Below are the 7 most recent journal entries recorded in swtrading1's InsaneJournal:

Thursday, December 17th, 2009
7:24 am	How to Simplify Finding Profitable Swing Trading Strategies So what makes a good swing trading strategy? Do good swing trading strategies have any features that make them better than others. Are there any key points that a strategy must address to truely be considered good? Swing trading is all about trend identification and entering based on rallies or pullbacks. The most important element of swing trading is trend identification and trading only with the trend. What makes a trend so important for swing trading? It is said that the smart money typically follows the trend and if you follow the smart money you stand a good chance of winning. The best trading strategies are ones that allow you to trade with the trend. This greatly increases your chances of making a profit and being successful in the long run. Swing trading strategies are typically all about using rallies or pullbacks to enter. Swing traders do not just enter haphazardly in the market, swing traders are looking for an opportunity to get into the market. By waiting for a retracement to occur, they are able to enter a trade at a price which is in their favour. What makes this crucial? If you can enter the market at a price that is in your favour, you stand the best chance of entering into a winning trade and making a profit. Trading with the trend and using market retracements and pullbacks are two key components of any good swing trading strategy. Swing traders manage to do this by waiting for price to retrace before it continues on with the main trend. (Comment on this)
Saturday, November 14th, 2009
1:17 pm	Don't Neglect Psychology and It's Importance for Swing Trading You may not have thought of it before but the hardest thing about trading is the psychology of it. Sadly, most traders completely ignore psychology and never give it the attention it deserves. It could be said that the true key to being successful at swing trading lies in understanding the psychology of it. The word psychology here is used in reference to how a trader manages him or herself while trading. Trading usually brings out the best and worst in people, more so when a trade they have just placed begins to make a large profit or loss. It is these emotions that lead to some people making hasty decisions as they are listening to their emotions and not making proper decisions. Why do many traders think trading psychology isn' t important or it is a joke? Simply because people are scared that what they uncover about themselves will cause them more pain than good. This is the same kind of fear that ruins a good trade. Whether or not you succeed in the long run in trading depends on you. Can you handle losing money and making money while trading? Changing your thinking is crucial to being successful in trading. (Comment on this)
Saturday, October 24th, 2009
7:06 am	Money Management Questions? Having good money management is a core component of being successful at swing trading. If a trader does not manage their trading funds correctly, it is not uncommon for traders to increase the size of their trades too quickly. They do this with the hope of increasing their returns exponentially. However, this style of trading thanks to poor money management usually results in traders blowing up their trading accounts and losing more money than they make. Effective money management should cover all of the following: Detach yourself emotionally from the money. Never trade more than you are comfortable with. Never risk more than you stand to win. First, you should place no importance or emotions on the money you use for trading. Swing trading should be done with money that is set aside and specifically for trading. This isn't about failure or the worry of failure. It is about being smart. Trading with your child's college funds will only add unwanted stress. Do you really need to make trading any more difficult by worrying about how you will feed your family if you lose next week's paycheck? Of course not. Second, start trading with small amount. Don't be in any kind of hurry. The markets will be around for years to come and you should be in no rush. Just how small should you start trading? Anything that you feel comfortable with. During trading, you should be focused on trading and not on how much money you may win or lose. To avoid having this happen, only trade with amounts that you feel ok with. You may even start trading pennies at the beginning, but that is ok. The important thing is that you are in control of yourself, your emotions and your trading. (Comment on this)
6:56 am	Finding the Best Indicators for Swing Trading Having an indicator that was able to warn or show when markets were nearing turning points would make swing trading much easier. Knowing when markets were about to rally or retrace would make it easy to pick the perfect entry points for your trades. Luckily, there are indicators already available that can do exactly this. These indicators are known as momentum indicators. The majority if indicators are known as lagging, but momentum indicators are leading and lead price. Basically, momentum indicators offer an insight into what price may do in the near future. Momentum indicators work on the basis of measuring a currency pair's level of momentum. As the speed of change in price begins to slow down, the indicators warn of this and alert traders that a possible retracement in future price movement may be about to happen. By plotting a currency pair's momentum, a trader can know in advance when markets may be preparing to pull back. One such momentum indicator is called RSI. The RSI (relative strength indicator) shows levels of a currency pair that are considered overbought or oversold. When the indicator is in these areas, a trader should be on the lookout for potential price retracement. If a market moves into these overbought and oversold areas, more often than not price will experience some kind of adjustment in the near future. By knowing in advance when this may happen, you can manage your trades before it is too late and essentially increase your trading edge. If you are looking for someway to know in advance where price may go, check out what momentum indicators. Of all the momentum based indicators, RSI is the most widespread and widely used. You may find that the RSI is just the indicator you need to increase your trading edge. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009
