Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Focus | The Options Insider

Focus


One of the most important things you need to do to be successful when short term trading for income or long term trading for wealth is to have proper focus. What I mean is this? As a day trader, all you need to do each day is look at a chart, apply the Supply/Demand strategy and focus on where institutions are buying and selling that day. The hard part is to only focus on that.

Below are two trades on succesive days last week in the NASDAQ that we took in the XLT with our students. On the 25th and 26th, we started the day out by locating on a chart exactly where institutions were selling the Nasdaq, the supply levels you see below. We then sold short at those levels when price rallied to them and profited from a downside move in both cases. These are examples of what we regularly do in our trading but the key is the FOCUS.

Nasdaq Futures: 10/25/12 ? Short Term Day Trade

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Nasdaq Futures: 10/26/12 ? Short Term Day Trade

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What makes this focus so hard for most people is all the other things they let into their decision making process. For example, prior to taking these trades above, you may want to think about the economic numbers coming out that day. On the 26th trade, GDP came out. Wrong! We don?t consider that number or pay attention to it. All we care about when it comes to profitable trading is where the big buyers and sellers are in a market. You may want to see what?s happening in Greece or Spain or the next country nearing default. Let me tell you something? allocating one ounce of my focus on that is useless when it came to identifying where institutions were selling the Nasdaq and then shorting in those areas. The focus needs to be 100% on where the institution sell orders are that day and then selling there, nothing else. When it comes to profitable trading, knowing the details of what is happing to European economy is as important as knowing what the Rover is doing on Mars that day, you get my point.

When people use the term ?100%?, most of the time it?s a figure of speech, I am not. Again, when it comes to profitable day trading and longer term position trading and investing, 100% of your focus needs to be on one thing and one thing only: Where are the significant institution buy and sell orders, period. As I always write about, we do this by learning how to identify supply and demand levels on a chart. We look for the picture that represents a major supply and demand imbalance and then take action at that level. Some people will want to also include some indicators, Fibonacci levels, maybe the latest oscillator, wrong again? You need to have a razor sharp focus on where the major buy and sell orders are, nothing else matters.

Now that I have repeated myself a few times, hopefully you get the point and I will not waste your time with more repetition. This is just my opinion of course but from my experience, nothing else matters when you know where institutions are buying and selling in a market and that?s the focus of Supply and Demand. If you don?t agree, that?s fine as well, this is what makes a market.

Hope this was helpful, have a great day.

Sam Seiden


About Sam Seiden

Sam brings over 15 years experience of equities, forex, options and futures trading which began when he was on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange where he facilitated institutional orderflow.. He has traded equities, futures, interest rate markets, forex, options, and commodities for his personal interests for years and has educated hundreds of traders and investors through seminars and daily advisory services both domestically and internationally. Sam has been involved in the markets since 1991 both on and off the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. He has served as the Director of Technical Research for two trading firms and regularly contributes articles to industry publications. Sam is known for his trading, technical research, and educational guidance.


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Source: http://www.theoptionsinsider.com/education/?p=100003505&qcABC=1

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