Stock Trading Planning

Money Growers PH shares how to plan your trades in stock trading

• set entry point
• set sell point
• set stop loss or stop profit
• risk computation (risk reward ratio of 2:1)
• portfolio allocation
• potential reward

He first draws a line on the chart for the lines of support and lines of resistance. Buy on support, sell on resistance

Chris Cruz shares his reasons for buying

• Uptrend
• Old resistance becomes support
• Fibonacci 23.5%
• MA 20 support

Abraham Avila Jr of Abs Trading shares

What's a trading plan?

Trading plan helps you to organize your thoughts and takes the emotion of the stock trading

Structure of set of guidelines, define your trading activity, and what and when and how to trade

Why create a trading plan?

manages your risk better

streamline decision making

helps you enter and exit based on strategy and not emotion

maintain disciple

How to develop a trading plan?

Answer the 7 questions

1. what markets are you trading?

- US market? Futures? Crypto currency? Commodities? Stocks or Equities?

- mastery or focus; pick one market then once mastered that's when you pick another. There is also a saying not to limit to once income vehicle

2. what time frame?

- as newbie, focus on one thing. Pick on the set-up most suitable to you. Position trading? Momentum trading?

- as a newbie, master daily candle or daily time frame for now

3. how much are you risking one each trade?

- risk first before profit; how much are you willing to loss to lose?

- started with 25,000; newbies advised to risk at 5 digit amount to as much as 100,000

- biggest lost placed at 2,000

4. What are the conditions of your trading set-up?

- what are the criteria to enter a stock

5. How will you enter your trade?

- breakout? retracement? pullback?

6. Where is your stop loss?

- 5%? Break of resistance?

7. Where is your profit target?

What markets are you trading?

PSE Market capitalization

Blue chip (top 10 companies): Investors; mabagal ang returns

2nd liners (good fundamentals): Investors/ Traders;

3rd liners (Basura stocks): Traders

What is your time frame

Position trader:

- look at big picture--weekly

- Entry/ Exit--daily

Swing trader:

- look at big picture--daily

- Entry/Exit--intraday (minute chart/5 or 15 

Day trader

- Entry/Exit: intraday

How much as you risking on each trade?

Risk should no more than -1% of total portfolio per trade e.g. 100K portfolio lose only 1K

Position sizing and allocation. Avoid buying a lot of varied stocks with low volume.

Buy 8,000 per share to save on transaction fees

Risk Reward ratio 1:2 or better

What are the conditions of your trading setup? Parameters

downtrend? range? uptrend?

Range trend better for experienced trader; buy on support sell on resistance

Uptrend: you just enjoy the ride; recommended (trend or swing) for newbies

Downtrend: avoid for newbies; may be done by experienced traders with success

If price > 20 MA >50 MA > 100 MA then the trend is bullish; AOTS by ZeeFreaks

How will you enter your trade? Triggers

buy on support, sell on resistance

buy on breakout: recommended

buy on retracement

if trend is bullish, then identify the resistance where price could breakout to

if price break the resistance at near end of day, enter an allocation 50% max of total accounts

Where is your stop loss?

If price return back below the previous resistance or reached -3% to -5% loss then cut loss

Where is your profit target?

If price snaps the 20 MA, then take profit

Sample Trading Plan

Trade setup: breakout play

Trade objective: trend following

Primary Criteria

- prior consolidation

- breakout of resistance of the consolidation

- volume spike

Secondary criteria

- longest range in the past 10 days or 2 weeks

- new 2 month price high

- price closed above the upper 50% of the day's range or better

Indicators

- AOTS

- RSI 71

- MACD crossover

Abs Trading checklist for Breakout Play (old study)

AOTS
Breakout of resistance

Supply and demand

Prior consolidation

Longest range in the past 10 days

Price closed above pivot point of the day's range 50%+

RSI above 70

How to Backtest Stock and Bounce Play

Why we need to back test stock?
Jack Angel shares: To know the support and resistance and to know when to buy or sell.

