[thehun69]

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What timeframes do you trade in? Do you daytrade or take a longer term perspective and if longer how long? Do you use and/or believe in blackbox systems or systems of any kind?

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I tried daytrading once....once.. in fact I worked at a daytrading firm for about a week to figure out that it wasn't for me. Why grind and go nuts for pennies at a time, when you can make your life easier and pick up the dollars with less stress? Making 200 trades a day isn't fun, and especially with the Nasdaq stocks, there is TA involved, but that game, to be really successful is about learning the market maker and playing against him. People don't realize that it is humans you are playing against, and like poker they have tendencies. So, essentially you have to learn the MM, learn how to fade his tricks, and get in his head because the same patterns do come up in many places. I just hated that pace.

For me, I swing trade. That means 1 week is a long term. I like to be in and out within 3-4 days, nice and quick and then move on to the next idea. I can get a good feel with how things will play out in the near future, so holding on for even a week or so, I don't mind, but a month from now, two months, I have no idea what will happen.

I do think black box systems can work and show good returns. The problem with most systems is that the designer will get too carried away and inserts 5000 parameters and this was all done to optimize the results based on the history. I think that a simple system, even the breakout system talked about earlier can be very effective. That being said, I do not use black box systems, because my analysis needs to be seen with my eyes and the context has to be understood. The Doji example I gave earlier is a good example of what I am talking about. A Doji by itself is meaningless, but looking at that chart, seeing where the Doji was (especially as it formed right near the resistance level of $46 bucks), and using Stochastics, leads me to the short. I don't know how that could be programmed into a computer. To me, TA is science, but a lot of art as well, but that comes from experience and a significant amount of screen time.

THE HUN.