Hi folks,
John, thanks for the direction to this thread! I've been on vacation for the past couple of weeks....nice to be away!
I know what you mean about trade execution time. IT DRIVES ME CRAZY!! Especially when something is moving, and I miss it with my limit order. What's worse is when you see your trade go through on your screen, but greenline doesn't get confirmation back so you're in a limbo state. There's been times where I wanted to get back out of something (momentum faded...whatever) and couldn't cut and run. The worst seems to be on the V.S.E. where I've had to wait up to 1 1/2 hours for "confirmation" of a trade that I saw go through.
I spoke to Greenline about this, and they suggested that it wasn't a problem at their end. Well, I think it was. I've also got an E-trade account which I love. Very fast executions, INSTANT email confirmations of the trades as they go through. NEVER a hassle. In fact, while I was on vacation, I had my entire portfolio transfered over (about a 3 week process if you don't just do it in cash). Sorry Greenline, but for my purposes, you're just not there yet.
Interesting to hear some of your strategies. I've tried playing the market several different ways:
1) Significant news just before market opening (it's amazing sometimes how SLOW the market can be to digest it. I've seen good news that comes in the 1/2 hour before opening take up to an hour to really get digested by the market.
2) Gaps up in the morning or quick big volume....particularly by one house who is openly/agressively buying. -Nothing like riding the coat tails of the big boys with money to play and a little "advance knowledge".
3) Late day strength with an overnight hold? Ya, I've done that. I'm trying not to though. There's something nice about being flat at the end of the day. No bad overnight surprises...which I've had before. In fact, some of them accounted for my worst losses. Volume/price increasing on rumour/pending release, and then get slammed on bad news overnight.
I've been spending a lot of time lately on intraday charting and have really started to become a fan of it. Using a combination of a simple moving average in combination with MACD. Then factor in volume, the story, and depth and a few other things.
Anyway...got to run for now...more later. Thanks for starting this thread!
Kevin |
