Why I Don't Share My Trade Plan or Pre-Trade Checklist!
By Cliff Clark
Today in the Live Trader's trading room a trader was being called out for not having a pre-trade checklist. While this was happening someone commented that I should share my pre-trade checklist. I think this would be a bad idea for many reasons.
What would you be willing to pay for my trading plan or my pre-trade checklist? If you had it do you think you could take it and make money with it? I would argue that buying my trading plan and pre-trade check-list would be the worst thing you could do. It tells me you are looking for the easy way out. Given that, you would have my trading plan but you would likely not follow it or maybe you wouldn't understand some aspect of it and it would cost you even more money. I know you think you may be the exception to the case, I know I once thought that.
No good trading educator or mentor should ever give you anything. They should make you work for it. We make you work for it for a reason. You learn by doing not by copying what someone else is doing. Both your trading plan and your pre-trade checklist need to be mapped to your personality. While you are developing these items you will learn about your trading strategies, you will learn about different management strategies and you will learn an awful low about yourself.
So if you want to succeed in this business get to work on your trading plan, your pre-trade checklist and most of all get to work on yourself! Stop looking for the easy way out.
2 trades for me today with +1.5R total
1st Trade QCOM +2R
148.39/149.97 exit 143.25
12% gap down under pivot support and 50ma after a strong daily double top rejection,. I took it on a congestion breakdown with a fairly wide stop, leaving my 2R target 50c over its ATR, slow but consistent move down with great RW, hit my target on the penny before it bounced.
2nd Trade AQB -0.5R
9.40/9.70 exit 9.56
I rarely trade stocks under $10 and even more rarely short them. I liked this daily chart as it broke its uptrend channel and stayed under a strong 9.50 support line enough room to its daily 50ma. I entered after a pullback with a fairly wide stop but only 1/3 of its ATR used at the time. It failed to break down with the strong market open and stayed in a narrow range.
I actually broke my plan with this trade as I lowered my stop to a pivot where price made a big bounce earlier at 11am with a large seller sitting there. My thought was that if it breaks that level again then it will likely...
1 trade for (-1R)
I took a BD on QCOM. I was worried about the target being close to the daily range, so I took a tighter stop on the 2 min chart. I am looking through PTS right now, most of the examples have 2 options for where to put your stop. It looks to me like one of the stops would be at the bottom of the main consolidation area, and the other at the bottom of where there has been a shakeout or turnaround bar (if there has been one). Due to the daily range I took the tighter one on this. In hindsight it seems obvious to take the wider stop, but in the moment it looked ok.
I was then looking at the 15 min 3BP on QCOM, but the reason I used a tighter stop in the first place was because of the range. The 15 min 3BP would have needed to have gone even further than the wider stop on the 2 min BD, so I didn't take it.