8:32 pm	Can Swing Trading Be Applied To All Markets? Swing trading stock markets promises to give you the best of the trading world but without the inherent high risk that other traders expose themselves to when they day or intra-day trade. It is possible to swing trade any market. However, there are two factors a market must posses to allow you to swing trade with maximum potential. First, the market must trend more often than not. There are markets where there seems to be no trend with price jumping up and down with almost no reason as to why. Swing trading requires the market you trade to show a high level of trendiness. This must be present to allow you to take chunks or slices out of the market and make money. Secondly, whatever market you trade must not be too volatile. Volatile stocks, while offering the potential of a good income if you happen to be on the right side of the trade, make it difficult to swing trade. Swing trading takes time and as a result if a stock moves too fast or too abruptly in any one direction, it does not give you time to plan your entry and exit. The best kind of market to trade is one that is traded heavily. To make the most of swing trading you must first find a market that has a high tendency to trend and is not too volatile. Keeping this in mind will help you to gain an edge over other traders and be profitable at swing trading. (Comment on this)
8:31 pm	Why Swing Trading Is The Key The ways in which a trader can trade markets is almost endless, no matter if you trade the stock markets or dabble in the growing FOREX market. With such risk involved in trading, you should consider spending sometime examining the styles of trading and discover which one is the best. Swing trading is the absolute best trading style to improve your trading odds. There are two main reasons why swing trading is the best. The first is that swing trading doesn't require you to spend long days in front of the monitor watching charts waiting for the precise second to enter a trade. How many new traders do you know that think they must sit in front of a monitor all day waiting for a trade? Probably quite a lot. For the majority of traders, this results usually in a loss of time and a loss of money. You don't need to spend hours each day watching charts waiting to pin point your entry. Swing trading doesn't require you to be watching charts all day and instead gives you more freedom. Trade setups don't need to be calculated down to the second. In addition to trading freedom, swing trading is extremely low risk. Swing traders see the big picture. By watching higher timeframe charts, swing traders can spot trends with much more ease. Trading low level timeframes is difficult as the trends come and go much faster. These trends can be so short lived that they are almost impossible to trade. Trading higher timeframe trends usually gives a swing trader several days ot usually many months to make a profit. By being able to trade in the direction of these major trends, returns on your investment are increased greatly while the chance of a loss is reduced significantly. There are so many different styles of trading because traders are different, however, only swing trading offers the best of both worlds with high reward and low risk. Swing trading benefits a trader by allowing them to place trades in the direction of major trends and as a result increases their chances of winning and gives them a true trading edge. (Comment on this)
8:30 pm	Just What Is Swing Trading All About? Do you know about what is swing trading? Swing trading is about a trader taking advantage of the swings in price or oscillations of price as it moves up and down over time. Swing trading is just one of the many different styles of trading but it is the best style regardless of the market you trade. The three most popular trading styles are day trading, swing trading and trend or buy and hold trading. Swing trading is found in between day trading and buy and hold trading and is highly recommended, no matter what you trade. Let's take a look at the other styles. Day traders typically keep their trades confined to a single trading day, hence the name. Even opening and closing trades for several seconds to minutes, commonly known as scalping, is considered day trading. Scalping typically involves high risk but in turn offers potentially high profits. Buy and hold traders take the extreme of trading and commonly hold trades for several weeks to months. Without large trading capital, you will find that the buy and hold trading style can be difficult to profit from. Swing trading is medium term focused and usually has traders holding trades for several days, but less than a week. Is it common for some traders to go longer? Of course, but this is just a general rule of thumb. While swing trading can be applied to any market, some are more suitable than others. Many traders swing trade because it is the only style to offer high rewards with the lowest levels of risk. This is the perfect balance for trading profitably. Scalping, while sometimes profitable, usually results in many traders melting down and blowing up their trading capital. Only swing trading offers high rewards with low risk. This style of trading can be applied to forex, options, futures and many more markets. (Comment on this)