Topic
Swing Trading
Trades held from a few hours to a few weeks: how to pick the setup, where the stop goes, how many shares to buy and when to stay out.
A swing trade lives or dies on two numbers decided before the order goes in: where the idea is wrong, and how much of the account you lose if it is. Everything else, the indicator and the pattern and the target, is a way of choosing those two numbers well.
The position size calculator turns the stop and the account risk into a share count. Read the short swing strategies before trading the downside; borrowing shares brings costs and risks a long trade never meets.
Strategies
Verdict
Swing Trading Indicators Worth Keeping: Trend, Momentum, VolatilityKeep a moving average, RSI and ATR, since each measures something different, and read volume from the bars.
Playbook
Intraday Swing Trades: Catch the Move and Be Flat by the BellOne intraday swing, taken on a VWAP pullback after the opening range and closed before the bell, removes gap risk at the cost of more trades and tighter rules.
Playbook
Swing Trading the Short Side: Setups for a Stock Heading LowerShort a stock only after it fails at a level, and size the trade so a gap through the stop is a loss you can take.
Comparison
Trend Following vs Mean Reversion: Which Losing Streak Can You Bear?Trend following and mean reversion can both work; choose the one whose losing streak you can sit through without changing the rules.
Guides
Definitions
- Higher highs and higher lows
A pattern of swing points in which each peak tops the one before and each trough holds above the one before; it defines an uptrend, and lower highs with lower lows define a downtrend.
- Opening range
The high and low a stock trades in the first minutes of the regular session, commonly the first 5, 15 or 30 minutes, used as a reference for the rest of the day.
- Short squeeze
A sharp price rise driven by short sellers buying back shares to cut their losses, where each wave of buying pushes the price higher and forces more short sellers to buy.
Calculators
- Position Size Calculator
The share count from your account risk and stop, the reward in R, and the loss if the stock gaps past the stop.