Trade Ideas Recorded webinar
September 7, 2011
Here is a recording from the Sep 7 webinar on how to setup and use Trade Ideas. Just right click and “save target as” to download to your computer
Sep 7
Trade Ideas Free Trial
Sep 7
August 30, 2011
http://www.trade-ideas.com/TodayTrader/FreeTrial.html
Here is the Gotomeeting link for Wednesday’s Trade Ideas Demo webinar https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/605080570 (just copy /paste this link)
Hello Traders. As many of you know, we have been using the Alert Scanning software from Trade ideas for about 8 years now. In fact we were one of the original traders to test the beta version for them. We would be flying blind if it were not available to us right now.
The guys at Trade Ideas have created a special offer only available thru us at TodayTrader. It allows you to try their amazing product FREE for one week and then decide if you want to continue your subscription.
Additionally, you can try the back testing module called “Oddsmaker” for a limited use of back testing scans during this free trial period.
Just click on the graphic above to sign up for this unique and exclusive offer. They have even offered to give a FREE tutorial webinar on how to use this product as it is very powerful and comprehensive.
Barron’s Article
May 8, 2011
Here is the full article from May 7 Barron’s regarding DittoTrade and our relationship with this technology.
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Electronic Investor
| SATURDAY, MAY 7, 2011
Day Trade and Keep Your Day Job
By THERESA W. CAREY | MORE ARTICLES BY AUTHOR
A new online brokerage firm, DittoTrade, lets you mimic the trades of professionals—and get the same prices they do.
A new online broker is opening with an interesting twist. Aside from the usual online features, Ditto Trade lets you buy and sell right alongside an experienced trader.
Ditto Trade’s CEO, Joseph Fox, has prior experience operating an online brokerage firm—he was a founder of Web Street Securities, which was a top-rated broker in Barron’s annual ranking back in the late 1990s and was acquired by E*TRADE (ticker: ETFC) in 2001. Fox decided during 2008′s financial meltdown that he wanted to go back into the business, mainly because he believed individual traders were getting clobbered by institutional traders using algorithms and high-frequency techniques.
His fledgling firm (www.dittotrade.com) opened its virtual doors in a beta test last October, but will soon be more visible, thanks to a new marketing campaign (and, no doubt, articles like this one). Fox says the idea is to let average investors, who usually have better things to do than stare at a computer screen, benefit from the skills of people who are in the market every day.
Upon logging in, you are presented with a standard-looking account balance page with streaming quotes. The “Trading Pit” is where customers can place orders on their own; like trade Monster, when you enter a position on Ditto Trade; you are encouraged to set a stop-loss and a profit target. Things start to differ, however, if you connect to a Master Trader.
THE MASTER TRADER LINK takes you to a dashboard that shows the stocks your chosen trader is monitoring. Most of the master traders attach notes to each symbol on this watch list, which often includes their thinking about a particular stock, along with an explanation of price entry and exit points. There are two ways to join into a master trader’s transactions: Full Throttle, which means you take part in every transaction entered by the master trader, or Participation Mode, which means you pick which stocks you want to trade from the master trader’s watch list.
You can also define in advance how you want to take part. You can choose from Share for Share (trade the same number of shares as your master trader), Percent for Percent (trade the same percentage of your total account as your master) or Max Loss Per Trade (set an amount you’re willing to lose should the stock price hit its stop-loss). The Ditto Trade engine calculates these measures for you, and bundles your transactions together with those of the master and all of his other minions. Everyone gets the same price at the time of execution, which distinguishes Ditto Trade not only from traditional online sites but from those offering other trade-mirroring technologies.
Once you’ve opened a position, you can either follow the master trader to close the position, or close it on your own. You can also detach the position from the master trader’s dashboard and hold it separately.
