After hours trading may seem hard to some, but actually it’s very simple. It’s our preferred way to trade. The stock market is open for active trading Monday-Friday 9:30a to 4p EST. This is when most trades are executed and where most of the action happens. However, setting your trades after the market has closed gives us several advantages and freedom to plan our trades and strategies accordingly.
Systematic Swing Trading
There are generally two types of trading: discretionary and systematic. Discretionary trading is subjective (based on opinion) and largely dependent on intuition. Systematic trading is objective (based on fact) and removes all interpretation and bias from trading. This is where we come in and use systematic swing trading after hours to our advantage.
First, the most significant advantage with swing trading systematically is the ability to develop and test trading strategies. Our specialized software pulls the intraday data to monitor the best strategies for execution on the next market open. These swing trading strategies have been backtested with over 50 years of data to prove reliable in any market environment. Discretionary trading requires the user to make each and every decision after analyzing many charts, which can be mentally exhausting and extremely time consuming.
Secondly, systematic trading makes all the decisions for you and removes any doubt or second-guessing. It provides you with a calculated plan with specific entry, exit, and target positions based on historic data and intraday price movement. All that’s left for you is to assess your own risk parameters and choose a setup that’s right for you. You may enter your own trade orders within your broker and let the market work for you.
Lastly, one distinct advantage with systematic trading is that it saves you time. All the time consuming work is done during development of the trading strategy and backtesting variables. Once the trade strategy is locked in place, all orders and setups are simply a click away. No more need to constantly monitor the markets or comb through thousands of charts to find the setup you think might work.
How Does After Hours Trading Work?
At the end of the day after markets have closed, our trading systems run the intraday data to find the best possible setups overnight. Some brokers may allow market trades to execute and move after hours. For those that don’t, we set the trades overnight to execute at market price (MKT) on the next market open.
All our trade orders are set up and in place ready for the next day’s market action. This allows us to have better planning and set our stops to hit during the day without reacting emotionally. You may certainly watch your trades and make adjustments throughout the day but once we set our order, we let it run until our stops are hit. We’ve executed our plan and let the markets work for us.
One of the most common reasons traders lose money is because they let their emotions take over. Having a systematic trading system in place gives you a plan to execute without over-analyzing endless charts and worrying if you’ve made the right trades. We send out daily chart analysis and market recaps that showcase our systematic trade setups. These chart setups may contain markups with technical analysis to help teach and guide our methodic trading plans.
Swing trading after hours give you freedom from charts throughout the day and gives your time back to you. Have a trading plan sent directly to you for swing trade setups without the guesswork.
Sign up now to start your free two-week trial for our daily trade alerts. Learn to trade your own investments by trading with a plan.
CONVICTION. EXECUTION. DISCIPLINE.
Daily Trade Setups
