Learn to Use Multiple Time Frames
No matter what type of trader you are, whether its day trading or swing trading or even buy and hold investing, it really pays to pay attention to different timeframes before you decide to enter at trade. Usually you want to pay attention to higher timeframes rather than lower. For example, if you are looking at a daily chart on IBM, and are looking to buy the stock, you also want to look at a weekly chart. If you have a 5 minute chart of CAT up and are looking to short, you should also glance at the 15 minute and maybe the 60 minute chart as well.
Not doing this leaves a lot out of the picture. You can find resistance and support areas that you would never have noticed otherwise. In addition, often times the near term chart you are watching is biasing your opinion – meaning it looks short so you want to short the stock – but a quick glance at a few higher timeframes may show that its actually in a longer term uptrend. So either you pass on the trade OR you use that additional information to assess risk and gain potential. Usually the most important timeframe is one just above the main one you are using to enter the trade. What good is it to use a 1 minute to day trade RIMM and then look on a weekly chart? After all that is super long term when you are only planning to be in the trade for a short period of time. The best timeframe if you are doing that would be the 5 minute and the 15 minute chart. Occasionally you could use the daily chart to find breakout areas and trigger a trade point, but usually a nearer term chart will provide more assistance in decision making.
Once you make note of any key items such as major resistance or support, you need to write them down so you have access to them once in the trade. Ignore anything that is just too far away. After all, if you are going long WMT at 50.00 as a day trade, who the hell cares if there is major resistance at 56.00? Now it would be good to know on a 15 minute chart there is support at 48.80 or something like that – that is close enough that it might actually come into play and affect the risk on the trade. Another thing I often do is to draw horizontal lines on my chart at major levels – meaning 60 minute, daily or weekly areas. This line will be put on any timeframe you put up, even if its out of sight. For example, if you notice there is the major resistance on WMT at 56.00 – I would put a horizontal line stretching to the right at 56.00 on WMT. While it might not be in play today, and even not be visible on the chart currently (unless I switch to a daily chart instead of a 1 or 5 minute chart) – it will stay on that symbol and will keep me from duplicating work in a few days should I choose to trade WMT again. These types of things I usually put on charts I find over the weekend, so for the next week I have stuff already ready to go should it come into play
