Robert H

Please allow me to chime in here. I am on the tiered commission plan and am trading with 100 share sizes. What I failed to realize was that there is a minimum charge of 0.35 per order. So when I scale out of my 100 shares in thirds, it typically looks like this: -sell 33 shares, charged ~0.35 + regulatory fees -sell 22 shares, charged ~0.35 + fees -sell 14 shares, charged ~0.35 + fees -sell 10 shares, charged ~0.35 + fees -sell remaining 21 shares, charged ~0.35 + fees For the above trade example, I paid roughly $1.75 in commissions on 100 shares. That works out to $0.0175/share. Definitely not the 0.0035 I was expecting! With the fixed plan, the minimum charge is $1 per order. So in my above example, commissions could be as high as $5, or 0.05/share. Given this structure, it makes sense to use the tiered plan when first starting out with small sizes. Lee and I plan to compare our results once the sample size is large enough. Here's the IB page which shows order minimums for fixed vs tiered.

I opened an account with IB Canada (separate entity), and here is what I have been doing to trade US stocks: 1. Funded account in Canadian dollars (CAD) 2. Set base currency to USD in Account Management (only for display and reporting purposes) 3. Converted a small amount of CAD to USD to cover initial losses. This video tutorial was very helpful 4. Each day, my Buying Power in IB/DAS is converted from CAD to equivalent USD 5. I day trade only US stocks and close out all positions at end of day 6. I stay well below my BP--again, calculated in USD in DAS 7. Profits and losses are settled in USD automatically 8. Commissions are deducted from USD balance 9. USD balance increases/declines with profit/loss at the end of each day Note that the majority of my equity used for buying power and margin is still in CAD (+90%). When I am profitable, I plan on converting the USD gains to CAD on a monthly--maybe even weekly--basis. This way I am not exposed to long-term currency risk. Not sure if any of the above is helpful at all, but I've documented it here for future reference. Best of luck!

Good call Crewdog. It's down 4.2% today, but you can never predict these things as a day trader. Swing traders, on the other hand...

KHC Opening Range Breakout – February 16, 2018 First Trade KHC capitulated in the opening 5 minutes, but I patiently waited for the first candle to close before going short. My entry was 68.51, with a stop above VWAP at 68.95. The target was 68.15, for a risk-to-reward 0.8. During the excitement of the sell-off, I quickly forgot that this was not a favourable ratio and took the trade anyway. The price tanked below my original target of 68.15 to 67.65, but I got greedy and didn't take any profit. The following 5 minutes saw a massive bullish engulfing candle form. I had the chance to get out at break-even, but again I froze. When the price popped above VWAP, I stopped out for a huge loss. Second Trade Immediately after that pullback, I saw a better entry right below VWAP. This time I placed the stop at 69 to give it some more room. My target was the same, at 68.15, for a better risk-to-reward of 2.6 this time. Having learned my lesson from the first trade, I covered at 68.50, 68.15, and 3 times after during another pullback to VWAP. The gains from this second trade almost covered the huge loss from the first. This was an important lesson in trade management. I could have gotten out of the first trade with a profit, or break-even at worst. The market was giving me information that I chose to ignore (at my own peril). Commissions are cheap; I could have easily gotten back into the 2nd trade with a clean slate. Instead both trades resulted in a wash.

No worries, Robbie. To add to my previous points: Andrew is always saying the 1-minute provides better resolution. The way I interpret that is like using a powerful zoom lens on a camera or microscope. It allows you to focus on the minutia of an object, but you lose the big picture of what your study is. Max zoom has very specialized uses, similar to the 1-minute chart.

Hey Robbie, I'm still learning (who isn't) but here's my two cents: I watch both, but give more weight to the 5-minute. It is what I base my decisions on and what I use to identify strategies (i,e ABCD). Setups are just way more clean. Price action signals like engulfing patterns and higher-high/higher-lows are often noise on the 1-minute. There is just too much choppy movement. I try to use the 1-minute to get favorable entries on pullbacks, etc. It also depends on the speed of the trade; for example a scalp vs. a reversal. In the former, I would use the 1-minute to enter/exit. The latter may take 10-15 minutes to clearly set up, so I base my decisions on the 5-minute. For low floats--which I am avoiding at the moment--the 1-minute provides good signals, but only when the 5-minute is confirming it. The XNET trade above was a good example of bullish 1-minute price action during a bearish/neutral 5-minute setup. Long story short--I could trade purely on the 5-minute, but can't say the same about the 1-minute. You only grey faster basing entire trades on the 1 minute.