Some Barron’s readers may be wondering how they can become master traders. Fox says his brokerage is actively seeking more masters, and also is looking for those with international trading expertise. You can reach him at jfox@dittotrade.com. Master traders typically charge a subscription fee to their followers, and they control which Ditto Trade customers are allowed to “ditto” their transactions. You can also develop a “friends and family” following. That means you aren’t publicly visible like a master trader, but your nephew or mother-in-law can trade with you.
San Diego-based Andy Lindloff of todaytrader.com is one of the existing master traders. Ditto Trade clients can follow Lindloff for $99 per month for Full Throttle access, or they can sign up to be alerted when he makes a trade, for $49 per month. If you choose the alert system, you can make the trade on your own, but it won’t go through in a bundle with Lindloff’s orders.
Last year, the New York Times featured Lindloff in a story about the death of day trading, which brought him to Fox’s attention. Now Lindloff and his partner, Steve Gomez, are on board with Ditto Trade. They generate approximately 30 transactions per month with their trading system, and customers can also watch Lindloff trade in real time using GoToMeeting, the screen-sharing program for conferencing.
Lindloff, a discretionary trader eschewing algorithms, and Gomez have posted a 28.5% gain over the past six months on Ditto Trade, at http://www.todaytrader.com/performance/. He says he enjoys working as a Ditto Trade Master Trader: “I think it’s a great idea if you find someone—maybe me, maybe your cousin—who is keeping an eye on your stocks and protecting you in the market. If you don’t have time, find somebody who is watching the market full-time.”
Ditto Trade has a logo that Fox calls “the molecule,” which he would eventually like to see festooned on many financial Websites. It would let individuals just click on the molecule and start trading alongside their favorite bloggers and professional traders on Ditto Trade. Each transaction is $4.95 for stocks and an additional 50 cents per contract for options. Margin fees are a relatively low 4.95%.
Though this site is still a little wet behind its virtual ears, it looks like a good idea worth further exploration and development. It would be worth considering if you’re a portfolio manager placing trades for your customers, or if you’re managing family accounts. Right now, all you can trade on the site are stocks and options—no mutual funds, penny stocks or foreign ordinaries.
What is your natural Bias? Long or Short?
March 17, 2011
Somebody in our live service asked a great question the other day. The question was: “Do you guys not like to short”? This brought up a good topic of discussion on that subject.
I told him that it is my opinion that every trader has a natural long or a natural short bias when they trade. I do not think anyone can say that they carry both a long and short bias each day. Look at it like a tennis player. A good player works on both the forehand shot and the backhand shot. Obviously a tennis player prefers to use the forehand but is not against playing the backhand when needed.
Personally, I prefer to read charts going up from the left side of the page to the right. This doesn’t mean I am never going to take a short setup. It just means I prefer to play to my strength, which is looking for mostly long setups in the market. I also try to have a few short setups on stand-by just in case the markets have nothing working on the long side. For the last 6 months of trading, there really has not been a reason for me to focus on short setups, as the few shorts I did try never seemed to work out well.
Now that the markets have rolled over and broken trendline support and moving average support, I might need to work on my “backhand” a little bit more as it may come in handy if the sellers take back control of the major trend. Or even in a sideways choppy market, having some good short plays on the radar is a good idea.
I have seen good traders who are natural short seller’s do things like Short an Inverse ETF when the market is going up because they still get paid watching the chart go down from left to right even though the market is moving up. This just illustrates a natural bias that traders often have. That person would rather play the market from the short side as that is where they are more comfortable. In other words, this left-handed player is just playing their forehand in their comfort zone. Nothing wrong with that.
When the markets get weak, I tend to gravitate to the Inverse ETF’s like SDS or QID. Being a natural long bias trader, I don’t mind those Inverse ETF’s at all when the market goes down, as I still feel I am hitting good shots with my forehand.
-Steve
Swing Scalping – Live Webinar Event
January 30, 2011
“Swing Scalping” – An Advanced Short Term Trading Tactic 3 Hours.
