A Simple Day Trading Strategy for Beginners For ThinkOrSwim

[BenTen]

Less is more. This is something @Ace_Trader and I has been talking about in the voice chat channel. Me, personally, I have been looking into it for a few days now. The purpose to remove all the noises around our trading setups and stick to the basics and what works for us.

What works for me was Support and Resistance, price action, trend lines, and gap fill. I know some of you are having trouble with trading so I wanted to share a simple strategy I'm currently using when I'm day trading SPY. This can also be applied to other tickers as well. Also, it's nothing new but we often overlooked and overcomplicated things.

Ever since last week, this has been my daily routine and I'm sharing it with you guys to see if it can be any help.

1. Pull up $SPY 5-10 mins before market open. Identify support and resistance.
2. Once the market open, watch where SPY opened at and where the candles are moving. Are the first few candles going straight up or down? Are they consolidating around the support/resistance area?

Here is a great example of SPY on the 7th of Jan. I identified Support/Resistance from pre-market. SPY opened in between the channel. Then it came back down to test the Support level. Bounced off of it (which is a bullish sign) and quickly got rejected by Resistance level.

How to Approach This Trade:

1. I would buy after it bounced off of the Support line and set a stop loss a little under it (this vary and depending on your risk tolerance.)
2. Noticed how it rejected the Resistance shortly after and consolidate above the Support line? I would enter on the break of that Resistance line.

What about Intraday?

Same thing. Identify intraday support/resistance and go from there. Using the same SPY example from above. It was consolidating above resistance before going higher, then later came back down. Then what happens? It bounced off of that level.

Here is another example from the next day. Again, check pre-market first and identify support/resistance. For this one, we got a resistance, a middle support, and a bottom support.

First, we opened above the resistance line, that's cool. Are we going to spike up? Apparently, it didn't. The second candle breached down below resistance. We got some sellers kicking in on the 3rd one but then the 4th candle was a red one with closing below resistance line.

In this case, I would have taken a put on SPY and set my stop loss somewhere around/above the resistance line. For the next few candles, you see it trying to creep back above the resistance line but got rejected. That's a confirmation that we're bearish at the moment.

To be extra safe, you can wait for the stock to break down below the second support line. In this case, it did as well and found itself going lower. Now we come to the support line. After going lower, it decided to consolidate and pulled back up from the support line drawn based on pre-market data. I would have taken a call after the second bounce.

Watching the price action is extremely important.

Here is an example from today. Super choppy day but I was able to get one trade in. All just from Support and Resistance.

In this example, we also got a top resistance, middle support, and bottom support. SPY decided to opened right on the middle support level. The next candle did the same but it was a green candle. Then the third one totally broke above the resistance line. You can wait for the close of that candle above the resistance line before entering. I personally entered at the third candle today (real trade).

 

[Chenthy73]

Thanks a lot. I observed some other good traders using simple similar strategies like this. Key is to honor those stops and let winners go longer unless key point is broken. Feels good about simple.

 

[Ace_Trader]

Great advice and a really nice looking strategy @BenTen. Thanks for sharing with the community. I LOVE S&R levels and to be honest, the way you're trading in the strat is how true pros trade. Very little (or no) indicators. Pure price action is all you need. #truth 😄

 

[8Nick8]

Hi Ben, may i know if you have completed this strategy? I am keen to know how the support and resistance works in daily timeframe.

Thank you

 

[BenTen]

@Nick I have not. If you want to learn the basics of support and resistance, this video is great for that.

 

[Likos]

Could you give an example of Pivots projections?

 

[thinky]

Why pre-market hi & low are not the support & resistance you mention in point #1? (looking at first chart)

1. Pull up $SPY 5-10 mins before market open. Identify support and resistance.

 

[BenTen]

@Likos https://usethinkscript.com/threads/...ort-resistance-indicator-for-thinkorswim.158/

@thinky Pre-market hi and low are considered S/R as well.

 

[Magic]

Gonna try this tomorrow..I think this is better than the orb indicators I've used in the past

 

[KKaiser]

Thank you Ben. Tomorrow I will do my first trade based on these simple steps. I believe, for a beginner like me I should start here and than read the OneNote to get more skills.