Speaking from experience: I recommend you get out of that trade ASAP. I know that sounds extreme, but please hear me out. I made the mistake of holding $10K worth of RAD overnight last summer. My limit was off by a few pennies at the closing bell and I didn't want to exit in after-hours. What was the worst that could happen, right? Next day it opened lower than my entry and closed even lower than that. I thought I'd hold it until break-even or some favourable price. The day after, it popped a bit, but I missed the exit. Finally, on June 29 I woke up to this: Being the stubborn fool I was, I continued holding it for weeks in hopes of some recovery. I searched everywhere for information that justified my long position. Finally, I bit the bullet and sold somewhere around $2.25 for a 45% loss. Definitely not rad, dude. I don't mean to spook you--especially over the long weekend--but never let a day trade turn into a swing trade. You will think of all sorts of reasons not to get out with a loss since you're now biased in one direction. I'm not saying that something like this will happen to you, but as day traders we aren't in the business of holding positions overnight. Our initial decisions are based on very short time frames; the longer you hold the more risk you are being exposed to. Best of luck.

Patrick, I'm surprised your trading platform let that happen. You're with Schwab StreetSmart Edge, correct?

I recently funded my IB Canada account and use DAS. Here are my observations: 1. Make sure the Buying Power in DAS matches your IB account summary. Mine do not. DAS shows my BP:Equity ratio as 4:1, while IB shows 3.333:1. I believe this is because my account is under $25k USD (Canadian). 2. DAS should prevent you from exceeding your BP. I tested this multiple times in SIM, and I sure hope it works with live. The order basically gets rejected with a warning about BP exceeded. Hopefully somebody else can confirm this in a live account. Again, this assumes that your DAS and IB BP match (point 1 above). 3. The IB link you shared has a lot of information which I think complicates things for day trading. In your situation, you have $140k BP. As far as I'm aware, that is calculated real-time from your Equity. Say you enter into a $50K position. That leaves you with $90k BP for any new positions. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong. The part I'm unsure of is what happens if the $50k position increases in value to $75k intraday. Does the gain have to be realized before it is added to Equity? Or is unrealized gain added to Equity in real-time? I'll check this next week and get back to you.

SpeedTrader (www.speedtrader.com) is offering our members a flat commission rate of $2.95/trade, regardless of share size. A minimum of $30,000 is required to open an account and PDT rules apply. SpeedTrader uses DAS Pro as their trading platform. They offer day trading margin of 4:1 and overnight margin of 2:1. If you generate $450 or more in monthly commissions, the SpeedTrader Pro platform fee is waived. Please mention Bear Bull Traders as a referral in your application to receive the discounted rate. UPDATE: March 28, 2018: $500 in free trades or 1 month free (whichever comes first) from SpeedTrader for us https://speedtrader.com/bearbulltraders/ also $2.95/trade flat fee or 0.0039/share

This is a very common question, so here is a breakdown of the Account Report in DAS. To access the report, navigate to menu Tools > Account Report. Please note that the commissions assume SureTrader's rate structure, and may not necessarily match your broker's fees. If you plan on using Interactive Brokers, a good estimate of commissions is to multiply number of shares traded (B below) x $0.005. ====================[TOP]==================== [A] Tickets - A Ticket represents any and all executions that result from one order being entered. Regardless of how many partial executions result from one order being sent, only one ticket is generated. One Ticket = one commission. [b Shares - Number of shares bought/sold and shorted/covered [C] SEC - Securities and Exchange Commission fee calculated as a percentage of the dollar value of the trade. Read more on Investopedia. [D] FINRA - Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Trading Activity Fee. Read more. [E] Trade P&L - Gross profit/loss before any commissions or fees. E = L+C+D+G [F] Commission - Based on SureTrader's commissions structure. Unsure of exact calculation used; could be $4.95 per round-trip trade (?) Other users who are with IB say it could be using tiered commission rates, or $1/ticket. [G] ECN - Fee or credit for removing or adding liquidity to the market, respectively. Read more. [H] Net P&L - Net profit/loss after all commissions and fees. H = E-F-C-D-G, or H = L-F ====================[TOTALS]==================== Total Trades - Total tickets, equal to A above [J] Bought Shares - Total shares bought/covered [K] Sold Shares - Total shares sold/shorted [L] Day-trade P&L - Profit/Loss before commissions, but including ECN, SEC, FINRA. L = E-C-D-G [M] Total ECN - Equal to G above [N] Total SEC - Equal to C above [O] Total FINRA - Equal to D above In Summary, the value in H is your take home pay/loss at the end of each trading day.

