How to Swing Trade Stocks with Michele aka Offshorehunter

hey it's camper investors underground welcome to another trader interview so in today's interview we're speaking with Michele also known as offshore hunter on Twitter she runs the blog trade on the fly calm and she's the moderator of the swing trading chatroom and investors underground we're gonna be chatting with her for around 25 minutes today about a trading and also a couple of new things that she has in the pipelines at the moment nice to speak to you today Michele how you doing I'm doing great how are you Kim I'm doing great thanks for asking thanks for having me today so I'm sure everyone's very interested to hear about your early trading line you tell us about how you got started with everything sure I've been trading full-time now for 13 years and I had traded part-time for a year while I was still working in high tech sales before I switched over to trading full-time and I had always had an interest in the stock market and just started dabbling in it like I said part time when I was still working and it was during the height of the dot-com and when the company that I was working for lost all of its venture funding I decided to switch over to trading full-time and focused primarily on the swing trading side of things but day trade as well but the swing trades are what I really love and where most of my big gains come from very cool and through those 13 years you must have really developed and refined a unique style of trading you tell us a little bit about the style and also about the timeframe that you trade around so the style and the timeframe that I trade in my day trades are even longer than most people's day trades my swing trades are anything from overnight to I would say my average swing trade hold time is 3 to 5 or 6 days I have had things you know that I've held for two or three weeks at a time and primarily I do all of my trading from a technical basis so I'm looking at charting I'm looking at support and resistance areas to buy and sell and looking for specific chart pattern setups to buy breakouts or breakdowns of those specific chart patterns so you mentioned you trade based on technical analysis you tell us a bit about what you're looking for on a chart I know that you use a few more indicators than some of the other traders that I've interviewed in this series give us know a little bit about those sure so through the years you know I've tried many different technical indicators that are out there and what I've developed for my particular style I try to stick to the kiss method which is just keep it simple stupid the fewer indicators that I have and using the ones that I'm very familiar with I think they work as guides I guess for myself to help verify the price action that I'm seeing in the stock and the ones that I prefer to use I use different ones on my daily charts versus what I use on my intraday chart so on my daily charts I like to look at the RSI which is the relative strength indicator I like to look at the MACD which is the moving average Convergence divergence line and then I also have my 50 and 200-day moving averages on my daily charts and then on my intraday charts depending on the time frame that I'm trading I talked about this in my webinars a lot I really like to use the 60-minute charts and I use the 50 period exponential moving average and then I love to use the slow stochastics with that to help determine the overbought and oversold levels intraday as I'm trading to help along with those support and resistance lines that I draw in my charts to help determine good risk/reward areas to make my entries from it's really interesting so out of all those kind of patterns when would you get really excited about a chart what would it have to be showing you for it to really perk up your interest I think it depends you know on the daily charts I think any pattern I like Bull Flags a lot I mean we're in a bullish market currently so I tend to trade more in this market from the long side people don't know that I'm a bear at heart and I actually love shorting but because we're in a bull market I'd really like the bull flag setups there seem like they're more reliable at least in my experience you know those tend to break higher and they take less time to develop the other patterns though that I'll say that I do really like are the ones that spend a lot of time consolidating and coming off the bottom so pounding bottoms and the cup and handle patterns I really like because those bottoming processes they take time it takes a long time on the daily charts for those to develop and I feel like that you know the amount of time that those stocks that I find in those patterns and those bottoming patterns you know when they do usually come and break out of those patterns those breakouts are usually reliable and you know that that stock is spent the amount of time that it needs to spend working on that bottoming process so usually you'll get a good move out of that area that can be sustained I also really like the triangle patterns too because you can play those either waiting you know on your daily chart for the break-up or the breakdown of the triangle pattern but also while that patterns developing as that pattern develops you can have some swing traits inside that pattern and even some intraday trades as well off of those support and resistance levels of that triangle pattern as it develops so even though that pattern hasn't broken out yet as it develops it can give you some nice trades inside that pattern you know and you know what's going on with the stock and the stocks acting is expected so rewind back to the beginning of your trading career maybe when you were in the first few months of trading what kind of signs of signals did you have the told you that you were sort of good at this and that you