The purpose of this final post in the Beginner’s Swing Trade Strategy is to bring together all the learning and provide a checklist of things to consider before entering trades.
Read all of the series - The Beginner’s Swing Trade Strategy is a collection of posts which describe different elements of the strategy - make sure you read them all.
Backtest - Before you dive in and use the strategy for real, backtest all of its elements on tradingview.
Paper trade - Before you commit any real money, paper trade the system and record what worked well, what didn’t etc.
Run through the following checklist of things when paper trading:
What is the high timeframe trend? Does it make longs or shorts more likely?
What has been bigger in recent moves - bounces or dips? Does that make longs or shorts less risky?
What time frame do you enter your trades on, and what does the time frame higher than that say about the trend?
Can you draw a price trendline with multiple touches which looks like a strong candidate to break up or down?
Can you draw an equivalent RSI trendline with multiple touches which looks like a strong candidate to break up or down?
When the RSI breaks does it look like it will cross the 50 level too?
Can you spot any divergences, and how might they influence price direction?
What does your vwap say about long-term and local price equilibrium and retracement targets?
How does your fib targets align with your vwap?
Do you have a clear stop loss and targets?
What is the risk to reward ration of your trade?
Are you ready to trade based on TA rather than emotion?
And that’s it. Nothing here is financial advice but if you run through this checklist and thoroughly understand this Beginner’s Swing Trading Strategy you should be well placed to read the charts and avoid making the basic errors which most retail traders do.
