Schwab StreetSmart Edge

[David from CT 29]

For anyone using Charles Schwab as a broker and the StreetSmart Edge platform. I would like to exchange ideas on how you have set up your platform.

[deejaypj 14]

Hi David, I am also with Schwab. Formerly, I was Options Xpress, so ended up at Schwab in the buyout and still trying to decide if I should look for a change or stay with Schwab. I am finding that it is hard to trade to the short side on some of the trades mentioned by Andrew but I mostly trade a little more based on 5min formations and stay away from the low float issues so it's not much of a problem. I am still working out the setup of the platform and integrating some of the ideas discussed here, such as hotkeys. I'm relatively new to BearBull so I haven't taken many trades based on strategies discussed here at this point. I would love to discuss more about ideas, as I'm sure it would benefit both of us.

 

Patrick

[David from CT 29]

I have my moments with the Schwab platform so am always "thinking" about changing, but I do like the news feed and the screener tools that are built in. By the time Andrew arrives in the chat (I am east coast US so have a big head start) I have already found a watch list that is fairly close to what he ends up with. I do not trade anything under $5 and stay away from NYSE stocks for the most part. By limiting my screeners to NASDAQ and $5-$100 stocks I can be assured of a small but active watch list in the morning. I personally only trade up to 11am since I find the volume drops off and I don't want to give back morning profits to the afternoon market. I started with the chat room first week in October, did the sim for 3 months and am now back trading live in January. Previously I had traded on my own for 9 months and decided I needed some sim time and additional training after reading Andrew's book. I do have hotkeys set-up in the street smart edge platform. A couple of key points there, you must have the all-in-one trade tool "active", as in clicked on, to have the hotkeys work and you should probably remove the confirmation popup window. I found that I can get an experience close to the das simulator that way. Although, in the das sim I had buttons set up and just clicked on them to enter and exit trades. I have submitted two enhancement requests to the development team at Schwab, but who knows if they will implement anything. I only trade stocks, but they seem to roll out a lot of changes for options traders. Ok, now I am just blathering on. Good to meet you Patrick and look forward to the exchange.

[deejaypj 14]

Thanks for the follow up. I'm east coast also, Florida to be exact. I do also like a lot of the features of StreetSmart but I am still learning the platform so I'm not totally happy with my execution at times. Are you able to use the built in scanner in StreetSmart to find Pre-market movers? I haven't figured out how to do that. The scans that I have been able to set up are only working after the market opens. Sounds like you have some similar parameters as I do when it comes to filtering out stocks. I like to stay away from the real cheap stocks and NYSE issues as well. The time of day is also a good thought. Whenever I try to trade too late I always seem to give back to the market.

 

I did already discover the hotkey issue you mentioned, where you need to have the "all-in-one" window active. The confirmation was the other thing. That made me a little nervous at first, since I was thinking what if I accidentally sent an order off. I did have something bad happen just today and I'm not real sure why it was. I somehow left an order on the books and went to trade another stock. A few minutes later I was long and the stock was quite a bit lower. It cost me a few hundred (not good). I guess I need to have my order/positions window visible in addition to all the other windows I have open.

 

[deejaypj 14]

Hey David, I feel a bit stupid at this point. I opened my platform this morning and looked at the preset screen for "Change from Open" and I see that it has results from pre-market. It's the screens that I have created that don't have results. I'll have to look into it a bit more to figure out what I need to change on my custom screens.

[David from CT 29]

No need to feel stupid, this whole trading thing is a journey, not a race. Need to stay in it long enough to get proficient. Since its 8:45, I will just say I will come back this afternoon and let you know what I use for screeners. I have 4 set up as well as the high low window. I think we can post pictures so I will capture one of my window set-up as well. On your previous note, I have lost that kind of money on my trading foul ups before. Just need to get that process down of when you are in, you are in and when you are out you are out. I just make sure I only trade one thing at a time and do not switch tickers until that position/order info in top right of all-in-one trade window is blank. More to come.

