Stock Trading Systems

Welcome Back! photo credit: Symic When you have a market that trades like this one it’s time to dust off the stock trading systems cabinet,  pull out the oscillators, and forget moving averages and other trend following indicators. I like the Stochastics %K to trade a choppy market.  Try reducing the time periods from the [...]

photo credit: Photos8.com Charting software comes pre-loaded with a tremendous amount of technical analysis indicators.  It’s fun to sift through the indicator tab and plot the various indicators looking for the one that best finds tops and bottoms or new trends. For my style of trading staying as close to price is the best strategy.  [...]

Trading signals are buy and sell alerts.  Unless trading a purely mechanical system a layer of discretion will improve the quality of those buy and sell signals. My experience has provided a mental checklist for evaluating trading signals.  Here are some of its points: What is the overall trend of the market? What is the [...]

photo credit: pasukaru76 Automated trading systems are also known as block-box or robot systems.  In essence, it’s the use of computer power to enter trade orders with the use of an algorithm.  An algorithm is really nothing more than a problem solver with a definite set of answers, or ways to solve the problem. The [...]

photo credit: crazyoctopus The popularity of exchange traded funds (ETF’s) grows each year.   There are nearly 1,000 ETFs available to trade covering almost any asset class imaginable.  Some of the bigger ETFs are offered by ProShares, IShares, and the SPDRs. There are many reasons for their increased popularity, especially with the individual investor.  The primary [...]

photo credit: Sh4rp_i There are many ways to correctly execute stock research.  My bias should be no secret if you’ve visited this site before –my focus is  technical trading, not fundamental analysis. When first trading,  my evenings were devoted to crunching numbers and analyzing data in the search for a worthy company to buy.  It [...]

A trader could devote a lifetime to studying Fibonacci trading strategies and become very adept at using the analysis.  For the rest of us there are some simple techniques that will improve our trading results. A confluence of Fibonacci levels is usually an important area to watch.  One way to spot these congestion levels is [...]

Day trading strategies are useful in the current market conditions — up big one day and then down hard a couple of days later.  If you have a few hours to devote to the computer screen for a day trade here’s a scan that has worked well in finding potential winners. I look for stocks [...]

Back-testing trading strategies is something traders should do when they’re developing their own trading systems.  A strategy usually starts with an idea that is coded into a formula.  Back-testing that formula will prove the viability of the initial idea.  In essence, the goal of back-testing is gauging the effectiveness of your idea.  Here are a [...]

Volatility  trading strategies have become very popular and rightly so.  When used properly, the VIX (Volatility Index) is a very useful indicator. There are all types of volatility calculations.  If you’re interested in the mathematics, etc., check out the articles at Investopedia. Volatility has often been associated with risk and uncertainty.  That’s true.  As traders [...]