This is our latest concept of short term trading. This 3 hour recorded event will cover the strategy of “Swing Scalping”. We explain the method of riding the “waves” of short term momentum and exiting for quick profits. This video will teach you how to maximize profits while limiting the downside by focusing on the correct approach to taking an entry.
The recording for download is in Windows WMV format. You can download the file and save to your computer.
$49.95
Coming soon!
Topics to be discussed:
- Introduction
- What has changed in the last few years?
- HFT – What we are up against.
- What is Swing Scalping? (day trading mentality on daily charts)
- How does if differ from traditional Swing Trading?
- Adapting to current markets
- How to trade a Range-bound Environment
- Managing your own money vs. letting a Broker do it.
- Technical Analysis vs. Fundamentals
- What do we look for (setups)?
- What to watch out for – intraday traps (Shaking the trees)
- Using alerts to spot good setups
- Catching the intraday trigger and move on daily chart setups
- What position size to take ( all, 1/3, 1/2 )
- Managing the Trade (winners and losers)
- Benefits of Real-time and Full-time Market Observation
- Using Buy stops and Sell stops to Trigger Entries and Exits
- Short Selling and/or Hedging
- Using Options
- Adhering to Rules and Disciplines
- Q&A
What do hft bots fight about?
November 22, 2010
I had some time on my hands recently and was thinking about High Frequency Trading. I was laughing at how they actually fight over the length of cable in the co-location rooms next to the Exchange buildings. So the frustrated animator in me came up with this short bit.
-Steve
Avoid The Noise
October 14, 2010
There was a platform computer game in the late 1980s to promote Domino’s Pizza called “Avoid the Noid”. The ad featured a “Noid” that destroyed pizzas and must be avoided. Active traders have our own version of the “noid” in the form of HFT (high frequency trading) robots. Except this noid doesn’t destroy pizzas, it destroys traders.
By creating what I like to refer to as “noise”, these bots wreak havoc on intraday charts, setups, and technical indicators. They prey on conventional wisdom ignoring moving averages, support/resistance, and breakouts. With Jack Bauer like precision, they seem to know the exact level of pain to inflict to get traders to cough up their shares. And if greed is your demon, get ready for the mother of all vicious snap backs.
For a trader to be successful in today’s marketplace I believe it is crucial to “avoid the noise”. Three adjustments that have helped me avoid the noise and profit in this low-volume, HFT manipulated market are:
1. Smaller size and scaling in — At TodayTrader we often quote “The only two things you can control are your share size and your attitude”. Entering a trade in small lots (one third to one fifth at a time) will help you stay in a position as it takes the scenic route from point A to point B.
2. Longer time-frame charts — Bots feast at the micro level. They have the advantage, and the 1 minute and 5 minute chart is their playground. I have been focusing and trading more off the 10 minute and even the daily charts. I still use the 5 minute chart but will marry it up with longer time frames to keep me in a good trade.
3. Go with your gut – Bots are designed to take your money and will break down the technicals to do so. I know this is the nature of today’s market so when I feel that I am right in a position I will sit thru more pain than I would in the past. Don’t get me wrong. It is important to have a defined stop; I am just a little more liberal when it comes to setting them.
Let me give you a good example where all three of these helpful tips allowed me to stay in a trade and ring up a nice profit. Look at the chart above. On 10/8/2010 I noticed the casinos got out of the blocks early and were showing some bullish price action (MGM LVS etc). About 25 minutes after the open WYNN had a pullback and I entered a one third position (scaling in with small size) at 90.10. It pulled back further and I entered another third at 89.56 on the 10 moving average. I really liked the daily chart and that combined with the strength in the sector gave me conviction (going with my gut).
After checking out the 10 minute chart, I told our clients I would like to see it hold 89.50 but I was willing to give it to 89.40 because I liked the risk reward potential in this one. The stock wicked below 89.50 quickly to a low of 89.46 and then bounced, eventually going to highs and exploding. Unfortunately, I was working other trades and was unable to buy another third. I sold my last shares 92.97.