[David from CT 29]

Patrick, I got battered today. No single major loss, but I made the wrong call on every trade I entered. Got out before stop hit on all of them, but took a lot of trades. Printing charts and analyzing the results now, but I wanted to get back to you since you asked about my screeners. The stocks on the watch list today were fine, I just traded them poorly. So, I use 4 screeners. First is just a NASDAQ volume screener. Criteria are: Exchange - NASDAQ (All), Last Trade - Between 5 and 100, Volume - greater than 50000, Avg Vol 1 Month - greater than 250000. That screens out most of the low float stuff. For all of my screeners I display Top 10 sorted by volume. 2nd screener is a gap up scan. Criteria are Exchange - NASDAQ (All), Last trade - Between 5 and 100, Volume - greater than 50000, Avg Vol 1 Month - greater than 250000, % Change - greater than or equal to 2. 3rd screener is gap down, same as gap up except % Change is less than or equal to -2. Last screener I use is a High Relative Volume scan. Criteria are same as Volume scan, except I up the volume to 100000 from 50000, and I add a % Vol Over 1 Mo Avg Vol greater than 250. The other thing I have scanning is a high/low window. My criteria there are NASDAQ, exclude prices above 100, exclude prices below 5, and I exclude 5-Day Avg Vol lower than 500000. I wish they had a volume exclusion as well. Many times you'll click on a ticker that is showing 52 week high only to find out it has like 1500 shares traded... Hope something here helps with the cause. Have a great weekend.

[deejaypj 14]

Sorry too hear that you had a rough day. I know they happen. It's part of the game but they hurt. I almost had one of those days too. Started off rough. I went against my rules about the lower price stocks and traded FORD because Andrew was trading it (so much for the disclaimer about trading as an individual). I totally chased it to boot. Anyway, let it go way too far against me before closing. Fortunately I took it again for a nice win and then traded NVDA for a decent trade. Thanks for taking the time to share your screen settings. Looks like we have our screens set up similarly. I also use average daily vol because it does weed out some of the less active stocks. One thing that I incorporate as a filter is in regards to shorts. I am a subscriber to IBD and I won't short stocks that I know have high IBD ratings. I know fundamentals aren't necessarily a factor in day trades and even strong stocks pull back. It's just more a mentality thing for me. I've seen stocks like NVDA, for instance, look like it's going down and then get a sharp move up. Just my extra little filter there. Hope you are having a great weekend. Talk next week.

[David from CT 29]

Ah NVDA, last year I once lost $150 on NVDA in less than 3 seconds as I had a hard stop set and the price was wildly volatile and blew past my stop and I got nailed with the slippage. Early days for my skill set back then...a "nice" learning experience lol. I wanted to ask you if you have used or figured out the Recognia tools in the Edge platform. I have taken a look a couple of times and gave up, but am back having another look. I am most interested in the Intraday trader stuff to see if it can be an alternative to getting Trade Ideas. Any thoughts?

[deejaypj 14]

Yes, I have also played around with the Recognia tool and much like you, I gave up on it. I was planning to look at it again. I haven't seen many actionable signals when I've had it open. I keep seeing results from a day or so back. I've only used the predefined events in the event setup library. I've mostly tried the flags and breakouts. Maybe these aren't the best scans and sometimes with these types of tools the predefined choices aren't very good. Haven't spent much time trying to make my own scans and maybe that's the answer. One thing I noticed though is that when defining criteria, the smallest time frame it uses is 15 minutes and I had hoped it would go down to 5 min. I checked out the video tutorials but they were pretty lame. Tried to see if there was more info out there, since it's a third party tool, but found very little. The company website appears to be under construction and so not much info there either. Maybe I'll play around with it today. I'll let you know if I discover anything.

[David from CT 29]

Tried it today and nothing it found on the built in screens presented any opportunities for a day trade. I remain very skeptical about using it for day trading and agree with you on the support material on the web, just awful. They do have that intraday tab, but I think the whole product is for swing traders at best with regard to timeframes and then on to longer term investing. Please do let me know what you find out when poking around.

[idosunmu 0]

Just following this thread because I am considering SSE now (too many bugs in DAS for my liking). Are you guys still using SSE or have you switched to DAS? 

Also, I will appreciate if you can share the screen/chart settings you have set up for day trading on SSE so I can use it as a starting point for my configuration. 

[Ishyster 2]

On 11/7/2020 at 10:15 PM, idosunmu said:

Just following this thread because I am considering SSE now (too many bugs in DAS for my liking). Are you guys still using SSE or have you switched to DAS? 

Also, I will appreciate if you can share the screen/chart settings you have set up for day trading on SSE so I can use it as a starting point for my configuration. 

I was using SSE and currently somewhat still using it because I do like their scanners, but now I am using DAS with TD, and its a world of difference. I do feel SSE has so much potential though. They just need to speed it up. It lags way too much.