Hi Bella,
First of all I would like to thank you for everything that you do for us traders. I’ve just started to read The Playbook and I’m sure it will help me develop as a trader. I’ve one question though, in Playbook you write that we should archive trades in our Playbook that makes most sense to us. Well I need to tell you that I’m happy if I catch one trade daily, even though I’m an intraday trader, and here is my question: how many trades (daily) do you or your guys at SMB can find and trade on average ?
Thank you for your time and best regards.
@MikeBellafiore
Yes, you should archive one play each trading session that makes sense to you. This does not have to be a trade that you made. It can be one that you spotted and should have made that makes sense to you. This is a best practice to help internalize your favorite trades and perform optimally in real-time.
How many good trades you see each trading session depends on your trading style. A scalper will see many intraday, even every hour. We have not taught traders primarily to scalp since 09 but this is still an effective strategy for the best scalpers.
Our traders swing trade intraday. They hold trades for the real move intraday. How many they catch depends on their skill level. Those in our most recent trading class who just went live, might see one really good trade a day. An experienced trader might find 4-8.
You only have to catch one good swing trade a day to perform well. In fact after reviewing the results of our newest class, most would have had a successful month if they had caught the $HD opportunity from a few weeks ago.
I hope that helps.
Related Post:
The PlayBook Checkup: Shooting Star Continuation Pattern
“You can be better tomorrow than you are today!”
Mike Bellafiore is the Co-Founder of SMB Capital and SMBU, which provides trading education in stocks, options, forex and futures. Bella is the author of One Good Trade and The PlayBook.
He welcomes your trading questions at [email protected].
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3 Comments on “How Many Trades Do You Find Each Day?”
yes, this comment is about the baba ipo vid which i saw on twitter but you haven’t got on your blog yet.
bella starts off by saying “obviously the firm made a lot of money on the opening drive”
spencer tweeted just before the ipo that at approaching 90 it was too rich and he was going to wait for it. (presumably to come in)
so what are you talking about the obviously the firm made a lot of money on the opening drive stuff?
something changed? what?
1) many of the traders employ an opening print strategy that worked very well
2) the opening drive was very clean and liquid that offered excellent risk/reward for scalping
3) even the traders who bought the opening print were uncomfortable at 90 and would have preferred mid 80’s
4) price action can trump a preconceived thesis
I hope that helps!
Thanks for the insight. Just wondering, for the swing intraday trade, do you still go for a 5:1 TP/SL as outlined in your book? and do you tend move your SL as new highs/lows are made towards your target? or do you keep the SL in place? Cheers