3-Minute Man

Gross: +$589.79
Net: +$487.64
Loss From Top: $64.10
Trades: 64
Shares Traded: 116442

Stocks Traded Today (net profit/loss):
Ford (F): +$182.27
AT&T (T): +$159.91
Time Warner (TWX): +$104.57
Walmart (WMT): +$86.93
EMC Corp (EMC): +$58.50
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD): +$56.48
Motorola (MOT): +$32.08
Disney (DIS): +$25.70
Micron Tech (MU): -$0.22
Home Depot (HD): -$51.34
Exxon Mobil (XOM): -$63.68
Corning (GLW): -$103.57

Nooo....it's not what you're thinking!

For the last few trading days, I've had a 3-minute chart up in addition to my usual 1-minute charts. Whenever I was in a position, I'd bring up the 3-minute chart and the 1-minute chart and my goal was to try to use the 3-minute charts to determine when I should get out of a position and for identifying trends.

Unfortunately I've been having chart trouble for the last little while (see the last few posts), but I started getting comfortable looking at the 3-minute chart.

And so, today I changed all my charts to 3-minute charts (with the exception of the Futures charts - I'll keep them at 1-minute and 5-minute).

I still have a long ways to go, but I'm really trying to watch the charts instead of the Level II when I'm in a position.

I know I'm a little late to the game and most others out there in the blog-o-sphere are using 5-, 15-, and 30-minute charts, but you have to understand that as a scalper that holds for only a few seconds to a few minutes and as a scalper that has a very tight stop-loss (usually 1, 2 or 3 cents), I'd get chopped to hell using longer-term charts.

But, I'm working on holding positions longer and if I want to use charts to dictate when I should exit my position, I'll have to change to a multi-minute chart.

Here's an example. Take a look at the following Walmart (WMT) charts for today. On the left is the 1-minute chart and on the right is the 5-minute chart (sorry, I couldn't find anything online that has 3-minute charts). In particular, look at the circled area of the chart (which highlights the same move on WMT).







I don't know about you, but if I were in a short position and I were looking at the 1-minute chart, I'd be paring my position several times on every little uptick.

However, had I been looking at the 5-minute chart (in my case, 3-minute....don't worry, I'll eventually work my way up to a 5-minute), it's definitely easier on the eyes and the trend is clearer.

So my transition to 3-minute charts is just the first step to clearing all that noise that the 1-minute chart displays. Now I've got to work on relying on the charts and not what the Level II is telling me (plus I've got to start getting comfortable holding positions for up to an hour!!!).

I won't bore you with today's system problems this morning (just see the posts from the previous two days - today was no different, if not a little worse). After about 11AM, the system stabilized and the charts were actually acting much better today (I only had to restart it 4 times today!).

At around 2PM we started having problems with orders and we were told not to put out any additional orders. I don't know if we came back up or not, but I took this as a sign to go home...I had some errands to run anyways so I thought I get them done before the rush hour crowds made their way home.

I was quite surprised at the number of stocks I traded today. This could be because I switched over to 3-minute charts, which had me changing the charts to different stocks a lot (with 3-minute charts I can more easily assess whether trends existed or not).

Two good trades versus no bad trades today.

Good Trades
10:04:20AM - AT&T (T) was moving up and so were the Futures. The Futures popped up so I went long 2000 shares. When the move stalled a but, I took half my position out. AT&T moved up a little further and the Futures started moving back down and I got the other half out. I got out as follows: 7-cent winner (1000 shares), 10-cent winner (1000 shares) ($170 profit before fees ; Long 2000 shares @ $33.39 ; Out: 10:06:24AM)


10:18:59AM - Ford (F) looked like it caught some support and started moving up while the Futures were moving sideways. Ford came up to the $8.30 level which had some relatively big size on the offer. When it broke, I went long 10,000 shares. Ford moved up a bit, but it seemed like sellers were not letting it go further and so I got everything out for a 2-cent winner ($200 profit before fees ; Long 10,000 shares @ $8.30 ; Out: 10:19:39AM)

Bad Trades
None.