For those who subscribe to the DAS Deluxe package, here's a tip on how to boost your stock market data feed up to Premuim/Elite levels for free! All you need to do is contact DAS and ask them to swap your Options Level 2 data for ARCA book. There is no additional cost. This, of course, assumes you don't plan to trade options. After they confirm the switch has been made, close and re-open DAS. You should see additional ACB limit orders on the L2 Montage tab, as well as the complete ARCA Book. Contact DAS support through the DAS web form or via e-mail at [email protected].

EBAY ABCD/Moving Average Trend – February 1, 2018 EBAY was on our watchlist after gapping up big in the pre-market. The stock was at new all-time highs (ATH). At the Open I couldn't find any clear direction, until about 10 AM an ABCD pattern was clearly forming. I patiently waited for a bottom to be put in and quickly calculated the setup variables. My stop loss would be somewhere around $45.80 (point C), with the first profit target at $46.50 (point B). If I could get a good entry around $46, then my profit-to-loss potential was somewhere in the neighbourhood of 2.5. I waited for point C to clearly form and then went long on a new 5-min high. On the very next candle, there was a pullback towards VWAP but I held my ground. I could have easily panic sold below my entry, but the price was still above my stop loss. As the stock continued to make higher highs and higher lows, I noted that we were riding the 9 EMA. At 10:30, EBAY dipped below the MA but it didn't close below it--so I held. After riding the Moving Average Trend for nearly 45 minutes. I took some profit at $46.50. I continued taking profit all the way up to $47. When I saw a Shooting Star Doji form at around 11 AM, I sold my remaining shares. The stock broke below the 9 EMA shortly after and trended back to VWAP. Not everyone is comfortable being in/out of momentum trades in 5 minutes or less. This was a great example of using the classic ABCD strategy to gain a favorable entry, and exercising patience during a slow but profitable trade.

Detailed instructions are posted here.

I mentioned this trick in the chat today as the topic of emotional trading came up. Over-trading and revenge trading are sins we are all guilty of. At times we tell ourselves: Done for the day! I'm just going to observe the markets. Then we end up taking a trade out of boredom/FOMO. Well there's a feature in DAS that will physically prevent you from making a trade. In the Montage, click the little lock icon. It will go from green to red (not the day trading strategy, lol). Orders, hot buttons, and hotkeys are now disabled for this Montage. I know it sounds pretty extreme to lock yourself out, but even the most disciplined traders can have lapses in self-control.

This is a common question in the chat, so here's a YouTube video of how to do it: All credits to Trader Patrick.

I use Andrew's settings without the red, just a pure grey scale. It's one less colour for my brain to process. Please see below for the RGB values. Andrew's Tier Colours: Group 0: 255,255,255 Group 1: 247,239,239 Group 2: 222,222,222 Group 3: 240,198,198 Group 4: 206,206,206 Group 5: 231,173,173 Group 6: 181,181,181 Group 7: 231,148,148 My Tier Colours: Group 0: 255,255,255 Group 1: 230,230,230 Group 2: 205,205,205 Group 3: 180,180,180 Group 4: 155,155,155 Group 5: 130,130,130 Group 6: 105,105,105 Group 7: 80,80,80 For reference, here is how to change the L2 Tier Color in DAS: Right-click Montage > Level 2 Config Click the Color Group X > Define Custom Colors Enter RGB values in green boxes below:

Toan, try changing the Global Default Order Configuration: Go to Setup > Order Templates For Q---Nasdaq, change Account in drop down Hit Apply For N---NYSE, change Account in drop down Hit "Apply to all exchanges" Hit "Apply" If that still doesn't work, for each Montage: Right-click the order entry area > Order Template Check Use Global Default

Hey Robbie, give this a try: ROUTE=STOP;StopType=Market;StopPrice=AvgCost-0.10;Share=Pos;TIF=DAY+;SELL=Send;

IB has a $10,000 USD funding minimum for both Canadians and Americans. US residents need $25k worth of equity to avoid being flagged a Pattern Day Trader. Canadians are exempt from the PDT rules. Questrade has L2 and no required minimum. Their platform--IQ Edge--isn't the greatest, but it supports basic hotkeys. I have my TFSA, RRSP, and a Margin account with Questrade. Commissions are relatively cheap compared to other Canadian brokers. TD Canada Trust is another option. They have a popular platform called Think or Swim.

That's very odd, Greg. Is your Trades window being populated or is it blank like the Closed Positions?

The SwitchTWnd command is not working as expected. Please see below posts for prior discussion: Hotkey Question Set Montage to Chart Symbol Hotkey

Try right-clicking inside the window and selecting Config. Make sure that all the check boxes are selected under the Filter section.

Thanks for this undertaking, Jason. I especially like the strategy-based reporting feature as I am a stats junkie lol. Carlos and I shared our journal templates in this post. It may be useful for your design.

Great post, Jason. Thank you for taking the time to share with us.