Focus On Your Setups

A quick piece of advice, but one that is extremely important to my trading.  With all the real time information we have at our fingertips today it’s hard not to get caught up in the minute to minute action of the market as a swing trader.  Yes, we must use the shorter time frames to time our entries well, but we can become distracted by what the broader indices are doing this minute, in my mind an unhealthy thing.

Although I do not approach short selling quite the same way as I do the long side of the market, some of the same principals hold true.  When the major market indices are trading above the rising 50 day moving averages, I trade from the long side.  It’s important to focus on individual setups instead of how overbought or oversold the market is.  As we saw back in February and March, the broader market can remain overbought for quite some time.  But while the market was getting extended, there were still some great risk reward setups to the long side.  As we consolidated in mid March, the stocks which had ran first gave secondary entries.  The point is that you should have been taking entries the whole time to your long setups as the market trended above its 50 day moving average.

The same holds true on the short side.  As we are below a falling 50 day moving average, wait for your setups and take them.  Don’t concern yourself with how extended to the downside the indices are.  Yes, those stocks which have led to the downside will set up better as the market consolidates under support here, but there are plenty of good entries to stocks which have not broken major support yet.  As long as this market continues to show unhealthy action as it did today, giving back the whole gap from the open, your short setups will continue working.  I don’t swing trade short positions like I do on the long side.  Stocks go down faster and more violently than they go up.  Get in, get out, move on.  Take your setups.

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