# Standard swing trading ideas



## grah33 (8 December 2015)

(skip to question below if u prefer)
I've spent lots of time learning and i'm still learning more and more.  i like trend following (daily timeframe) and i'm going to continue with that.  we had a bear market before so couldn't trade and now i'm into it and waiting for my trades to turn over. and will build them up slowly as i see it really works for me.  it's taking a while though .  long story short: i don't have a big capital base and i don't work much (for good reasons), and it would be nice to allocate a small portion of my portfolio to swing trading.  


MY QUESTION :
are there any basic swing trading end of day strategies that should work?   maybe i can just find the same setup over and over and use it? mean reversion seems popular and could be the way to go. anyone know of any strategies or methods for me?  i'd only trade long when my market filter says the XAO is uptrending, and avoid outside of that.  


as always, i'm grateful for everybody's assistance to me,  and sorry for probably sounding annoying at times.


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## Gringotts Bank (8 December 2015)

grah33 said:


> (skip to question below if u prefer)
> I've spent lots of time learning and i'm still learning more and more.  i like trend following (daily timeframe) and i'm going to continue with that.  we had a bear market before so couldn't trade and now i'm into it and waiting for my trades to turn over. and will build them up slowly as i see it really works for me.  it's taking a while though .  long story short: i don't have a big capital base and i don't work much (for good reasons), and it would be nice to allocate a small portion of my portfolio to swing trading.
> 
> 
> ...




Yeh, don't do swing trading right now.  The market is not giving up anything for this approach.  You still get the odd one, like 1PG today, but it's been hard for over a month.  Will work again at some point. 

 To get a rough idea of swing trading, you can just plot a few MA's.  Buy the dips in strongly uptrending stocks - that sort of thing can work.


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## CanOz (8 December 2015)

My Swing account is down like 15%, its been poor for these types of systems for sure.


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## peter2 (8 December 2015)

grah33: A small capital account to start with, is a major handicap. Plus, if you aren't working then any losses can't be replaced quickly. Have you heard the term "scared money"?  You can't learn to trade with scared money because you have to place some of this scared money at risk in order to make money. 

You're looking for a method that gets wins quickly and does so right at the start. Unfortunately there isn't any, especially with a small starting account. Every method has its good periods and bad periods in the market. 

Work and earn some more. Motivate yourself to work for the next six months and save hard so that you have a bigger starting capital. Save to trade. Spend this six months paper trading real-time charts. You'll get some experience if you do it properly. 

You've been around Pav's and my thread for quite a while now. Ask yourself what's holding you back? You could have competed in the last two ASX trading games? No money at risk. You could have started your own short term trading thread here at ASF. The results would be immaterial. You would have learned heaps. 

Whatever it is that's holding you back. You got to get past it yourself.


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## CanOz (8 December 2015)

Got to admire Peter2's method, to achieve those results in this type of market is really impressive. Imagine what he can achieve in a trending market.

Peter, you should be trading OPM...


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## kid hustlr (8 December 2015)

CanOz said:


> My Swing account is down like 15%, its been poor for these types of systems for sure.




What type of system?

(Roughly)

New highs
Pivot lows
RSI

?


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## CanOz (8 December 2015)

kid hustlr said:


> What type of system?
> 
> (Roughly)
> 
> ...




Pattern trading, i trade some of Nick's power setups as well some of my own ideas from my scans.


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## peter2 (8 December 2015)

Thanks for the compliment. There were a few steps that had to be taken before I started.

1. I made a commitment to the ASF community.
2. I accepted the responsibility for all my trading actions, including the mistakes.
3. I defined the trading style - momentum (~swing)
4. I defined the break-out setup (and later the pullback setup that I've not needed).
5. I created scans/process to find these setups.
6. I created a trading plan, with position sizing, money management.
7. I created a set of trade management rules/guidelines for all possible price movements after the entry.
8. I created a spreadsheet to monitor all the important stats.
9. I made a commitment to report to the forum on a regular basis (EOW). 
10. I try to be disciplined.

There's a lot more important stuff than the strategy.


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## grah33 (8 December 2015)

i'll get back to this thread soon, but the market was holding me back. since may it went down, and I only trade when my hull market filter regards the market as uptrending.  that's about 5 months of no trading (it was a bear), except a few little spurts.   then i got into it when it started rising and now my first trades are slowly going. takes about 3 months with this system for a trade to roll out some profit. i still reckon it's a great system though.  just need a year of it on my total savings.  

i don't work much (got a few health problems). but yeah, i could put out more hours, save to trade as you suggest.


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## ThirtysixD (8 December 2015)

grah33 said:


> (skip to question below if u prefer)
> I've spent lots of time learning and i'm still learning more and more.  i like trend following (daily timeframe) and i'm going to continue with that.  we had a bear market before so couldn't trade and now i'm into it and waiting for my trades to turn over. and will build them up slowly as i see it really works for me.  it's taking a while though .  long story short: i don't have a big capital base and i don't work much (for good reasons), and it would be nice to allocate a small portion of my portfolio to swing trading.
> 
> 
> ...




I don't think swing trading is profitable any more (except on a few currency pairs). Most of the systems you see floating around on the net lose money. If you like trend following why not just expand your markets? ETF's give you good access to commodities and foreign markets.


