Registered User
Joined: 12/7/2004
Posts: 22
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Hi: December 1st was a great day for the markets. December 7th was a bad day. How do you go about figuring whether or not you will place a trade on any given day? (Let's assume that you are long.) If you go about placing a trade this way, did your analysis tell you to stay on the side lines on December 7th? Did it tell you that December 1st was going to be a good trading day? Thank you.
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Worden Trainer
Joined: 10/1/2004
Posts: 4,308
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gigimay:
Whether to place a trade on a given day is a highly individual matter. It is affected by your trading and investing goals, your time frame, your risk tolerance, and a number of other factors. I think you've posed an interesting question, and I'd like to see others out there in the forums stop by and throw in their two cents on this interesting subject.
There won't be any right or wrong answers, but it should prove very interesting to see how others decide if and when to place trades on given market days!
Thanks for contributing an interesting topic to the discussion forums!
- Doug
Teaching Online!
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Registered User
Joined: 11/10/2004
Posts: 21
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If you are a trader - you trade. You have a strategy, you have done your homework, picked your targets, and set your entry, stop and target points. If the market goes against your analysis, then your losses are minimized, and you live to trade again. If the market follows your analysis, you profit...which is the point.
Your analysis tells you whether to take long or short positions. You typically do not want to fight the market, so if a stock is uptrending you favor long position....downtrends are short opportunities. While it is emotionally exciting to watch the markets carry your positions you should not trade based on emotion. The whole idea of technical analysis is to increase your probability of trading successfully...it demands a disciplined approach. I guess the above is just a long winded way of saying most any day is a good day to trade...
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Worden Trainer
Joined: 10/1/2004
Posts: 18,819
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Wow... what a great addition to what may become a very active thread. Thanks, tfelts.... Anyone else out there want to share their thoughts?? 
- Craig
Here to Help!
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Registered User
Joined: 11/13/2004
Posts: 141
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Some things you can do to improve your chances.
Know where the market is going by studying where it’s been. Apply your technical analysis to the broad market averages like you would a stock. The Dow, Nasdaq and the S&P500, as well as any other indexes that may be relevant to your trading style.
Know what sectors/industry groups are moving with or against the market. It may be a good day to trade for the market over all, but it could still be a bad day for certain market sectors or industry groups, so it’s important to apply your technical analysis to the industry group you are trading as well as to the market and the stock you want to trade
Know what stocks in a given sector or industry group are leading that particular group and apply your analysis here again to the stocks you find. Pick the leaders of the group and leave the laggards behind
Get comfortable with your technical analysis, learn how to recognize trends, support, resistance, and candlestick patterns at a glance, they will be your guide, and will confirm or refute the trend, but remember the charts are only suggestive and not always accurate, and don’t forget even when all appears to be moving in the right direction the trade can still turn against you like a wild animal. It’s the nature of the beast, so don’t place that trade until you have established an exit plan
If it did not turn out to be a good day just accept it, study it, learn from it, and try again tomorrow
UserTM
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Registered User
Joined: 12/7/2004
Posts: 22
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QUOTE (usertm) Some things you can do to improve your chances.
Know where the market is going by studying where it’s been. Apply your technical analysis to the broad market averages like you would a stock. The Dow, Nasdaq and the S&P500, as well as any other indexes that may be relevant to your trading style.
Know what sectors/industry groups are moving with or against the market. It may be a good day to trade for the market over all, but it could still be a bad day for certain market sectors or industry groups, so it’s important to apply your technical analysis to the industry group you are trading as well as to the market and the stock you want to trade
Know what stocks in a given sector or industry group are leading that particular group and apply your analysis here again to the stocks you find. Pick the leaders of the group and leave the laggards behind
Get comfortable with your technical analysis, learn how to recognize trends, support, resistance, and candlestick patterns at a glance, they will be your guide, and will confirm or refute the trend, but remember the charts are only suggestive and not always accurate, and don’t forget even when all appears to be moving in the right direction the trade can still turn against you like a wild animal. It’s the nature of the beast, so don’t place that trade until you have established an exit plan
If it did not turn out to be a good day just accept it, study it, learn from it, and try again tomorrow
UserTM
Before the markets open in the morning, we can see, for example, what has gone on in Europe during the day. How does this affect your thinking? What about futures, for example, the Dow Futures, in the hours and minutes before the market open? Thanks.
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Registered User
Joined: 10/7/2004
Posts: 142
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When the market opens one has to believe that every day is a good day for trading the market.
I consider market action as randon with a bias (like loaded dice). At any given moment I don't know the state of the bias. I have to discover the bias from the market data as it is made available.
