My strategies for trading are obviously going to be very different than Phil’s strategies. For one, I day-trade stocks and do not work with longer term option strategies. My specific investment style is focused on short term investments that gain 2-5%. These rapid fire lucrative trades start to build up into a profitable long term portfolio over time. The keys to my trading strategy are early entry, short term holds, and the earliest exit as possible.
Entry
I enter a stock based on what it can do in one to two days (maximum). When I look at a stock, I want to decide where it can be at the end of the day and whether I will be able to enter and exit it in this short term period for a 2-5% gain. Finding winners is the hardest part of day trading, while the entry, to me, is more of a system.
My entry strategy for a given equity depends on whether it has good fundamentals or bad fundamentals, as well as, whether the stock market looks to be moving upwards or downwards for the day. If a stock has good fundamentals for the day (good earnings, upgrades, bullish sector news) and the market looks like it is going to be green, the given stock will most likely gap up. On that gap up, some traders that were in the stock prior to the day will take profits. Usually on any gap up of 2% or higher, there will be a slight pullback in the first ten to fifteen minutes. This pullback is where I want to enter, because it will likely present the most discounted price that I will be able to get for the day, unless for some reason the market turns south.
If the market is looking particularly weak, I tend to stay away from stocks that have strong fundamentals because they probably won’t be able to have a lot of upward movement. Instead, I look to enter short on a stock that is either extremely overvalued, opening 10% up or more, or a stock that has bad fundamentals. When the market is looking red, I enter the stock almost right away. If there are poor fundamentals combined with a bad market, the stock has no reason to move up at the open and I want to short it as soon as I can.
The key here is that we want to initially…
