Trading Strategies

I run many different strategies, depending on lots of different factors – market conditions, timeframes, instrument. As far as I’m concerned trying to use the wrong trading strategy in the wrong type of market conditions will usually end in failure.

Each trade I take my strategy within that trade is very much biased towards how much I have gone into on the trade, so a trade at say £10pp is going to be treated very differently to one at £300pp. I always try to get myself into a free trade as soon as possible, it’s actually a lot easier trading with larger sums than smaller amounts, say at £300pp it goes 10pts in my favour I will have £2k off that leaves me with £100pp to play with and a 20pt leeway before I’m out of pocket, this leaves me with plenty of options on how I want to play the trade out going forward.

If my trades are taken off of larger timeframes and news is backing my direction i will more than likely look to pyramid, so no trade I enter has a hard and fast rule, but i’ll be thinking along the lines of how much risk I’m taking into the trade getting it risk free asap and if possible running a slice of it to maximise profits, you know a lot of people set up each trade with risk parameters and i’m not against that it’s just not how I trade.

Some lovely trades lately ,last 45mins on the Dow Jones can quite often give a nice move, I went long DAX at 5204 and 14 traded it right back to its pivot at 5311,with a few add on’s at 55 and 67 along the way, also bought gold at 1603 (still in that trade) and about 20 minutes before market closing I took a small long on Apple stock (AAPL). So fingers crossed come 14.30pm although the hourly candle is one hell of a bullish engulfer, yesterday was pretty much the perfect conditions for day trading, a lot of people get caught out because today they will think ahh we have this trading game nailed now, and will give it all back the next day, I know I’ve been there, now i approach each day on its merits.

So let’s have a look at a stock and the reason I took the trade, AAPL was delivering news but not the news we expected i.e. the new iphone5, so the stock takes a battering along with the market, the news is an iphone 4s basically quicker processor and better camera and this icloud thing to keep a pace with the samsung, Is this bad news or more clever AAPL marketing. My thinking is that they have another product to market for xmas and you can bet your bottom $ an iphone5 will be just around the corner, they have more cash than you can shake a stick at, so knowing I won’t get an entry on the hourly which is how i prefer to play AAPL, I drop down to the 5,and the following chart shows when I entered!

My technical anlaysis is far from textbook stuff, but it is stuff that gets used in the trenches day in day out, so it’s been tested proved and improved over time and no doubt I will go on improving things as new things come to light, a lot of people have technical analysis websites, write books etc and don’t even trade, I wouldn’t give them the time of day, battle hardened veterans is the way to go, hmmm been up since 4.30am quite often I struggle to sleep after a real full on trading day can’t seem to stop buzzing this is what caused me problems trading accounts full time, I now pick and choose when I do this…