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## CanOz (8 December 2015)

ThirtysixD said:


> I don't think swing trading is profitable any more (except on a few currency pairs). Most of the systems you see floating around on the net lose money. If you like trend following why not just expand your markets? ETF's give you good access to commodities and foreign markets.





Another ASF long bow....

Peter2 is swing trading, have you looked at that?


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## ThirtysixD (9 December 2015)

CanOz said:


> Another ASF long bow....
> 
> Peter2 is swing trading, have you looked at that?




Most of his trades are short term breakouts that follow the prevailing trend

If you wanna call that swing trading thats fine but I think its a combination of different techniques.


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## CanOz (9 December 2015)

ThirtysixD said:


> Most of his trades are short term breakouts that follow the prevailing trend
> 
> If you wanna call that swing trading thats fine but I think its a combination of different techniques.




Swing trading speaks more to the duration than the technique. Usually several days to a few weeks.


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## Gringotts Bank (9 December 2015)

CanOz said:


> Swing trading speaks more to the duration than the technique. Usually several days to a few weeks.




No it doesn't.  Swing trading = "buying the dips", like mean reversion (same thing).


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## Gringotts Bank (9 December 2015)

Gringotts Bank said:


> No it doesn't.  Swing trading = "buying the dips", like mean reversion (same thing).




Sorry Cana, I see there's different definitions.  Seems you can jump on the swing mid way through its trajectory, rather than at its turning point.


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## CanOz (9 December 2015)

Gringotts Bank said:


> Sorry Cana, I see there's different definitions.  Seems you can jump on the swing mid way through its trajectory, rather than at its turning point.




Yeah, i mean ideally you want the whole thing...I can think of several different techniques off hand, break outs, divergence a-b-c, pullbacks/retests, flags/pennants/complex patterns....on and on


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## grah33 (9 December 2015)

just wondering, for the people in drawdown right now, maybe that's because the market has been a bear for a few months.  would you have been in drawdown if  you were trading in better market conditions, like in this image (trade during the yellow boxes only)?  


and when do people exit? there is just no way of knowing if the rally will go a little higher or lower or stay at the same level.


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## CanOz (9 December 2015)

Well Grah33, thats trading. The individual swing trades are exited as per the trailing or initial stops. You can use an index filter to reduce the risk in non-ideal conditions, and increase to max risk in perfect conditions, but you're never going to hit this perfectly. Its a choppy range bound market....c'est la vie.


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## Gringotts Bank (9 December 2015)

grah33 said:


> just wondering, for the people in drawdown right now, maybe that's because the market has been a bear for a few months.




The broader market direction doesn't have a huge amount to do with it, for me anyway.  

Right now we just happen to have conditions where if a stock gets sold off, it continues to get sold off...hard.  That's not good.  Won't be like the at forever.  Markets change.


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## pixel (10 December 2015)

I came across this article:
*The Two Biggest Swing Trading Mistakes*

http://www.intelligenttrendfollower.com/the-two-biggest-swing-trading-mistakes/

might be useful for more than just noob swingers


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## pixel (10 December 2015)

I came across this article:
*The Two Biggest Swing Trading Mistakes*



> #1) Swing trading requires disciplined risk management. While this is true of all trading types, it’s especially true of swing trading. That’s because without clear risk management rules you can be tempted to “wait and see” if your losing stock trade (the one you were only going to hold for a few days) is going to turn around or not. This can lead to a short term trade turning into a long term losing “investment.” Not only does this cost you money, but it also ties up your capital from investing in other opportunities. So always set stop losses with your swing trades and just as importantly, stick with them. Otherwise you’ll be left holding the bag.
> 
> But that’s not the only swing trading mistake I often see. Here’s the second…
> 
> ...




http://www.intelligenttrendfollower.com/the-two-biggest-swing-trading-mistakes/

might be useful for more than just noob swingers


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## Gringotts Bank (10 December 2015)

When I look at my backtests, it's actually all fine.  I just have a *really *hard time with drawdowns.  I hate putting in so many hours and coming out flat or negative.  It grinds my gears, and that makes me do things like holding onto a losing position, or averaging down.  You know what happens next.

I was up about 40% in 3 months (from the start of FY2015).  I got used to easy money and when that started to evaporate I just got *so sh1tty*.  The thing is I could see it hapening.  I knew the market was changing, but I kept trading.  Discretion vs system is very hard.  I always apply some level of discretion over the top of my systems.


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## grah33 (10 December 2015)

thanks for the suggestions everybody.  i often re read posts and get something more out of them later on. very helpful.

i wonder how forex 1h and 4h TREND trades would compare to swing share trading ? money turns over quite fast on 1h/4h and you're capturing a trend rather than a swing portion which  seems easier to do and might yield better reward for risk. maybe that is an easier way to make money than swing share trading but still faster than share trend following on the daily timeframe.  could be the way to go as a secondary smaller portfolio...  


getting access to US shares seems like a good idea for me. the asx is going down (according to my market filter) so i can't buy anymore ASX shares if they bomb out, but i can buy US shares to replace them .so i can keep turning the money over rather than halting my trading. just replaced one of my asx shares last night.


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