There are abundant good money-making ideas running through StockTwits every day. Yet there are also thousands of traders who read these same ideas but just can't seem to work their away above "churn/grind" status (not to mention the number who actually lose money). Why is that?
Because it's the execution of the idea that makes the difference between a profitable trader and a non-profitable trader. Develop an execution methodology and then filter all external ideas from others through that framework; otherwise you'll be lost in the noise. What does this mean?
Basically you have to figure out what kind of trading you want to do before you trade anyone else's ideas. And no one can do that for you -- that's the hard work that many wannabe traders avoid.
We have a very defined methodology that revolves around support and resistance. It's the only thing we do and the only way we've traded for now 13 years. We've taught it to our subscribers for almost 5 years now in the HCPG newsletter. We don't do options, we don't trade gaps, we don't trade small-caps, we don't trade earnings, and we don't trade news. But what we do every day is trade in a very specific way around support and resistance on a small set of stocks (around 200 candidates, with a high percentage in momentum and commodity).
Even though we have opinions on what the market will do they become completely irrelevant once the market opens. We might feel bearish but if our long alerts trigger and set-up well ( conditions being good volume, and set-up under two intraday strategies we've developed, base and break and Indy) we will go long. It really is as simple as that. What we believe and what we do have very little to do with each other. Of course one's bias helps one's conviction but in the end the set-up will always trump everything else in our trading. This is the beauty of having a pre-defined watch-list -- it removes your opinion from the equation.
We keep it very clean and very simple. We focus on very few stocks for each day and all the homework is done the night before. We rarely trade any stock which was not on our watchlist from the night before. We often watch the same stock for days before our we finally pounce as our alert triggers. This gives us conviction in the trade as we have become familiar with the stock's behavior. This is our methodology. What's yours?
Figure it out before you jump on our or anyone else's ideas.
