US Power Setups® Discretionary Portfolio
Short Term Discretionary Trading for the US Stock Market
The US Power Setups® Discretionary portfolio is based on our foundation trading course TRADESMART – New Traders Blueprint.
Discretionary Trading is the use of various chart patterns to identify low-risk opportunities. These patterns cannot be programmed into a computer, but by using prudent trading principles we are able to create an edge over the longer term. Being a discretionary trader allows you to be completely in charge of the trading process and add your own ‘colour’ to trade selection and position management.
The US Discretionary Portfolio trades both long and short but will tend to be biased toward the direction of the underlying market, which is defined with our proprietary Daily Momentum reading.
On average, the strategy will trade 200 – 250 times per year with an average hold time from 2 to 20 days.
What You Need
- A ‘non-cash’ account if you intend to use leverage and trade short. ** WARNING: The use of leverage can lead to large losses as well as gains.
- An online or discount broker that offers ‘stop’ or ‘contingent’ orders. We use Interactive Brokers but you can use the broker of your choice.
- Minimum suggested account size of US$20,000
Position Sizing and Trade Selection
The US Discretionary Portfolio requires the use of Fixed Fractional Position Sizing to determine how many shares are to be bought or sold. You should not allocate a specific dollar amount to each trade. We provide a calculator for you to determine the correct number of shares to buy based on your available capital and risk. It is strongly recommended that the value does not exceed 2%.
We do not believe that every trade should be taken and, at certain times, less trading is better. Our experience shows that many new participants simply want to trade for the sake of trading. This is incorrect. It is best to trade when the market is moving strongly and a well-defined pattern is available.
US Discretionary Portfolio Performance
As this is an ‘ideas generation’ service, no performance data is maintained. Performance data for this service was ceased in 2009 for a variety of reasons, namely:
- some clients could not take all trades
- some clients are unable to trade short
- some clients could not access the required order types via their broker