NikkiB

Yup, it's AAPL for me every day. And I'll tell you why - I have the 1, 2, 5, 15, 30 and 1 day charts up for AAPL. Along with my montage with L2 highlighting big orders and two T&S screens up, one just for big orders. I can't tell you how much I've learned about watching different time frames and actually knowing what's going on with the L2 by just keeping it all up there for one stock and paying attention to it. If I'm trying to watch that for too many stocks, I retain no information. There were big orders on the ask on the L2 this morning at 161.00 - I knew if AAPL was strong I needed to watch that level to see what happened - bounce or continuation. And I took it for the continuation this morning after it passed the 161.00 and held PDH. Of course it's still going, I got out WAY too early, but that's ok - I did everything right and I'm green. It is still a learning curve for me! But I do WAY better when I concentrate on one stock at a time and AAPL moves most every day and works for me - and I'm actually also getting a really good feel for how it moves. I make about .7R-1.5R per day. My R is $110 right now, I just raised it up from $100 last week and I started at $50R a couple months ago. I try to only take 2-3 trades a day, so my commissions are generally under $10. I know - nothing glorious there - no big 5R stuff and huge money making days! But trust me, I've tried that many times and I just end up with big -6-7R's with a bunch of commission fees! It's all trial and error...and unfortunately takes way longer than you'd expect it to! For the record, I now also have AMD up on another screen - the 1-min and 5-min or 1-day charts. I found that by only having AAPL up, if it wasn't moving I'd find a reason to "see" a trade to take because I'd be getting bored/antsy. I go in to the open with a good idea of what's going on with both of those tickers and I watch them both. I.E. - I had AAPL up on my main set up when I saw AMD looking like it was going to break that range this morning - it happened as I was in my AAPL trade (only a few shares left, I'd already taken the bulk off), so I set a trailing stop on my AAPL trade and switched all my main screens over to AMD and went long on that for the break of the range. So I guess I trade only AAPL and AMD, but to me, AAPL's my main watch and AMD is off there on the side for me to glance at if AAPL's not doing anything.

Keep in mind that I have been trading for 2.5 years - so I've gone through SIM trading, I've traded every dang strategy out there, I've been with BBT for a little over 1.5 years now and have seen almost every webinar and education video, I did the PCT bootcamp...I've worked through a lot of wins and losses to find out what works for me and what doesn't (and I still screw up and take bad trades even when I know they're bad trades!) This morning on AAPL I did a quick scalp on the 1-min ORB based on price action and what I saw on the L2 before the bell (with VWAP as my stop). Then I shorted it at HOD (stop loss a few cents above HOD) at 9:49 because of the wick pushing price action down. Then I shorted it at 10:03 (stop loss a few cents above HOD) for a double top. Keep in mind - I take my profits quick because although some trades do run - most of them don't seem to for me (and I don't have the patience to wait them out)! Double tops are by far my most profitable trades....unfortunately I don't have the self-control to wait for them to form most of the time. I heard it so many time over the years...."You'll eventually find what you like to trade" and I spent a lot of time thinking I found it. You need to play around with a lot of strategies and find out what works for your brain. I.E. - ABCD's don't work for my brain at all. I'm best when I trade for the first 30-45 minutes and walk away. No matter if I'm up or down after that time - 95% of the time if I keep trading, I'm gonna make myself red or redder for the day. If I hit my max daily stop in the first 5 minutes, I'm pissed because I lost money and I wasn't patient and now I can't trade more for the day. So that helps me chill out and wait for trades that make sense to me. And although I wanted to be one of those people who has 10 different stocks up on my screen - I found that just makes me frantic and I miss every trade trying to catch every trade. One of the BBT videos was someone saying they only trade one stock every day (I think it was TSLA) and I decided to try that and it works much better for ME. Maybe I can work up to more, but for right now this is what works for me

I think ORB's are the hardest ones to play. And I actually think ABCD's are hard too - they're only clear to me AFTER they happen! Since I trade AAPL every day, on your trade above, you entered when it was consolidating/in a range on the 1-min chart. You needed to wait until it picked a direction. Also, AAPL was very wicky this morning and therefore very hard to play. I've also found that 1-min hammers are generally useless, unless there's a bunch of them in a row. It takes a while....months....years!...to figure out what works for you. My entries are bad because I wait too long to make sure of my decision - so I take profits quickly. I rarely make 1R on a trade - but I'll make .5R, .4R and .7R and call it a day.

100% agree! Higher share size, smaller R and little-to-no partialling has made a huge difference. Most of the time now I’m excited to get that commissions report email from IB after 5pm - I used to dread it!

For me - not necessarily 1.5R, but some R, and being able to try it with a .5 increment is incredibly helpful. I am finding that taking smaller R's and having a higher win rate is more beneficial to me so far. ETA - And yes, all or nothing most of the time. I find I start partialling out too much and end up wasting my money on commissions.

I'm glad Russell got to this before me so I can just copy his answer instead of typing it all out myself because my answer is the same Basically making the R's and win/loss ratio work for me based on all the data I'm collecting. I'm horrible at trade management. I enter trades at good spots, but then I panic and exit too early. Trying to somewhat "automate" my exits so I'm not in control of them, or at least have the R value on my chart so I can take most of my shares off then and let the rest ride. Being able to break it down even smaller to a .5R value (with any whole number) helps with the options of what's best to do. And ditto - not looking to make a killing, just a steady ROI every day/week/month.

Wow Russell - thanks for this info! I had the same exact problem when changing it to 1.5 and gave up, just figured it was too much math/decimals for it to work. Thanks for the solution!

It's the $150/month plus commissions (I use tiered). When I did it, I transferred my money from TD to my bank, and then from my bank to IB. I did the change about 9 months ago, so worth it!

Okey doke, I’ve been adjusting it manually. Was just curious if there was a more automated way to do it. Thanks

For this hot key (Buy fixed risk $50, take profit at 1R), is there a way to configure it to take 75% of profit at 1R instead of the full 100%? Thanks CXL ALLSYMB;StopPrice=Price-0;DefShare=BP*0.925;Price=Price-Bid+0.00;SShare=50/Price;Share=DefShare-SShare;DefShare=DefShare+SShare;SShare=Share;Sshare=DefShare-SShare;Share=0.5*SShare;TogSShare;ROUTE=LIMIT;Price=Bid-.05;TIF=DAY+;SELL=Send;DefShare=200;Price=StopPrice-Bid*1;Price=Bid-Price;TriggerOrder=RT:STOP STOPTYPE:RANGE LowPrice:Price HighPrice:StopPrice ACT:BUY QTY:POS TIF:DAY+;

Hey - you can call DAS at 702-943-1881 and have it set up to be charged to a credit card instead of through Paypal

Not that it accomplishes the same thing, but when I have to leave my computer for a bit, I set a trailing stop loss. I haven't had a problem with it working correctly (yet?).

@Skye You can trade with under $25K on a cash account. Just "play" with half your account value every day so your money has time to clear. I.E. if you have $15K, use $7.5K per day to trade with and you will have money cleared to play with every day (because it takes 2 days for funds to clear when your account is a cash account instead of a margin account).

@hailchaser2 Thanks for the input and info. I started using ChartLog when I switched to IB/DAS about 4 months ago, so hopefully I at least have that hurdle covered. Good luck going live again and post updates on how it's going for you!