@PaperhandsJB Mr. Paperhands, (I tag JB cause he’s an incredible contributor and I enjoy listening to VC daily for insights, but I welcome anyone else that cares to answer - many rockstars and contributors here)
I’ve been trading for under a year and Valhalla has been a great inspiration to continue learning and refine my skills. Disclaimer: I exercise position-sizing in line with my risk tolerance, attempt to take profits much more consistently and have a clear exit strategy when making a trade. It is important to constantly remind the server of these principles so I don’t hate when folks provide kind reminders.
Focusing on options scalping is my goal, as the pre-market scalps you perform is not for me, but I do appreciate the constant call out of your entries/exits.
My question is - how are you coming across so many tickers to scalp? Are you using a particular Finviz settings, as laid out in the Education section of the forum? Or are you using the Scanner Stream in trading floor? I’m reading trading floor, the forums and researching elsewhere for longer term plays, however default into scalping SPY when unable to find a scalp for the day.
I’d greatly appreciate if you can explain your thought-process for the Scanner Stream. I’ve followed much of your posts and advice over the past year on breaks, resistance levels, among others. I understand this scanner to be beneficial but am curious what you glean from it when attempting to find your next scalp or play.
With much discipline and insights from others, I’m determined to revive my portfolio in December and onward into 2022.
I sometimes use the pre-set scanners in Think or Swim or I know people use Webull pre-set scanners. I also use Finviz for swing trades (for me 1-2 week options) or DD. I also just have a list built up of stocks that have popped before that always have more pops and just cycle through them. I create a large watchlist for those and then have a smaller watchlist for ones that I am playing or think I will play in the near future. Other than that, it is also reading or hearing what others are calling out in our discord, other discords, and bot callouts in our channel #market-alerts for most mentioned tickers on Discord. I would say start with the scanners and watch the ones that move pre-market/after market and then see how those trend 1-2 days after they pop in non-market hours. Then the scanner can be used to find ones that are moving during the day. A lot of random, but you can become good with finding a few go-to places and then being able to read the chart history 1-3 years back for resistance/support then play those with the current movements( in most cases I am able to do this within 10 sec of looking at a chart, posting the breaks, then playing it myself within 20-30 sec. Lots of practice to get this fast with small positions of 10-20 shares. Then I moved this concept to option trading during the day. Lastly, I have added stop market orders to most of my option plays as soon as I enter a position. You have to find what you tolerance is but I often set it .20 to .50 cents or more lower than the current price. This depends on the play, cost of entry, and how many contracts I have. With fewer, I am able to stand lowering my stop loss much more than a larger play. This new strategy has cut many of my losses to keep them under 5% to 7% for most and then it usually tells me I made a bad entry point and need to rethink when I buy. I have been green each week since I started doing this vs manually doing it. However, I have had some stop losses hit, then immediately see it jump, so getting that right with the share price support can be tricky, but has gotten easier with practice. I hope to soon share my experiences on this forum to let others know what I went through and how I got to making money each week, when I don’t play dumb options…lol. I also made great money but would hold my options for too long and see -50% to -80% on many big plays that I could have just sold, waited for a new bottom, then rebuy. That saves a lot of people and is a hard mindset to have.I hope this helped a bit.