Trading with RTT confirmation

I have tried to stay away because I felt like I was hogging the board but I had to share this with you all.

I knew AMZN was the stock to watch in my basket. I bought AMZN to go down and sold this morning. I bought AMZN when it hit about $224.15 and sold this morning when it hit about $213.50...a $10.65 move down. I am done for the week.

Okay so here is how I knew. I look at the Daily chart every morning at about 21 - 30 minutes into the trading day. If I do not see anything long term I move to my 21 moving average chart for short bites into the market. I spotted a AMZN Bollinger Band signal. AMZN was preparing for a turn around. AMZN according to RTT is preparing to go into earnings and out of the last 13 years it has been down 11 times. (Confirming “TRADE WITH KNOWLEDGE TRADE WITH POWER”)

So I had 2 things confirming a down for AMZN. If you will look at your daily chart at the Bollinger Band on 6/29 you can see the top band is still showing up slightly but the bottom band is flat. This is saying (1) volume is leaving this stock which means (2) buyers are losing interest going into earnings. On July 2, I saw my 3rd confirmation; a gravestone DOJI…and it is true that this gravestone wasn’t as strong as some I have seen but it was enough to confirm the 2 signals I had on June 29. It was not time yet to buy. I wanted two more confirmations as to what was looking like a PUT. The next day I had another gravestone DOJI so the trade wasn’t ready yet. On July 5th I had another, 4th, confirmation with the strong red candle with a top wick but my MACD was not below the zero line. July 6th was the final confirmation with a HRFP across the board on my daily chart but in THIS market I do not hold over the weekend so I waited for Monday’s open HOPING there would not be a gap down causing a dead Cat Bounce. There wasn’t and I was off to the races. I was almost 100% certain that my trade would work.

I estimated that AMZN would go at least $213.17 down when I got into my trade because that was the level where the bottom Bollinger Band held for several days. I never set stops (Gary’s teaching) so I would watch my trade on a 233 chart and at intervals during the day I would watch the 55. While in my trade I studied, read and listened to CNBC and Fox Business.

I want all of you to be successful. That is my heart felt desire. If you want success you have to reach for it and success means studying until this is all you talk about even in your sleep.

Awesome, great trade and commentary. Thanks so much for your details of the trade. I look forward to reading about your trades. Your insight as well as the others on this forum help me as I struggle through this. Thanks and keep the good trades and commentaries going!

I am also appreciative for your commentaries. I can actually follow your steps very well and you are very easy to understand. I can almost hear your voice as I read. For the record, you are not only an excellent trader, but you write very well also. Thanks again, you are so helpful to all of us. Do not worry about hogging the board. We learn something everytime you post.

I have read several books on the list. I am reading Cash Flow Quadrant right now. I am listening to The Master Swing Trader on my phone. That book is FULL of excellent, excellent information, but you must have a pen and pad when reading/listening. This is an extremely powerful book that really provide guidance to a new trader.

Rookie,

Thank you for the very nice complement. Interestingly enough I was a writer with my own local newspaper column. I am glad I am helpful.

Darcy, I also want to encourage you to keep on posting. I'm always eager to read your posts, and I love hearing about your trades - winners and losers.

Great post Darcy! Thank you, I too went through WSB, Advance, and read RTP notes and discussed Double Espresso... I have been working to become consistent over the last 2.5 years, I still cannot trade consistently..thank you for sharing.. God bless

Darcy,

I wanted to let you know that your information and guidance has helped me tremendously. I have been practicing for an entire year and it is finally coming together. I am having one win after the other after the other. I am not over confident. I learned a hard lesson a few months ago by becoming over confident. I am only trading the evidence as Gary would say. For the new traders, I will simply state, if you are not working really, really hard at this, this world will continue to be a mystery. It is like Gary said, one day it all makes sense, but without a lot of sweat, sleepless nights, big losses, and few tears, it will be a long time coming.

I am a former collegiate athlete, so losing day after day after day is not something I handle well. I could not understand why my hardwork was not paying off. I am not accustomed to working as hard as I had and not see better results. I did not start seeing true progress until I focused my hardwork in the following areas; writing in my journal, understanding candle patterns, being aware of the Market Calendar and Trading Zone, reading several books on the booklist, watch CNBC, understand what is going on outside of the US and most importantly, following the rules.

