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Strategies & Market Trends : Successful Short-Term Trading Strategies for Beginners -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Billy Bob who wrote (21)	8/11/1998 11:57:00 AM
From: tide	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 78

Great thread! I'm mostly a learning lurker & printer as well. I would say to beginners that today has to be a prime example of what to always beware of. Don't get burnt badly by a tanking mkt! I'm not a daytrader but today any daytrader & perhaps very short term trader, would have been well advised to end yestdy in cash. A badly falling mkt can occur suddenly & with little if any forewarning, so I rest much better at nite if I know the next AM is not going to fall apart. Personally I am mostly in small caps which I am confident have good fundamentals. These may not make me rich quickly but they don't tend to dive along with major mkts. I expect to move more into big caps but will be very cautious of overnite holds. More knowledgeable & experienced investors/traders please correct me where you think I am speaking incorrectly. Wouldn't want my words to be causing false alarm or wrong impressions. Call me cautious. tide

To: Billy Bob who wrote (21)	8/11/1998 2:14:00 PM
From: Wayners	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 78

I wanted to add one more thing on picking stocks for short term trading--especially day trading. On quote.com, the list of stocks with highest volumes and highest number of trades for the day contains a list of 10 stocks. You always see the same ones day after day inluding INTC, MSFT, CPQ, CSCO and DELL--stocks that trade more than 5M shares per day. What I look for are stocks that show up the list that do not show up there very often. Today the "unusual" ones are NSCP, AAPL, YHOO, BP, SPY, and AN. That is where the unusual investor interest is. If they trade for under $30 and move in daily ranges of several dollars is preferred. Then its a matter of just doing some basic technical analysis of the charts. I'll quickly flip through 60 min down to 1 min tick to get a feel for it. I look for unfilled gaps, basing patterns, basic support and resistance levels, volume increasing or decreasing, and hold a "hi-tech" pen up to the screen to look at trendlines. I then pick where to place orders. For example NSCP made an intraday double top at $30 1/4. I would want to place a buy stop past that level at around $30 3/8. NSCP also has an unfilled gap to the upside. If NSCP tanks from here--no biggie. If it rally's past $30 1/4, it should be a good move that takes me at least to near $31.