Video- Scanning for trade opportunities

A few readers have asked how I go about looking for trade opportunities each day, so tonight I've done a video giving a brief overview of one of the morning scans I run.



Alan

Chart overlay software

A couple of readers have commented on the chart overlay feature I have been applying onto my Spark Software to draw Fibonacci Lines, etc.(Spark charts have limited drawing tools).

I do this via a little piece of software called, surprisingly enough, ChartOverlay. It costs about $80 USD, and there's a free 14 day trial. It could do with a few more drawing features but is pretty handy for the price.

Sorry, but no video tonight...I've been busy testing a few new intraday trading techniques I'm working on, based on scalping between Fibs. I'll pass on more details if/when I decide it could be a viable addition to the trading tool bag.

U.S, Gold, Oil, AUD and Metals all looking pretty shaky so far tonight, so if this continues it looks like we could be in for more pain tomorrow,but we'll see.

One of the benefits of trading CFD's is the fact that you can trade to the short side just as simply as going long. In my opinion, not adding short trading to your daily trade skills is the equivalent of getting into a boxing ring with one hand tied behind your back.

Alan

Blog addition - FP Morning Money

Just a quick post to let you know of a small but very handy addition to the blog.

On the top right hand corner you will see a link named "FP Morning Money". This is a link to a daily market update issued every morning by FP Markets to their trading clients.

It includes a snapshot and commentary of overseas indices and commodities, and other useful information.

FP have kindly allowed me to offer this link to all blog readers.

Enjoy!

Alan

My daily trading preparation and tools used.

A viewer of the nightly videos recently asked me how I identify potential trades and what trading software/platform I use. I remembered a relevant post I made on the blog before I accidentally deleted it a few weeks ago, and was lucky enough to find a copy. So here's a run down on my tools of trade and a little insight to how I prepare for a trading day:

Every morning the first thing I do (second after coffee!) is check the overnight market action. I check U.S and European market movements, metals prices and general market news.

My favourite web sites for this are:

www.marketwatch.com
www.kitcometals.com
www.bloomberg.com/news

I'll then open my charting program (FCharts Pro) and run a few scans, with a bias towards overnight action. For example if U.S markets were looking toppy, I might focus more on looking for shorting opportunities. Or if gold was very strong, I'll make sure to pay particular attention to goldies. I will particularly look for stocks in hot sectors that haven't ran hard yet.

The 2 primary scans I use are a simple Price and Volume increase scan, and one looking for potential swings in trending stocks. I also look at every individual chart in the ASX300 if I have time.

From these scans I will start setting up watch lists, and set alerts at prices of interest...primarily support and resistance figures. I will often set well in advance of 50 alerts each morning.

I then have 3 trading platforms that I rely on during market hours:

1/ Spark
Spark is an excellent piece of platform software. A couple of features that stand it out from the crowd are a unique graphical presentation of market depth, and a very very handy feature called "Smart lists". Smart lists allow me to scan and sort the market in real time for market movers over specific time periods, search for stocks with unusually high volume, and much more. Many of my intraday day trading opportunities are sourced from Spark. I run Spark across 2 monitors.

2/ ETrade Pro
Although I rarely trade through ETrade, I have used this platform since the old TD Waterhouse days. I know it intimately, I like the charts, and the watchlists have a very useful feature where the user can set how long price change highlights take to fade from screen. What this basically means for me is that I can still pick up price movements across my 6 monitor ETrade set up, over a minute or two after the actual price action. This is a very handy feature if you are watching large amounts of stock at once as I do.

3/ WebIress
WebIress is the platform where I actually place my trades through my CFD provider - FP Markets. The software is nothing special, but it is pretty stable, which is extremely important, and it does have a few cool features.

Throughout the day I'll also keep an eye on U.S Futures and also Asian Markets, particularly when they re open in the afternoon.

As alerts trigger throughout the day, or stocks on watch hit potential entry levels, I will move them to my "close watch" lists, and take positions from there. When I can I will Twitter stocks that have sparked my interest, some of these I'll take positions in, but not all, as many of the set ups don't kick on as I'd like.

Add to this; Email, Excel, the odd forum, and Messenger and you might get an idea of how hard my PC works during the day!

Here's a pic of my trading desk...it's usually tidier than that though....really! :)!

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.