Advice for day --> swing trading

[Diana 0]

Hello good people,

Forum lurker here seeking some advice. I have been day trading for the past half year, but now due to a new job restriction, I'm not allowed to. I still can however swing trade in indexes and ETFs (non single stocks) freely and I am thinking of doing that.

This would definitely change the pace and strategy, and I'm going to Brian's book first as a guide.

Anyone with experience with the same thing or any tips?

[Rob C 826]

On 5/7/2021 at 11:36 PM, Diana said:

Hello good people,

Forum lurker here seeking some advice. I have been day trading for the past half year, but now due to a new job restriction, I'm not allowed to. I still can however swing trade in indexes and ETFs (non single stocks) freely and I am thinking of doing that.

This would definitely change the pace and strategy, and I'm going to Brian's book first as a guide.

Anyone with experience with the same thing or any tips?

 

Sorry for the delay, I missed your post last month. Yes, I have been through the same dilemma as my job changed and I was unable to trade my most profitable setups which are usually after the first hour of trading. This is common and one of the coaches at Day Trading Academy, where I am taking courses, also made that transition from day to swing trading successfully when teaching would interrupt his trading.

Yes Brian's book is very good. I also recommend taking an Udemy course of your choosing on chart reading.

The lessons I have learned:

I see that you won't trade single stocks. That is good. It seems for about a year I have needed to check the price of stocks (at least on my phone) during the day to optimize profits. ETFs need less observation.

Learn 1 to 3 ETFs really, really well. If your account is too small to take shorts than please stick to ETFs that have an inverse ETF with good liquidity as well.

Careful learning ETFs that are well correlated. Like SLV and GDX will be too well correlated.

Don't use leveraged ETFs. I use to, but they would always gap well beyond my stop overnight. In general I would lose half my profits with these huge gaps.

Use options whenever possible. So if you are wondering if you can make decent money NOT trading stocks and NOT trading leverage ETFs, well you can’t. That’s where options plays a part. I use vertical spreads a lot. It gives me the leverage and you can lock in the risk. Best of both worlds. But that also means no homeruns with vertical spreads. But I am not into getting that one big trade that makes my month. I like the slow accumulation of profit. Since many ETFs are very liquid, it is easy to get fills with options. It is not impossible to get catastrophic price fluctuations with ETFs. Especially commodity ETFs. I quit swing trading for a year after BE (not an ETF but a midsize float stock) dropped -20R passed my stop overnight. I didn’t get back into swing trading until I understood options better to prevent that.

I always place my stop order right after my buy/short order is filled. I find it easy to take a stop day trading. But I find it more difficult taking the stop on swing trades. So I must place the stop order right away.

Check prices of your positions in premarket not after the market open. It is surprising how many position partials and closures I take in PM and I am glad I did. Please have an account that you can trade before/after hours.

Etrade has a paper trading account that was useful during my learning phase.

Choose an ETF that you have some interest in. If you like coffee maybe ETFs JO or CAFE may interest you (gotta love those names) plus you will enjoy keeping current with the eco-political events that effect your ETF.

 

I hope you find something useful in the above list.

Rob C

 

[Diana 0]

Thanks Rob! That was very helpful! Your sharing of experience is definitely valuable.

I spent the last month or so re-orienting myself and reading up on stuff.

It's definitely a different skillset & mindset!

 

 

[vchandra11 8]

Hi there, were you able to get good lead to start swing trading. When i started out on swing trading, I had good experience in getting lots of good info from TD Ameritrade Webcast...it is for free....no cost. They have regular daily lessons from very experienced instructors...I have attached link below:

TD Ameritrade Webcasts (thinkorswim.com)

Hope this work for you...... its not something you will learn in a day or few months....takes lots of patience, and a good mentor who can help you to prepare a swing trading plan for you.

Your plan will help you to identify suitable type of swing trade: short term - few days or intermediate term - few weeks. Strategy with entry and exit points. Risk management. Trading vehicles and suitable trading platform.

...some food for thought...all the best