At TodayTrader we believe it is crucial for a trader to adapt to the ever-changing market. If you are having a hard time adapting to HFT try playing smaller size and scaling in, stretching out the time frame removing yourself from their playground, and going with your gut more often. It will help you “AVOID THE NOISE”.
- Andy Lindloff
TodayTrader
Golf and Trading
September 21, 2010
Maybe you play Golf, maybe you don’t. Either way, there is much to learn from those that play the game well. I have played Golf for years and there are many similarities to trading that are just too hard to ignore. Although it will be easier for Golfers to relate to some of these concepts, I invite anyone interested in trading to continue reading.
One of the first things people say about Golf is that it is a “mental game”, a game between you and the course. Just how well you manage yourself and how well you manage the course will ultimately help your score. Is this sounding familiar?
“Course management” is a term you hear good golfers talk about. Another way to say this would be “risk management”. The golf course is wide open with many hazards and it leaves club selection and shot selection up to you. There are no set rules on when to go for it or when to lay back. This is solely up to you. The markets also have no set rules of when to go for it and when to lay back. The only thing we can rely on is when the bell will ring each day. The rest is up to traders and how they manage risk day in and day out.
“Play to your strength” is another term used on the golf course. My ball flight has a natural tendency to fly from right to left. When given the chance, I will most often rely on the shape of that shot. There is no reason to force a left to right shot if I don’t absolutely need to. For the want of a few extra yards off the tee, I will not change my natural swing as the risk vs. reward is just not there. If you are a trader who prefers to play the short side given the chance, then trying to force long trades on a day where the market is range bound may not be worth the risk. Instead sit back and look for your perfect short setup. It just makes things easier when you play to our own strengths.
On the course, I have heard people jokingly say; “After the Bird comes the turd”. In other words, after a really good hole where everything went right, beware of a false confidence on the next tee. Don’t misunderstand me; there is nothing wrong with having confidence. It’s how you manage that confidence that really matters. Never let your guard down. It’s very easy when trading to let your defenses down after a good trading day and give money back the very next day. If that happens, go back and look at that particularly bad day, it may have been a dose of careless trading due to overly high confidence levels. I have learned over the years to be extra careful the day after a stellar trading day.
One of my favorite Golf quotes that also pertains to trading is; “The next hole is a fresh new start”. The last score does not have an effect on the next hole so tee it up with confidence and swing away. If you choose to think about the last hole and carry that with you, then prepare for another bad score. I try to remind myself that each trading day is like a Golf hole. After a bad day, you get a fresh start the next day and everything starts over again. The same could be said after a bad trade. A bad trade should have no effect on the next good trading setup that comes across your screen.
I like to say that there are only 2 things you can control as a trader; your position size, and your attitude. Drawing on the parallels of Golf, helps me to manage my attitude when needed.
- Steve Gomez
TodayTrader
Who Moved My Cheese?
July 18, 2010
By far the best non-trading book I have read that can be applied to trading is “Who Moved My Cheese” It deals with the human animal and how it reacts to change. A parable in nature that shows us what happens to those that embrace change and those that resist it.
What a great topic for traders. When was the last time you had an edge that was really working, only to see it disappear at some point? How did you deal with it? Did you fight the change? Our subconscious minds remember the pleasure of winning with that strategy in the recent past. So as traders, we have to be alert to our minds trying to take us back to the well that worked so many times before.
It has been quoted many times but well worth repeating here again; Einstein once said “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but each time expecting a different result”. If this sounds familiar, then it may be time to step back and read this short story. You may be surprised how this parable relates to trading ever-changing markets.
- Steve Gomez
TodayTrader
Welcome
Hello and welcome to the new TodayTrader Blog. Please check back soon for new content as I get familiar with the new features of WordPress.
-Steve
