How Often Do You Trade?

Investing Strategies Technical Trader's Sanctuary
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I consider myself more of a swing trader, certainly not a totally buy-and-hold guy. I do weekly credit spreads, and certainly have scaled-in and scaled-out of many stocks, but I just get the feeling that it’s nothing compared to what you all are referring to in Marketsurge (Marketsmith from my day).

It’s not meant snarky or negative, just an observation and comment. I tried Leaderboard not too long ago, mainly looking to establish a strong pool of stocks (screened by someone else for strength) to screen for verticals. I got all the alerts on stocks coming on and going off of lists as well as buy lists, and was amazed. They changed stocks on the lists faster than I changed my underwear!?! You all use retracement moves, tests of the ema’s, candles, stops etc just like “Swing traders” do, just under different names.

Again, respect and admire the dedication to a discipline, the focus and certainly the sharing, just curious how many positions you maintain and for how long. I realize that is really an unfair question, and you shouldn’t really answer it, asking more to make the point.

I do feel that Bill did bring to light the need to focus on preserving profit, as well as holding longer when supported. Webby’s RSI and using ema’s to their relative strength is also something I want to learn to incorporate more to help with holding a position, or scaling out. But I still consider IBD’s approach basically a fancy swing traders, with a slightly longer tilt. Thanks for the sharing.

Lakedog

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@Lakedog thanks for asking, curiosity drives knowledge, challenge drives me to see if I really understand what I am doing.

My intent is never to buy a stock for a quick 5% gain, my intent is to buy stocks that I either hold a very long time, or take profits at 20-25%, depending on the context.

As noted, I still have my NVDA from March of 2016, that is known as a life changer. During the recent correction, I had done some offensive selling, like shave of 50% when the market seems more shaky. I did some defensive selling if the stock was a loser, because I don’t want to hold losers after a lot of distribution days put the market it question. Therefore, during this recent “rally”, I had a decent amount of cash and as things looked a little better, and when Mike Webster gave us the unofficial ok with “it feels like a FTD”, I started picking up small test positions. Bill did talk about that. Don’t jump in all at once on an FTD, but buy something. See how the market treats you. If your new positions are going down, something is wrong. If they are going up, you can expand your exposure.

Bill also says we should do a post-analysis of our trades. One of mine was that I bought too many small positions and would be “stuck” with some 1/4 or 1/2 positions. I also am a little eager and buy too many too fast (and too small). So I have to work on that.

Let’s go back to the good FTD back on Nov 1 of 2. I bought NVDA on 11/9 and later adds, and SCHW on 12/14/23. I have all the SCHW but I had been paring down NVDA, but never sold all of it. Recently I have been adding it back.

I bought UBER on 11/2 and RACE on 11/3. I sold UBER on 12/14 for about a 28% gain and sold RACE on 12/18 for only about 3% gain. That was a relatively short holding.

I bought NET on 11/14 and had some adds, sold 1/26/24.
I bought TDG on 11/2++ and sold 2/9/24
I bought MLM on 11/2 and 11/3 and sold 4/19/24

So those are all the early FTD buys. I did buy a number of other good and bad stocks between then and the end of that rally.

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Once per month usually based on 90 day growth rates.

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