Andrew, since you are interested in others' methods for min. risk and max. profits, I'll briefly run through my standard routine: I take the cardinal rule of daytrading by the letter: Never hold positions overnight. Although every trader has his own opinion on this matter, I see this as the greatest advantage to strict daytrading over position trading and long-termers. You are never exposed to the risks of holding positions past the close (news releases, macro global factors, etc). This keeps my trading directed and systematic. As long as I am 100% cash by the closing bell, I know all my capital is protected from the unforeseen emerging its ugly face. I usually only trade fundamentally sound and/or market leaders...or sometimes companies that have been recently brutalized and simply cannot rationally fall further. I research and analyze my target raids the night before, then the next day I get a feel for market sentiment through the S&P Futures...I wait until 10am to see what prices the amateurs have set up, and I watch the quotes and ticker-graphs. After I choose my entry point, I accept no more than a max. $300 value of a move against my position before I exit. Usually it continues to fall/rise until the bears/bulls hit max power for that time segment...then I re-enter and once I recover to the break-even point I set a stop above it...then trail it. If I feel the trend is moving against me, I exit +/- or par, and re-evaluate. I never enter a position past 3 pm, by which time I am already beginning to exit all positions unless the pros start moving in my favor...like today with ASND (I stayed until 10 min before close because my profit range was wide and protected. I limit my max. # of positions at any one time to 3 with lots = to 40K worth each. That way I don't confuse myself watching/analyzing them all tick by tick! ;)
That's it...albeit greatly simplified. I guess the #1 element is your talent, but other than skill-wise, daytrading's cardinal rule helps me out the most and allows me a very high success rate. I prefer accumulating wealth slowly, but safely.
But hey, your 2K per week is excellent performance, so I'd stick with what works for you. Lizzrd's right, we all pretty much have our own spin on things, and our own unique methods for trading -- I think you might have already discovered the best strategy that works for you individually. I can understand the desire to fine-tune it though...I feel that all the time! But the way I see it...the more capital I accumulate, the larger my positions, and thus the larger my profits that I reap. So an effective strategy is self-fulfilling, don't you think?
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