yeah i think it might be the poker player in me, but sitting in front of my comp watching tick for tick ill see an okish setup and just feel the need to scalp every 5 min chart with volume that I can.. clicking btns and ultimately just eating commission.. although i think my position size is big enough that i can eat it, gotta work on setting some rules and sticking to them...

anyone have any personal rules they follow when trading?

yes

Ok, I've spent a few hours researching them and their future doesn't look good.

1. Most of their customers are small private practice doctors who need a medical waste disposal service and are forced into using Stericycle by way of no other options. In turn they are forced to pay their monopoly pricing (look it up, there are no competitors). Below is found in a company presentation from 2015

-Small account customers generate gross margins higher
than large account customers

-Small account customers are more likely to outsource
and are easier to up-sell

2. Small private practices are being gobbled up by hospitals and larger medical organizations due to managed care screwing them over. So they go join a larger organization who can bargain on their behalf. This trend isn't going to change, more likely to accelerate.

3. So now Stericycle is going to have to bargain with hospitals and larger medical organizations. Unlike, small private practices, these larger organizations aren't at the mercy of Stericycle. They can bargain for lower rates, or if they feel it makes more economic sense, purchase a medical waste incinerator and completely cut them out.

4. They purchased Shred-It (paper shredding company) for $2.3 billion in 2015. This purchase was supposed to complement their medical waste business, but it seems like a highly competitive marketplace with low barriers to entry, while taking on a lot of debt.

5. Lastly, there's been 0 insider buys as far back as I can go (2015). The stock has fallen more than 50% from its October 2015 high. This should raise some red flags.

Let me know if you guys think this makes as much sense to you as it does to me.

-One more thing to add on. They've been on an acquisition spree buying up local medical waste companies and jacking up the prices 300-400%. I feel like I've heard this story somewhere else.

haha nice man

I get that youve spent a lot of time honing your trading skills, and i respect that, i just dont get the motivation to post this kind of comment just to prove something? why post at all?

obviously im trying to learn and am going to ask as many questions as i can while doing so. Belittling someone doesnt make any sense to me. Obviously an egotisitical nature is associated with trading and if you think your edge is diminished by sharing, then just.. dont.

Am i being unreasonable?

Its sort of like asking "do you 3bet AK"

Rules ensure consistency in your strategy, which is key to knowing your expectancy. Without knowing your expectation its almost inevitable to lose faith in any strategy during a drawdown and switch to something different rinse/repeat. This is basically the definition of a trading fish.

You have to just get used to Brian being Brian.

I think maybe a more digestible question would be "post a rule you try to follow when trading", and we can just post one a day here and there. I'll kick it off:

1) If I missed it, I missed it. Figure out why I missed it, and move on. Sometimes I think I missed it and in fact all I missed was the start of a huge breakout. But generally speaking 80%ish of the time I really just missed it (and it's a trap). 20% of the time I missed the bigger breakout. Odds for me work out to performing better if I sit on my hands and admire the chart without chasing. Not a very fancy rule, but I think most bad investors chase. Some people in here still do it.

Brian doesn't even trade except for some old-people stuff like Munis.

Yes. The people good enough to have a nicely reliable edge aren't going to post that edge on a public forum. It's not like poker where you're playing against a huge population where you only have to beat the average. A profitable niche can dry up in trading by having a single professional trader capitalized in the millions - of which there are tens of thousands - start exploiting your edge.

Poker is 100,000 self contained markets with different participants each time where the average intelligence and skill is low. Trading is a single market where capital can move elsewhere in seconds.

Imagine a poker table where there are always seats, and the world's best sharks could teleport to your table as soon as they became aware of how juicy it was. That's the game you're playing in trading.

Being funny is fun. What other motivation could I possibly have?

I wasn't belittling you. I was being silly. I use momentum / trend following for everything other than VIX futures. I occasionally dabble with value trades when I want to lose money.