could entertain doing it full-time for your living things were much different when I started trading than they are today when I started trading the trades and they marry trades were just kind of coming online you know more people were able to trade on their own you didn't have to trade through your da Davidson or Morgan Stanley broker and get charged two or three hundred dollars for a trade so it was you know very new we didn't have chat rooms and we didn't have Twitter and we didn't have the access to information that is so readily available now which I wish I had had back then I think my learning curve would have been much shorter if I had had that and I didn't have a mentor I had gone to Montana State University and gotten my degree in finance and like I mentioned earlier I'd always had a really strong interest in the stock market and I always had had god this feeling out there that there was something that I was meant to do where I could be my own boss I wasn't going to be capped by an hourly rate that I was getting paid or a salary annually that I would have a lot of flexibility and what I would be able to make I'd felt that for a long time and when I kind of stumbled into the trading world I just felt like I had had my niche and I had lots of early success using the charts I had lots of books that I had bought and studied very hard reading my books on technical analysis and that was the way that I had chosen that I wanted to trade but like all new traders that's early success you know led to failures as well I got too big for my britches and nearly blew my account up twice and you know learned and I'm still learning you know that you have to have patience and I think you know having a plan moving forward and in my early trading career I didn't necessarily have a plan I mean I had a journal and I would write stuff down I just wanted to make money and as I saw my account grow you know that's what I was looking for was the way that I could make money and continue to make money very quickly through the trading like I had mentioned earlier I wish the availability of the information I mean we just I just didn't have it back then I was trading at my house in my room you know off of charts and having a mentor I think would have been really helpful so what goals do you set for yourself on a day to day week to week month month kind of basis how do you track and measure your own personal success um I think now you know obviously still to continue to make money to try and you know make less mistakes in my trading to be more patient I'm always it seems like I'm always working on that especially since I'm a swing trader you know when I go back and look at charts you know and setups that I've had often I wish that I had been more patient with the setup and I guess some of the goals and some of the things that I enjoy now you know working with investors underground you know is just helping some of the new traders hopefully find a path that makes sense for them and picking and choosing things from different traders that can help them be profitable more quickly I really enjoy you know working with the people out there you know that was something that obviously I didn't do early in my trading career but feel like at this point trying to give some of the knowledge that I've learned through the school of hard knocks back to maybe some of the newer people that are starting out so hopefully their learning curve is shorter than what mine was so sort of like the mental that you never had correct yeah exactly so when was it that you found investors underground yourself so I had started out in another chatroom for a few months that didn't fit my style of trading and sort of my personality type and I think in that chat room when I was in there I saw somebody mentioned investors underground and so I went over and checked it out and definitely felt more at home and really liked Nate and the moderators that he had in there at the time and really likes the clean format of the room with good alerts and not a lot of the other garbage that went along with you know the other chat room that I was in so I think that was about four or five years ago now I'd have to go back and look exactly but that's how I found the room and I just loved the room it's grown through the years and just a great group of traders in there and lots to learn for sure so it was probably around a year ago now that you and Nate teamed up and started the swing trading room had investors underground you tell us a little bit about that sure so the swing trade room we started the first of this year in January and I had been suggesting to mate for a while really I think since I first came on board because of my style of trading that I thought that there was you know an opportunity out there for people who maybe can't be in front of the screen full time due to you know maybe they work they're not trading full time or maybe life commitments or people that are just interested in a you know in a slower trade style and so I thought that having that option out there would be a great addition to the investors underground community and so the first of this year we went ahead and started the swing trade room and I think it's been a good addition and it's a different style of trading in the room is you know we're a little quieter not as many setups but definitely putting quality setups in there and we're trying to set it up where it's a good learning environment or newer traders or people who are trying to learn some of the charting in the technical analysis we give a lot of examples in there during the day and can have some discussions in there on the setups of the stocks or you know discussing some of the things that are going on in the market very cool and what kind of feedback have you been receiving from the members who've been spending some time in there so the feedback that I've gotten so far is been very positive people like the feel of the room it's a little slower trade style in there we do both the day trades in there and obviously the swing trade setups that we're looking for but even on our day trades they tend to be you know a little slower in nature we're looking for the same types of setups that I'm looking for on my daily charts we're just doing that on a smaller time frame usually off of the 60-minute and the 15-minute charts and often get you know moves we're looking for the breakouts or the breakdowns you know or pushes off support and you know we get some really nice moves in in there even on our day trades we're getting you know a lot of stuff that's moving 50 cents to several dollars during the day for those that might be looking for a little slower style day trade I think people really like the availability I guess to ask questions I've been trying to encourage people to put some of their questions in the chat room so we can all benefit from the question as well as the answers that they're getting on it from me and then also from the other moderator in there Tim Parker who's autumn all-city he's the other moderator in that room and does a great job helping the members of that room and we've got some great traders in there as well who are always willing to help out some of the new folks in there sounds really positive and it was last year that you verified over half a million dollars in profits in a single year of trading is that your best year to date sure so I did verify last year on profit Lee and last year was my best year I have typically been in the six figures on my trading year-over-year but last year was my best year so that was definitely good it was a great year for me so and what would you say was the highlight ticket that you really crushed a trade on that year last year I think FNMA was my biggest gainer and definitely it had a great run last year I was in and out of it a couple times and like always with some of my swings I look back and wish I would have bought and sat still and been patient through the whole ride because I never catch all of the move but I always feel like if I can catch the meet and catch the middle part of the move that I'm doing pretty good so back to the teaching side of things what is that you find the most rewarding thing about helping new traders and sharing quality information um I think that what I when I was a kid growing up we lived obviously here in Montana and I started giving riding lessons at the age of about 13 and gave riding lessons all the way through high school and college and I think that the teaching part in me I've always I just have always really enjoyed helping people I get a lot of gratification out of that I like seeing people succeed and be successful and have the light bulbs go on and it doesn't mean you know that they have to do things exactly the way I do them but if they can take things you know take ideas from what I do and add that into their trade plan you know and come up with something that's gonna help make them successful I love that and I love yeah I just I like watching people succeed and do well and I think that you know trainings definitely a hard path and not everybody makes it trading but I think it offers a great lifestyle and you know a great way to earn a living and a lot of flexibility and pretty lucky to be able to do it so if I can help other people find success there I get a lot of enjoyment out of that so for quite some time now you've been running a pretty popular blogger trade on the fly com do you tell us about the vision behind starting that and some of the exciting things that are happening in the future sure so trade on the fly I started blogging a few years ago and doing swing trade chart setups and do the updates two or three times a week and we have a complete new look and feel of that that's getting ready to be launched here shortly as well as a service and an upgraded offering that we haven't had there before and people will be able to still have the scans and access to a webinar but they will also be able to have access to a private Twitter feed that I will be doing the scans the webinars as well as access to the swing trade chat room and I think the big thing with trade on the fly and the charts that I do for people you know everybody's lives are busy and one of the biggest questions that I get over and over again from people as they want to have my scan recipe literally the way that I scan is I have hundreds and hundreds of charts stored you know in my stock charts account and I go through those I have you know I'm always adding and deleting charts to that people always say these stocks that you're coming up with there's you know a big variety in the things that you come up with people are always wanting to know where are your scans coming from and my scans are literally coming from me combing through hundreds of charts every day so a lot of people are busy in their lives they don't have time you know maybe to do a lot of scanning and what trade on the fly offers them is quality set ups two or three times a week and I've recently made some changes in the way that I've been doing them to be able to update and do notes on the charts so that people can follow the trade through or if the trade doesn't trigger we take it off and I'm always adding new setups on there so what it is really offering people is the high quality swing trade setups with specific breakout levels or levels of support that we're watching that it needs to hold at and potential price targets if it's a specific chart pattern we can talk about that in my notes on that of where the price may be going or what the next area of resistance is it makes sense to take profits at so I think it's a great option for people who are looking for setups that just don't have time you know in their lives maybe to go out and do tons of scanning and tons of homework every single night it offers them the option of some great setups multiple times a week it's sort of like people want the recipe but you're saying the main ingredient is pretty much time and sweat so you spend all the time going through hundreds of thousands of charts and they end up getting a snapshot of what you think is worth watching what kind of format does this end up getting condensed into are we talking about a handful of tickers or charts with commentary correct yeah usually in my scans when I do them I try and do dates on the ones that need to be updated some of them are just spending time consolidating so there's no additional comments on those but anything that's moved up to a resistance area maybe is falling back to support I can comment on it and then I'm adding in two to four or five new setups with each scan depending you know on the market conditions and what I'm seeing I'm trying really hard to focus on what I think are the best setups gonna be easy for me to throw twenty or thirty charts out there but I've tried to really condense it down to the stuff that looks to me like it's very ready to move or will be moving in the next couple of days so they can put it on their watch list they can put an alert out there if we're looking for a specific breakout area so that they'll be able to trade that as it moves and you mentioned that you also do webinars every two weeks what a format of these what can members look to gain from attending those or watching the past ones in the webinar archive sure so the webinars that I do are usually between an hour and two hours long I open it up ahead of time for members to be able to send in any kind of questions that they have either on the type of training that I do or specific questions if they're having issues in their own trading as well as chart requests so I can have all that material prepared ahead of time and go through that with chart examples live audio and then at the end of every webinar as well if additional questions come up we can go through those and I can give specific chart examples or talk through the issues or the questions that people may be having and then we also spend a bit of time where people like to send in or ask questions on maybe charts that they're watching or thinking about and I can put those charts up on the screen for them and we can go through those we usually go through those I start out by looking at the daily views of those charts and then we break it down and look at the intraday chart usually the 60-minute chart on those as well and I can draw my support/resistance lines and tell them what I see on the chart so a lot of the listeners to our youtube channel would have probably already seen Nate's first DVD textbook trading or the most recent released tandem trader but something they might not know is that for the last six months you and I have been working together using your experience and expertise in swing trading and some of my experience from making Nate's DVDs to create a hen civ crash course of your strategy condensing to around eight hours of lessons to give people the foundation of knowledge to understand the key concepts of what you're looking to achieve from your trading everyday can tell us a little bit about the progress of that project sure so I'm working on a swing trading DVD and we're looking at having that ready to go January of this next year and what people can expect from that is the basics of swing trading you know understanding swing trading and the technical analysis you know the viewpoint that I bring to swing trading which is using the charting using the technical indicators why technical analysis is important you know risk management entries and exits and then how I apply the indicators and the charting patterns into my own personal trading so all of that will be in the DVD and lined out for everybody I don't know if you can tell but I'm pretty excited myself to be able to release that for everyone pretty soon so what does the future hold for mechele's trading well I hope that for the future of my trading I just continue to get better as a trader that's one thing I love about trading is I feel like I can do this for 300 years and and never know everything so I like the challenge every day is a new day and just continue to do well trading and enjoy helping new people and new traders as they come in to investors underground and become part of the community there so and lots of fly fishing well Michelle I really appreciate the time you spent with us today to give our listeners some kind of insight into your strategy and style of trading I also wanted to take a moment to say thanks for all your hard work running the investors underground swing trading chat room I'm really looking forward to spending some time checking out your sister side service at trade on the fly comm I'm really excited about finally releasing the swing trading DVD with you in January 2015 well thanks for taking your time to visit with me today I sure appreciate it and look forward to meeting some of the new chat room members out there and maybe just new members of trade on the fly so I'm excited about the future for sure thanks again for your time

Channel: Investors Underground

Views: 169,274

Rating: 4.6850395 out of 5

Keywords: Investors Underground, Trading stocks, learn to trade, Nathan Michaud, short selling, day trading, profit, trading lesson, investorslive, how to invest, how to trade, trading penny stocks, trade stocks, trading interview, interview with traders, elkwood66, elkwood, eric wood, @offshorehunter, offshorehunter, tradeonthefly, trade on the fly, trading stocks, swing trading

Id: npv3318mFb0

Length: 22min 6sec (1326 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 17 2014