 

[tenacity11]

I've been working simple for awhile and it's made a huge difference for the better

 

[KKaiser]

Hi Ben,

Today I did my first trade and I made $1.50 of my first trade with 1 share. The point is not about making $$$, but I am so so surprised and excited that just by this simple method, I feel, I started to understand how stock price works in least. The video you suggested is so great, the dude is so honest and simple, he is not telling to make millions but rather telling that he would have use r/s from the day one and he suggests everyone to look into this strategy.

Attached is my screenshot, I used RSI2 and one more indicator from you I found here but forgot the name. The way I made s/r lines are moving every 10 mins from the previous s/r. It's too intense focus for few pennies, but worth millions to undertand and learn. The next I want to learn is about scanning. How and what should i pick to trade and also the time frame.
Thank you very much and will keep exploring your and others advice.

 

[tenacity11]

This was one of my trades today. Simple is the only way to go for me.
TY @BenTen and @Ace_Trader

 

[BenTen]

@KKaiser Hey, thank you for the update. I'm glad you found it helpful

Not sure what you mean by scan. What are you trying to scan for? I recommend watching only a few stocks for now and observe how they react to your support and resistance levels. Good luck and keep us updated

 

[KKaiser]

@BenTen Sure, I just got excited and thought to trade more stocks, but now I calm down and think to focus only on 2-3 stock/day. Thanks for the advice. Have a good and safe weekend.

Nice @tenacity11, feel good that there is someone out there starting like me, it's motivational. Have a good and safe weekend.

 

[tenacity11]

@KKaiser I'm going back to the beginning of the circle i.e. simplicity. Keep it simple. Amd is one of my favorite stocks using this methodology. I also trade Intc and Mu. Happy and safe weekend to you also.

 

[KKaiser]

Hi @BenTen @tenacity11, after one week starring at S/R, i am kind of tired and frustrated. I really want to learn the skills of day/swing trading and after reading so many post and scripts and watching over 50hrs of videos, I am completely lost and dont know what should i do next. I am not running behind $$ at this point, I want to learn the skills and hopefully apply these skills in near future to earn some $$.

I am lost and any help, suggestion is much appreciated.

KKaiser.

 

[BenTen]

@KKaiser Can you provide more info? What makes you frustrated?

 

[KKaiser]

@KKaiser Can you provide more info? What makes you frustrated?

Hi @BenTen, thanks for your reply.

So, 4 weeks ago I opened TOS account and started to watch few videos about trading. I was well aware of fake videos promising millions overnight, and such videos are and will be far away from my horizon from day one. After soul searching, I found few people on YouTube and this site, who are legitimate in their suggestions and teachings. I was very happy the day I landed on this site to find that there are people like you and others helping beginners like me to understand how it works rather than false promise of making millions.
After learning about Sup/Res, TOS, RSI, daily chart etc, I got so excited that I understand the charts which use to be like a random drawings for me few weeks ago. First thing, I started to learn about Sup/Res as you mentioned in this topic and made my first $. Yes, I agree i should first practice on demo account, before trading with real $, but i just gave a shot and after starring at Sup/Res for 2 hrs, I pulled my first trigger with confidence and got rewarded which made me do same next day. But more I learn, less confident I get into my entries (don't know what will happen to exit). So know I follow all the latest updates on this site, copy the codes to my TOS and to my surprise, I have gazillions strategy and studies, just to find out that I cant pull trigger based on the buy/sell signals generated by codes, which i totally understand.

My real frustration comes, from not knowing if I should do scalping which sounds safer as i can get in and get out quickly, or learn swing trading, short stocks which are more risky.

Personally, I want to do day trading like you mentioned in the first post about SPY, but not sitting around for long just to know that I am afraid to take action. I want to learn to scan for premarket floats, gap up or gap down, want to learn more about how shorting or float short works so i can judge the price of stock carefully to day trade. I take notes, i am reading these three books (A) Top 10 Trading Setups by Ivanhoff, (B) Technical analysis and stock market profits by RW Schabacker and Technical analysis of stock trends (11th edition).

Sorry for such a long email. I just want I can get a clear view about where to start.

Thank you very much for your time.
KKaiser

 

[BenTen]

@KKaiser I'm not in a position where I can write a detailed comment (just moved to a new place). What I can tell you is: take a step back. Try not to move too fast. You don't have to trade every day. Only trade when a good setup is there. How do you find good setups? Practice charting first, draws S/R and trendlines, observe how the stock move when it's breaking support, resistance, or trend line. I really like trading wedge patterns. I recommend looking into them as well.