Why we need to back test?
Belle Layos shares

• learned about bounce trading first (from Money Growers PH)
• reference: ZF's Bounce  Plays 101, Kapitan Kidlat's 3 days to Kill, 
• back test to test mastery and trade setup
• backtest tools Excel to input data and Word to see charts

Belle Layos setup for bounce play

• previously trending with parabolic move
• 3 day declining rule
• previous Darvas must act as support
• Use Fibonacci retracement with bounce in 38.2%, 50% and 61.8% (From Jason Cam)
• Candle should not close below retracement
• Should have reversal signs like doji or weak candles
• Drying volume, should dry up
• Sell on the 3rd day of bounce

Then on an Excel table, she has the following columns

• Count on how many of the above criteria has been met
• Name of stock/ symbol of stock
• Date
• bounce point
• Fibonacci
• Previous candle
• Volume
• RSI
• AOTS (Alignment of the starts)
• Price as to Moving Averages e.g. below MA 20
• Bounce? Yes or No?
• Resistance
• Number of candles on bounce

Fibonacci and Breakouts

Yggrasil shares how he spent 10-15 hours a day trying to learn stock trading. I have the same story. I am learning from the sidelines. Learning from the free stuff and then I got hold of the Blueprint. It has enlightened me greatly of the ways of stock trading.

ZF shares on the interpretation of Fibonacci retracements

• as long as FIBO is 38.% and above, bull territory (more money)
• between 38-50 is bullish bias
• between 61-50 is bearish territory: dumping or accumulating time
• 61.8-76.4% is last chance area; possible bounce play
• below 76.4% is death zone

Rayner Teo shares how to trade on breakout

• breakout with buildup: buildup he means a period of sideways trend
• higher lows into resistance or ascending triangle on trendlines (price going up)
• lower highs into support of descending triangles on trendlines (price going down)
• re-test where he illustrates when the previous support because the new resistance

Trading 212 shares on how to trade on breakout

• breakout means price moves and closes ABOVE resistance levels ad BELOW support levels
• trade range: support + resistance levels
• enter on actual breakout
• pre-set level before the breakout at previous high
• enter when candle closes above the trade range
• false breakout: when price breaks support and resistance and return back to trading range

Here is tutorial on trading retracements by Trading 212

Alignments, Strikes and Parallel Universe

There are important conditions to remember and they also have creative terms

• Zeus strike (ZS)
•  price pierces or is above 100 MA; 
• signals trend reveral
• also known as death cross?
•  Inverse Zeus Strike (iZS)
• price is below the 100 MA
• signals downtrend
• Alignment of the star (AOTS)
• where price is above 20/50/10 MA and
• 20MA > 50MA > 100MA
• signals uptrend; but not completely a buy signal as it also needs other trigger points
• Reverse Alignment or inverted AOTS
• 100 MA > 50 MA > 20 MA
• signal downtrend
• Parallel Universe Alignment (PUA)
• ZS should happen or should have happened in the daily + ZS on weekly chart; 
• signals the beginning of a major trend shift from down to up,
   or up to down

Shapes of Boxes and Darvas

Continuing with my self-study of stock trading, I came across Darvas Box Theory

Lifted from Investopedia

• Darvas' trading technique involves buying into stocks that are trading at new highs 
• The strategy traces its origins to 1956, when Nicolas Darvas turned a $10,000 investment into $2 million over an 18-month period using this theory.  
• type of momentum strategy
• to determine when to enter and exit the market 
• If the price breaks out of the Darvas box, the investor takes this as a sign of a breakout

MoneyGrowers advise to use Dravas Box in  stocks with a.) 52 week high and b.) high volume.
How to plot: 1. highest point, check next forward 3 candles if this point is not superseded; this will be the top border; then 2. mark the lowest point in the next 3 candles.  The ends of the candles measured may be body to body or wick to wick.

Notes:

• Once the price pierces the upper border by 1-2% then it is a buy signal
• Stop loss price is the lower border
• Once the lower border is pierced, the lower border is plotted first before the top border
• After a series of making boxes, you have a price range

ZF wrote

• successful breakouts are usually in a form of solid long green candles with high volume
• break from the border sends the price flying or falling into the border's direction
• if the price touches the border but does not break it, the border is said to be tried and tested

Trading is a Jungle and Trading Setup Up

This must be the third time I will say I got all the more puzzled about stock trading; I was self studying the system of a successful stock trader. Again, the flaw of not having a mentor.

On reading the blog posts, I realized that reading it from the earlier post to the latest is NOT the way to go. One post may have a more detailed explanation later on in another blog post or that there is a difficult concept might be introduced early and the explanation is on a later post. I decided to approach it in another way through labels or tags.

ZF said there are two types of play

• Momentum
• Sell on Target And Trailing Stop
• Bounce
• Sell on Resistance

Technical Analysis versus Fundamental Analysis

Lifted from Investopedia

• technical analysis
• looks at the price movement of a security and uses this data to predict future price movements
• begin their analysis with charts 
• short term approach 

• Fundamental analysis
• instead looks at economic and financial factors that influence a business
• start with a company’s financial statements 
•  long-term approach to investing 

In a Twitter twit, ZF posted the classic trend following starter setup

• 20/50/100 SMA
• MACD
• RSI