BTW: I’m trying out a new way of embedding these videos. They’re HTML5 with Flash fallback (so my techie guy says!), which apparently means they should work on iPads as well as regular browsers. I love my iPad, so this is a Good Thing!

In this context a tick is a trade execution. So instead of dividing your chart based on time periods, you’re dividing on number of trades.

A possible advantage of this method is that you will see a more regular representation of activity during slow and fast periods.

To take an extreme example, in a slow moving market with very few trades occurring, you could potentially have five minute bar representing just a couple of trades. Using a tick chart, the bar would not complete until the required number of trades had passed.

In other words, in a tick chart, all bars are equal. Tick charts smooth out fast and slow periods of trading to give a kind of ‘quantized’ view.

Whether that’s *actually* an advantage or not depends entirely on your trading method though…

Trying to figure out if a tick chart is “better” is a bit like trying to figure out if a 10 minute chart is “better” than a 5 minute chart. They both show the same data, just formatted differently (although you could argue a 5 minute chart shows more data points than a 10 minute chart, but for the sake of illustration, they essentially show the same thing). It’s not the chart itself that matters, it’s how you interpret it and act on that interpretation that counts.

1. The markets, as always, are so full of wonderful trades, sometimes it just doesn’t leave time to post.

2. I ran out of things to say.

That second one is the main issue. My last series of videos reached a natural conclusion with the final Let’s Get Practical film.

Doing more live trading videos isn’t really where I want to go, because they are of little value (they’re all the same after a while) and because they cost a lot in lost revenue while recording them (for various reasons I won’t bore you with).

Doing more content-based videos I think gives more value, but I want to make sure they are genuinely useful. So if you have suggestions for topics you’d like me to cover, do get in touch and let me know.

Anyway, back to trading. As I mentioned, the markets are awesome right now. I keep getting emails asking “Does your strategy still work?” or “Are you still trading?” etc.

Listen: a properly developed strategy that is based on fundamental market mechanics (or “price” as I prefer to call it!) will always work. My strategy, as anyone who’s read my course knows, is based entirely on price, not some wonder-indicator that only works in market that happens to be doing one particular thing – be that going up down or sideways.

As long as prices move, the strategy works. And prices move every day the market is open. All you need do is find the stocks whose prices are moving the most on any given day.

There are various ways of doing that, but here’s a really really simple one you can use right now: Pick 25 Nasdaq 100 stocks that fit in your price range.

In other words, make your daily watch list, a list of 25 stocks that come from the Nasdaq 100 list. Pick stocks that are trading within your price range as defined by your money management strategy. For example, stocks priced between $10 and $30.

It’s hardly scientific, and it’s certainly not the most efficient way of selecting a watch list. But as many people try and over complicate things, it’s as good a way as any of “dumbing down” and actually getting started (on paper, naturally).

Here are three trades from Monday that were Nasdaq 100 component stocks:

AAPL:

Ok, possibly a bad example I know, because it’s a high priced stock. Don’t forget though, with dynamic sizing you can make most stocks fit most budgets. So if you can’t trade 1000 AAPL shares, why not trade 100? It moves so well you can still make a good profit with smaller size.

Mondays trade went something like this (numbers relate to the circles on the chart):

1. Entered a short position.
2. Covered the short for +$0.50 (= $50 @ 100 shares, or $500 @ 1000 shares)
3. Took another short
4. Covered here for +$1.50 (= $150 @ 100 shares, or $1500 @ 1000 shares)

So even trading just 100 shares, there was a straightforward $200 profit to be had. For those who prefer the afternoon session, have a look at that lovely rally in the last couple of hours – easily $2/share to be had there (so another $200 profit if trading just 100 shares).

Right, next one:

AMZN:

1. Took a short
2. Covered for break even
3. Took another short on the break of the very obvious support
4. Covered for +$0.70 (= $70 @ 100 shares, or $700 @ 1000 shares)

And again, a lovely rally in the afternoon session, worth another $1/share without any trouble.

One more…

EBAY:

1. Took a short here
2. Covered here for +$0.20 (=$20 @ 100 shares, or $200 @ 1000 shares)

Ebay is a much lower priced stock, so although the profit per share was much lower than the other two, you could easily trade larger size to make up for it.

So there you have it – three Nasdaq 100 stocks providing simple trades. Now Monday was a particularly easy day to trade, but the point is there are easy trades like this every day – if you look for them.

When I first started producing live trading videos well over a year ago, I broke new ground – I posted them to YouTube for all to see, and at the time, I was the only trader doing so. Then I started distribution through iTunes (more on that in a bit), again breaking new ground.

Since then of course, lots of people have jumped on the bandwagon, and the are loads of videos available on youtube and similar sites. So the bar has been raised, which is great.

The feedback to my videos has been overwhelmingly positive. But watching live trades all the time is only useful to a point. What I can’t do very effectively while trading live, is explain some of my thought processes. In other words, showing what I’m doing is one thing, but I want to explain more about why I’m doing it.

So I’ve decided to take my videos in a new direction. Starting next week, I’m going to be bringing you more background stuff. Instead of live trades, I’ll be sharing with you my thoughts on how to trade.

This is going to be quite organic, and hopefully interactive. I’ve not got a long pre-planned list of subjects to cover, instead, I want to use your feedback to direct me. If there’s something you want me to talk about in a video, then let me know.

I’ll continue to include live trades from time to time as I know they’re popular. But over and above that, the format is open!

Getting The Videos

I mentioned iTunes earlier, and I really think this is the best way for getting your hands on my vids. It doesn’t matter if you use a Mac or a PC, iTunes makes the whole process ridiculously easy. You simply subscribe to my video podcast stream (for free of course), and every time I release something, it’s automatically in your iTunes!

You can watch it straight away on your computer, or if you have an iPod or iPhone, just sync it up and watch wherever you happen to be when you have a few spare minutes.

The great thing about this way of getting the videos is there’s no problem with buffering, or the video stopping and starting during playback, because it’s already downloaded to your iTunes. It also means you can keep copies of my videos on your computer, so if you want to watch more than once, you don’t have to wait for it to download each time.

If you don’t already have iTunes, you can download it for free from here (there are PC and Mac versions):

http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/

Once you’ve got it installed, you can subscribe to my podcast either by clicking this link:

http://www.daytradingfreedom.com/podcast

…or simply search for Harvey Walsh in the iTunes Store. That will bring up my podcast page, and then you just click the Subscribe button.

Priority Access

I always make new videos available on iTunes before they can be seen anywhere else. Starting next week this will be even more the case – iTunes subscribers will get at least a 24 hour head start on anyone else.

Of course, I’ll still be posting videos here to the blog, if you prefer to watch in a browser. But if you want to be first to see what’s new, subscribing through iTunes (for free) is the way to go.

When non-traders find out what I do for a living, they usually ask me how I cope with the unpredictability and stress. I simply tell them that trading properly is one of the most predictable jobs in the world. That might make it sounds boring, and in many ways it is. Perhaps that’s why I prefer to trade for as little time as possible each day!

Here’s today’s selection of trades: