Originally Posted by
200xp
The majority of my buying happens between 9:30 and 10:30'ish. I have and still do buy in pre-market, but not very often. As far as how long do I hold, my first goal on any stock is 3% to the upside on a 10K buy in, if it crosses 3% I set a stop loss at that price. If it continues to move up, I will follow with stop losses in 2-1/2 to 5% increments, depending on momentum and volume. I will keep doing this until I get stopped out. Most of the stocks I day trade, highly volatile sub $5 stocks, I usually will get stopped out before lunch, sometimes longer. Some days they are moving so fast to the upside I just hit the sell button and move on with anything above 3%, my fear is being a bagholder when it dumps, been there and done that.
On a normal day, for me, it is all over with by noon. I spend the rest of the day doing research for the next day. I do use scanners, low float scanners, volume scanners, momentum scanners, etc.I love twitter for social sentiment because it is instant news. I use stocktwits too, but not to read just to see the social sentiment, positive or negative, and their heat map. Buying attracts more buying, same with selling.
A couple of times a year I hit a homerun, but that is like a unicorn. My current goal is 500 bucks a day over a 5 day average. I will say, compared to day trading, it is easier to have success swing trading...much much easier to chart a swing trade with indicators, macd, ema's, etc., and those stocks move for a reason. A strong, healthy stock with decent daily volume, the chart has a tendency to repeat itself so you know your downside risk. That being said, day trading is a rush for me and I enjoy it, it is an addiction...LOL.