Twitter updates to your desktop

Most readers here are probably aware that I post regulary throughout the day on Twitter. When I can I share alerts on stocks, primarily simple support and resistance alerts, and also Swing Low set ups and news plays.

The panel to the left has a feed from my Twitter, but I think it's only updated every 5 minutes or so. There is also a link at the bottom of that panel to go directly to my Twitter page. From there if you are subscribed to Twitter (which is free), you can opt to "Follow Me" and my tweets will be regularly downloaded to your Twitter feed. You could also just refresh that page manually to see updates, but that seems like a pain.

I've been looking for a more dynamic way to receive updates that I'm interested in, and last night came across a program called Feed Notifier. This program will automatically send Twitter updates to your desktop as a little pop up, similar to what you'd get when a new email arrives.

I had a play and at this early stage it seems pretty cool.

Here's what you need to do if you want to give it a try. Firstly download the program from feednotifier.com and follow the simple instructions to install it.

Then log into Twitter and click on my feed http://twitter.com/alanmcg. To the right of the address bar you should see a little orange icon that looks like this: (only smaller lol).

Click on it and select "subscribe to alanmcg's tweets". Then highlight the address that appears and copy it. (It should read like this: http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/8951842.rss ). Lol in fact you could just the address above, and save yourself all the other steps.

Run and open Feed Notifier, you will see the icon on your taskbar. Right click it, and select "Add Feed". Then paste the URL from above into the "Feed URL" box, and click "Next".

On this page you can select how often you would like the program to check for updates. Change the "Polling Interval" to your preferred setting. I tested it on 30 seconds and it worked fine.

That's it! Then every time a new tweet is posted it will pop up at the bottom of your desktop!

Here's a link to the instructions from Feed Notifier...probably much easier to understand than my garble lol.

Hope you find it helpful!

Alan

PS If you have a Twitter account you can go to your own Twitter home page, and click the RSS feed button, and you can choose to follow your complete Twitter timeline, so you will get pop ups from all those you are following.

Metagaso Limited breaking out.

Metagaso Limited (MEL) - I have had my eye on this stock for the past week or so now, watching it tick up on lowish volume.

This morning they came out with a drilling update that the market liked pushing the stock up to an intraday high of 52c.. I suspect over the coming days we will see it test the next level of resistance @ around 56c. Old resistance as you can see on the chart @ 48c has been broken.

MACD looks positive, however the stochs are slightly overbought.. On the back of a good announcement through, this can keep climbing.

This is certainly not a buy recommendation, just technical analysis applied with potential targets (not certain targets).

Here is the chart



Cheers
Kevi

Hot sectors - a trader's treasure chest

Loving the action in the 2 noticably hot sectors at the moment, Rare Earths and Gold. Takeover offers to AND and AVO on top of the strong gold price, has set the goldies away, and the REE plays have all been flying.

In my opinion the key to playing these hot sectors is just putting in that extra little bit of homework and searching for stocks in the sectors that haven't taken off yet.

I usually make up a watch list of all the sector plays, and then scan for the most likely charts. I'll either set alerts at key technical break out levels, or sometimes take a leap of faith and start building positions early.

Either way, discipline is still paramount. Identify relevant exits, and hit that exit once your trade has ceased to do what you had hoped it would. Keep those losses managable!

Alan

What can we make from yesterday

After 17 days of government leadership uncertainty, yesterday two of the three undecided independants decided to sway their support to the Labour Party.

The speech from Independant Rob Oakshott was painful, unnecessary and in my honest opinion carried out as if it was his first and last time in the major limelight..(he just didnt want it to end).

Once the decision was unveiled I watched certain miners like Fortescue Metals get dumped and then recover, yet Telstra remained fairly flat! (suprising given the NBN proposal from the Labour Party).

Today is going to be interesting, DJIA down over 100 points and still the market isnt sure what this future government will bring. Im sure over the coming weeks the direction will be painted.

Cheers
Kevi

Set Ups: The Swing Low

If you've been following my daily Twitter Feed you will have seen me mention on many occasions, a swing low set up. I thought I'd revisit this set up and shed a little light on what I'm looking for.

This is an old example from a couple of years ago, but the set up is still relevant. The stock was HGR. You'll see it had a huge run, followed by a blow off top, and then started to dip. For 3 days it failed to make higher highs on the daily chart, culminating in the low made at Candle A.



Once HGR broke the high of Candle A, a swing low was in play. Depending on my perceived strength of the set up, I like to enter either on the 1st higher high made (ie the break of the high of Candle A), although I may wait until a break of the next resistance level above if I'm not so confident (in the above case the high of the bar preceeding Candle A).

Volume plays an important part in my decision of if and when to enter. The swing low after Candle A was ideal because:

* the volume on the dip preceeding the swing was reducing every day
* the volume on the swing low day increased compared to the previous 2 days

You'll notice HGR threw a similar set up several days later, but the swing low then couldn't go on with it and eventually failed. Notice how much lower the volume was on the bounce day after Candle B, compared to A.

Conventional technical analysis suggests setting a stop loss just below the previous low before the swing set up, for your exit (ie the low of A and B in each case), but being a short term trader mine would usually be tighter, possibly a trailing stop using support from an intraday time frame.

This swing low set up can be used across all time frames, ie it can be just as effective on a 5 minute chart as a daily. As always though, I can't emphasise enough that you must keep your losses small, and exit the trade as soon as the set up fails.

Happy trading.

Alan

Learn from your mistakes

Continuing to repost some of my old lost posts from my blog mishap last week. Here is one from Alan Farley at Hard Right Edge. Some good articles here.

It appears he wrote this one back in 2006, but there's still some very relevant and timeless points in here:

Alan

LEARN FROM YOUR MISTAKES

Neophytes think their trading flaws will vanish after they get a few years of experience under their belts. But nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, even market professionals make costly mistakes that could have been avoided.

On Wednesday I made 17 trades and cashed in a series of big winners. It was a good day, but it would have been better if I didn't throw money away with stupid trading mistakes. But I rarely lose sleep about these errors, because it's hard to play the game with perfect discipline, day after day.

The market forgives traders' mistakes in easy times, letting us profit despite bad judgment and poor timing. But it's a different story when no clear trend guides the price action. In choppy and confused markets, a big loss can follow every small error.

It's natural to make a few mistakes each day, because trading requires a thousand real-time decisions. Often the best we can do is to limit damage and understand the types of brain cramps that rob our pocketbooks.

These popular errors run the gamut from mental blunders to misguided opinions. Not surprisingly, the most common ones also cause the most damage. For example, consider how much money your blind love of tech stocks has cost you in the last six years.

We can't eliminate trading mistakes, but we can limit their destructive power. Start by listening to the little voice in your head, and let it question every trading decision you make. In no time, you'll find a dozen ways you're losing money for no reason.

Let's start with the trader who should have just taken the day off. There's nothing worse than trading trends in a choppy market, or choppy conditions in a trending market. So make sure you know the type of environment you're trading in before you hit the enter button.

Most traders feel compelled to be in the market each day, even when we have absolutely no edge to play. This common impulse is also a major trading mistake, because it forces us into bad positions just for the thrill of being in the action.

The solution: Learn to sit on your hands when the trading gods have nothing to offer.

Traders hate to lose money and don't want to admit it when they're wrong. So they press on with bad positions rather than cut their losses, trying to turn lemons into lemonade. Invariably this triggers a bigger loss than they would have incurred if they had just admitted the mistake right away."