Both bulls and bears can make money on any given day. I like to watch Peter Worden's comments because he seems to have a preference for the bearish side. I have a preference for the bullish side. I have watched Peter trade a short in the QQQ's while I simultaneously trade a long in the QQQ's and both of us make money because of the timing of our buys and sells.
Profitability in trading lies in the trader and his discipline as much as it does in the market.
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Registered User
Joined: 11/16/2004
Posts: 105
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I like to buy long after a series of bad days when volume is decreasing & sell after a series good days when volume is increasing.
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 Gold Customer
Joined: 10/29/2004
Posts: 45
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Jeez! What's this "good day" and "bad day" stuff? The market doesn't have good days and bad days. People who trade the market may have either or both. Those who attempt to predict a change in trend have good days and bad days. The market just is. It always has an appropriate day. The trick is to harmonize one's trading to harvest the fruit the market provides.
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Registered User
Joined: 11/13/2004
Posts: 141
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Gigimay
You can look at the after market and pre-market action, and it can often help, but you must remember that just because the market may be indicating a direction early in the morning does not mean that direction will prevail once the market opens. I think DFW1948 vdolmstead have said it best in their post above.
Another thing you may want to remember and something that took me a while to get over is, even though the market may see a broad based rally or decline making it appear to be a good day to trade one way or the other, it does not necessarily mean it will be a good to trade for you, or the stocks you may be watching, as nto all stocks follow the market.
Remember this has more to do with your overall trading strategy, than the over all market movement. Technical analysis is just a guide that can improve your chances for success. You must also remember that technical analysis is not always accurate and there is no holy grail. its up to the technical analyst to decipher what they see on a chart and try to make an informed decision based on past information about what will happen in the future, so the idea is not to be right every time as much as it is to be right more often than you are wrong
UserTM
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Registered User
Joined: 12/13/2004
Posts: 1
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Not really being a day trader, I can concentrate on a particular stock, and decide its entry point based on technical and/or fundamental analysis at the end of the day. Since my limit order decides my entry point, it does not matter if its an upday or a down day for me. The system automaticallly places me in an order or sometimes the stock runs beyond my reach and I just bid a farewell to that stock with no attempt to chase it.
Invariably after getting into the stock, I always feel that my entry point was wrong, but it has mostly turned into a winner when I control those emotions and just execute my predetermined plan for a stop loss and an exit point. If I stick to my plan irrespective of the market, I've been effective but whenever I have allowed my emotions to take over, those changes have penalized me dearly. 
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Registered User
Joined: 10/7/2004
Posts: 43
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Let's start by reading "day" as a hour, day, week, mounth or what ever fits your trading time frame.. And relize that what is a "good day" or a "bad day" is relative to how you are trading.. So let's refer to "up days" and "down days"...
As we all know (or will find out) there are strong up days where even the trash goes up and there are strong down days where even the gold plated winners drop.. Therefore, keeping track of the general direction and strength of the market, sectors/industry groups can and will improve your trading success... But, keep in mind that a strong up day can turn in to a strong down day or the reverse and it can happen very fast.. Don't be Bull/Bear headed.. It's been said more than once "don't fight the trend".. Keep an eye on the herd, you can either ride with it or be run over by it...
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Registered User
Joined: 10/7/2004
Posts: 1
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Registered User
Joined: 1/2/2005
Posts: 4
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As an options, futures and mutual fund trader for the past several (1992) I am always looking for the right day and the right way to trade. As you know the market indexes are very different from individual stock but in general I am looking at McCellan Index and 4day and 33 day trends--one of the great priciples I learned long ago was the 3 day KISS
if the market is trending it wants to Kiss or touch that 3 day m/a and reverse the existing trend or continue with the trend. In terms of the individual days of the month the first 3 days and the last 3 days are testing days and I bet 70% of the time the 7th is a sell off day--been using that for at least 7 years. I try to post information when I have it about directional trading if anyone is interesed
http://tigertrader.blogspot.com/ Unfortunately I am a discretary trader and it is hard to give anyone specific technical indicators I look at cause I look at a lot--one thing you should look at is 135 or 150 min chart--notice how the moves comes in those time frames and run out of juice consolidate or just plain reverse.
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Registered User
Joined: 12/1/2004
Posts: 1
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Something interesting in the Stock Traders Almanac. Up days have changed their pattern such that the best sell days(up performance) are the last 3 trading days of the month and the first two trading days of the following month. Throw in the 11th trading day as another high day. Something to do with the impact of 401K plan money flow.
In spite of all this, don't let it be the decision maker in what you do, just one of many factors to consider.
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