Sticking With What Works And Following It Over And Over…

May 8, 2003
Jennifer Highfield

A
little hard for some people to do, I know. I went against this philosophy
for two years. Of course, it helps to know what works in the first place. There
are many games played in this market, and at our expense. For those that don’t
have the guts or instinct to get into a trade without “knowing more before
placing it,” you will get burned. Most will get in, and then the
“special people” will drag you down.

One thing is for sure, you mustn’t have any “fear” when placing a
trade. You can’t sit and wait just a little longer, just to make sure… In this
day and age, you can get wiped right out with that thinking… Psychology plays
a big part in how you trade, I know, and being a woman, makes that a bigger
disadvantage. You have to be at the wholesale end of the trade and not the
retail. I would guess that is the holy grail everyone is looking for.

Getting on that side takes a lot of stamina, patience and a workable trading
arsenal. If you don’t have that arsenal, I suggest you kiss some really great
traders’ behinds and get some great ideas. Starting with those here in TradingMarkets.
I have been on many other trading sites and none of these offer what the traders
or the worker bees of TM can do for you. They are 100% there to help you learn
how to trade effectively, and they follow up to make sure you are still on the
right track later on down the road.

Until I found the TM team, I went from website to website, chat to chat, and in
no way did anyone ever offer up any trading styles or even let me in on what
technicals they were using and/or why. I was blind, so to say, jumping into the
market at every little move. I was mainly trying to trade off one 1 min chart
with a moving average and a stochastic with no real reasoning behind what I was
looking at. Like
I said — blind as a bat.

Once I found TM and really started digging into the University
and finding sooo much information, I decided that I needed to put things on hold
and do a little more homework. There was so much out there that I had no idea
about, or that I just didn’t know how to use correctly. I bought a few of the
Modules and did a lot of looking back on my charts to figure it all out. I added
on more time frames which I think is so important for looking at the bigger
picture. My basic moving averages and stochastics just needed a little tweaking
and added to all time frames (3, 13, 60). This in itself really put all the
pieces together for me. When I had all that put together, I subscribed to the
chat and just listened and watched what the other players were trading and
why.

Then I stated asking questions. Don’t ever feel uneasy about asking questions.
I’ll tell you, when I started asking questions, I actually got some phone calls!
Which was completely unexpected. (Thank you Brice, Todd, and Don.) Since then, I
have picked up all the pieces, put them back together — and have been trading
very profitably for months.

Another good point about TM is the Saturday
Interviews, I didn’t used to pay attention to those, when in actuality, it
became a lifesaver so to say. April 15, I ended up talking with a trader
accountant that Brice had an interview with from that Saturday (Green and Co.)
and in talking with him, he advised me in taking him on as our accountant as he
could get back most of the money I had lost the previous year “trying”
to daytrade. If that isn’t worth the price of TM and the levels of expertise
employed by them, I don’t know what is. I would still be with my old accountant
taking a mere $3,000 loss..

As of now, I am working off mainly a 13-minute chart for direction, and trade
off the 3-minute chart. A great strategy for me at this point is trading in the
direction of the 5- and 15-minute moving averages on the 13-min. When my 3-minute
chart bounces off my 65-minute moving average (which is the 15-ma on the 13-min.
chart), I will buy or sell according to the trend. I use scaling techniqes to
get out of my trades along the way.

This
is a new advantage for me, as I was waiting before with all my shares for the
moving averages to cross back in the opposite direction to cash out. Wrong
approach for daytraders. You always want to sell or cover at the peaks or
valleys, even if it’s just a little. That way you are assured to get a profit
one way or another. Even if it dies on you, you will at least get that partial
profit. Indicators for this could be the stochastics rising above the 80 level,
B. Bands, envelopes or RSI levels. There are plenty other indicators out there
on the TM site in the University
to help you out with this.

Buying at the dips was also my downfall. I would always be thinking, “Now,
how do I know this dip isn’t for real and is going to continue in that
direction?” Well there is a higher percentage of the 3-minute dips to the
65-ma continuing in the 13-minute trend direction then not. And, if it is just
that, it will usually have a move in the prevailing direction where you would
successfully scale out a partial position before reversing and taking you out
where you started in the first place. Sometimes you will get two or three
bounces on this 65-ma before continuing…It’s the specialists’ way of taking
out all the stops before continuing to their advantage..

This is where STOPS are valuable…This was another
learning process. Always put in a stop when your trade starts to go in your
favor. I will usually put in an initial stop at a place where I feel comfortable
saying “I was wrong” (which is why a lot of traders end up losing on
their trades in the first place, they have a hard time admitting they were
wrong). This way if something should happen and the trade should go against you,
you will immediately be able to get right out and not con yourself into, “Well,
I’ll just watch it a few more bars and see what happens.”

Analogy: If someone throws you a wad of money are you really going to
worry about the bills falling to the ground? Or just grab the wad and run?

One example from the QQQs on May 1st…a 13 min and 3 min. chart.

This
was a good day….

Thank you TradingMarkets and all the great people in it for helping me turn my
trading around (Kevin, Brice, Todd, Chris, Don, Highlow, Wb, CJ, JC, Tiger,
Bunky and everyone else I forgot).

Jennifer Highfield

(“Dream”)

Jennifer Highfield has
been in the market since September, 1999 and discovered TradingMarkets in
November, 2002. After many long nights and weekends of learning from the various
professionals on the site and the members on the chat, she has been daytrading
very successfully since February. She
lives near Ann Arbor, Mich.

Sticking With What Works And Following It Over And Over…

BUY THE FEAR, SELL THE GREED

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