For VIX futures, I use some math that can be found a ton of places on the internet. There are a ton of strategies out there. Most of them correlate highly with trend following.

Some other people trade on news and intuition. If I can't quantify something, I avoid it.

You won't learn anything in this thread as it is pretty much useless and used only for bragging rights. People here don't like to talk strategy and I believe it is mostly because in many cases they don't have one. My strategy is short term trend/momentum trading in the more volatile commodity markets and dip buying in uptrending equities. I have a list of rules that I follow and never trade on intuition, gut feel or on a hunch. If the trade fits the rules I do it no questions asked and if it doesn't I avoid. Grey areas and the holding of opinions will kill you otherwise.

Yeah I think everyone feels this way at some point. I find myself mentally trading stuff all the time. I think you get over it when you do it long enough to see you just lose money trading random stuff or bottom tier set ups. If you don't figure it out you probably have a gambling problem. I know several people who are good traders, that regularly bleed large 6 figure amounts just trading out of boredom.

good rule

Trading less will probably help you more than anything.

I'm one of those no strategy peeps, other than figuring out who I think are the smart traders and then occasionally following them in on an idea/thesis or trading based on trends/momo.

I guess my strategy is put 90% of my money in index funds and then yolo with the other 10%. I know I will never have the time nor the brain power to compete with the guys who do this full time and have years of experience at their disposal, so why bother trying. The 10% yolo allows me to learn new things, understand the markets and the world more, and have a little bit of that fun I used to get out of online poker in my 20s.

If I traded any less this year, I'd be at negative trades

Still 0/0, Feb 4

8-10 trades daily all before noon,
trying to cut back on being a workaholic and enjoy life a little.

to answer your other ????? I day trade.
rules are a MUST.
took a couple HUGE hits before pounding that into my head.
open an account with 25K and apply for a margin ; it gives you much more leverage.

no I won't post pre or post trade as like others said, we protect our little niche.

Just like entering a Tournament, those who go in with a plan fair much better than those without.

Posting trades in real time doesn't affect your margin or give away your niche. I've done it heaps before. It does however give you credibility.

It's the reasoning/setup that gives the game away, not the trades themselves.

What do people's weekend routine consist of? What kind of things do you do to help prepare for Monday? Run a bunch of scans? Study? Read, read, read? Relax? I guess this is mostly directed to guys that do this for a living.

Ya honestly with some of the stocks we're talking about too, there's no possible way people here are moving the needle. volume in them is just way too big. I know some of you are doing decent sized trades, but let's be honest here. If you wanna make a buy order on KORS, just post it here. The dirty dozen in this thread isn't going to hurt your trade.

Sunday is entirely devoted to NFL football. Saturday to the wife. I don't start researching until Monday morning. Gotta have some work/life balance!

weekends are for family.
my day starts at 4-4:30 am every morning.
coffee , fox biz channel , and then onto the computer by 5:30am

not true at all.
I'll use this one as I've dropped it from my rotation
CRC
most trades at 200-300 shares
along comes MR C..K BLOCKER PUTTING IN A 10K ORDER 1 CENT OFF LAST TRADE there by stopping any chance of making money.

yes something like BAC that trades volume way above what could be blocked is not an issue while lower volume equities are at risk.

there's two for you
BAC moves enough on most days to DAY TRADE FOR a profit.
CRC bounces following oil prices so watch crude ticks and bounce CRC accordingly.

Weed stocks look bullish again with WEED looking the strongest.

PIP is interesting, how does a $2.90 dividend only move the price $2.50

So i got caught holding the bag with VNR. Sadness.

What typically happens in this spot? Trading at 20¢ a share now and down 20% a day since went chapter 11

Does it just go to zero and i get a (big ) writeoff? Or are you telling me there's a chance?

taxaments?

definitely interesting though... opened at 50c, now up to 89c. efficient markets at work once again

Longed CLRB. GDXJ junior miners doing well