I will talk about a few little things that I found to be critical in nailing good entry and exit points as well as a few things that work well for me. Make sure you truly understand how to draw support and resistance lines. After enough of my key indicators line up, the support and resistance lines are critical. When one of those lines have been broken and my major indicators are signaling, I look for a good entry on a small chart ( 5, 8, 21). I personally like to enter on charts a little bigger than my 5 or 8. I have learned to NEVER trade against the Broad Market (Thanks Darcy!). I have gotten creamed doing this. All indicators can look good, but DO NOT DO IT. Rather fight Barney or Rocky? Give me Barney Fife. I have learned to never trade unless I have at least 3 lines crossing. The MACD must be turning up. The Trend and Decision Charts must have good candle signals and run in the same direction as my trade. I want my stock's sector to run in the same direction. I want the trend to be in my favor (RTT). Know what is your stock's temperment. It is crazy, but I think of my stocks as people. Each have a mind of it's on. I have a good idea of what it will do when specific signals start lining up. For example, I simply knew CRM (Salesforce) would run strong this morning. There were simply too many indicators lining up for a solid trade. It scream out at me, "ITS A TRADE". I bought 2 contracts of CRM at 10AM. The stock was at $129.88 (broke my $129 resistance line). I just sold it at 1:10PM and the stock was at $133. The virtual money was $490 on a $1500 positon. All indicators were telling me to stay in the position, but I am trying to settle in and not become greedy. I am happy with $490. I make it a practice to shut my system down after I close a trade.

After I get off from work, I evaluate my day, make notes, totally prepare for possible profit taking the next day. I will start trading "Real Money" in September! When you have practiced so much until, it becomes routine, you are heading in the right direction. I am not nervous or afraid after entering a trade. If it turns on me, I simply get out, and close up shop for that day. I go home, evaluate my day, make notes, and prepare for the next day. I limit my losses to 5-10%. You will know quickly if it turns on you. Just get out of the trade and evaluate where you messed up. Learn from that mistake. I never go into a trade after a loss, unless I KNOW why that trade did not work. Accept loss and do not jump another trade to make up for the loss. You usually lose more money, and more importantly, you lose confidence.

Last part and I am done. This part is for those of us who work full-time jobs, have children at home, and have limited time to trade at work. I learned the hard way, so I will share. I thought I needed to watch the market all day. This is not true. As position traders, we should not look to be in and out of a stock during the same day. It happens, but as newbies, we need to stay fairly safe. This is my second summer of practice trading, so I have done more in and out trades this summer. I am no veteran, but I have been in well over 1000 trades during the last year. Honestly, 90% of my work for trading is done AT HOME! I spend time with my wife and kids from 6:00-8:30 every night. I crank things up at about 9:00pm. I am at my computer from 9:00-11:00. I break down my day of trading. If i am in a trade, this take me about 15-20 minutes because I already know where I will most likely exit. If I am not in a trade, this take over an hour. I have to take time to draw my support and resistance lines, check my signals, get a feel for the broad market, check my stock sectors, check charts, identify which stock is setting up, etc. I do this for all 5 expert stocks. I use documents that have my resistance/support points-numerically. I can be away from my desk and use my cell phone to see when a stock has broken my resistance/support line. I have my laptop with me, so if I need to enter, I pull over, hotspot it or step outside and enter the position. I end my night by writing in my journal and reading. I rise at 5AM. I turn on the computer, get my coffee, and start my morning. My first 20 minutes, I watch my show with Cramer on the internet (CNBC Guy i think). He breaks things down pretty well. I then look over all my documents that were completed the night before. I re-evaluate my daily plan, and visualize how I am going to make it work with my job duties. My job does not allow downloads, so I have to run Qcharts on my laptop. This building has no WiFi, so I have to Hot Spot my cell phone to run my charts. It is not easy flipping through charts on a laptop. At work, if I am not in a trade, I try to watch the open, but I never enter a position until after amateur hour (thanks Darcy). I take a good look at where the market is at about 10:00. If nothing looks good, I wait and take another look at 11:00. If something looks like it is setting up and all signals are good, I wait until my line is broken, reconfirm all signals, and enter the trade. I watch for a few minutes. If it continues to show promise, I walk away for another hour and check the numbers on my phone periodically. If things are shaping up well as I expected, I do not go back to my computer until well after lunch or if it starts to turn and breaks my line in the wrong direction. If I do not have reason to exit, I stay and ride until the charts tell me otherwise (unless I am happy in seattle). That is a typical day for me.

I know this is a lot of Stuff, but I think it is important for some of us to help each other. I am not great at this yet, but I am having very, very few losses. Guys, the light truly comes on after you have given up you left arm to learn this stuff- lol... It is a great feeling to know that you have a good feel for how all this works.

Darcy and rookie30 - AWESOME posts. Thanks for sharing!

The Market Makers Edge is the best book I have read on the list. If you have been in this for a few months, you should understand most of the information. It is not the book that solves all your trading problems, but it gives a tremendous amount of frame work. It helps clarify alot of questions I had that were creating that little cloud. It also helps me trade with confidence, knowledge, and precision-opposed to gambling and luck. A MUST READ!

Rookie,

I realize this is an old thread, but I'll give it a shot anyway. You said that you did 40+ trades every week and over 1000 trades over the preceding year. That's a lot. Were a bunch of those the news ones that Gary talked about. Or were those "real" paper trades? If so, how did you go about finding so many meaningful plays that you could actually learn from and not just do to say you did a certain number each week?

Thanks.

Kars,

I had a certain number I planned per week. I did my 3 news plays a day. Gary said those are used as practice plays as well, so that left me with only 5 practice plays to set up a day. I think one misunderstanding about 40 practice trades a week is you almost can not physically enter 25 practice trades a week, unless you are glued to the computer all day- just my opinion. We have 9-5's, so I had to plan how I was going to make this work and keep my job.

This is what I did. I did my news plays each night. I had a process of researching and finding my stocks to predict movement. I set up a schedule to check them every 3 days- again, at night. My paper money practice plays were different. When I first started, I was slowly commiting suicide. I was trying to find 5 trades every day. Well, after sleep apnea, excessive weight gain, and Welbutrin, I knew I had to do something different. I then started setting up my 5 trades that looked very positive for either a call or put on the next day. I used a basket of about 25 stocks that were in different sectors. I drew my support and resistance lines, trendlines, and checked other indicators. I determined the direction I thought the stock would run the next day. I would rarely have all 5 predicted to run in the same direction. If my support or resistance was broken, I simply entered the trade. When or if I reached 20%, I was out. If it did not reach 20% and it turned on me, I did not know what to do, so I usually lost money. After a period of losing money, I learned how to set my exit points before entering. I also learned how different sectors acted under certain conditions an zones. For those who have 9-5's, you might want to hear this one, if you have not attempted to have 40 trades a week. The other really big component I learned was, once you enter off the 55, you can not physically sit there and watch all those stock. Remember you have those entered from the previous day, the day before that, and before that. I set my alarm on my phone to go off every 55 minutes, starting 10:25 AM, then, 11:20, 12:15, etc. This is how I gained some sanity. The remaining stocks that did not go my way, I would hold them for a few days and wait for my levels to be broken. If they did not break in 3 days, I dropped them and I was on to the next. By that time, The 3- days off the 55 was basically over, and I was sick of looking at that thing for 3 days ( along with so many others). I simply made sure I had 5 stocks every day that COULD come my way. Finally, I started narrowing my stocks down to only 10. I would only trade those 10 and enter about 10-15 trades a week. Then I narrowed down to 6 and entered no more than 10 week. Now, I am sick and have not done that for awhile. It was brutal, but well worth the time an effort. I know that is a lot of mumbo jumbo, but I hope this helps.

Rookie,

Thank you for the significant reply. You've given me a lot to think about.

My feeling is that folks (I do at least) probably make the practice harder than it needs to be. You must have learned a great deal from all that practice. Taking significant notes on those trades would greatly enhance the learning.

Anyway, I hope to be able to contribute to these boards more than just questions at some point. But for now, I'm just in receive (with discernment) mode. Thanks to the generosity of many posters here.

Kars,
I do not know how long you have been trading, but you are definately on the right forum. There is NOTHING else out there that gives you pointers and assistance on how to trade under WSB. There are some really good folks out here. Months ago I stated to someone else, go back through the different discussions and find every post from DARCY. Her knowledge and ability to explain how processes work are second to none. There are others who "know there stuff" as well, but she is the MAMA OF WSB- in my opinion! I have created a notebook filled with pages and pages of her postings. Some of her postings I probably will never understand because my little "pea brain" can only handle so much. On the contrary, I sometimes go back and read through some of those postings and have a more clear understanding of what she Darcy was conveying to us.

Do not be concerned about asking questions. I sometimes think they get tired of me, but I will help when I can and ask questions when I am lost. Just fire away. I am literally on here almost everyday.

If you have basic knowledge, " The Market Makers Edge" was a really good book for me. A good mindset book for me was "The Power of Focus". A pretty good little quick-read guide ( only about 75-80 pgs) is " 7 Chart Patterns That Consistently Make Money". Keep pushing