Five Commandments to become a successful Swing trader
1. Cut Losses Short - No matter who says what, if a trade is going against you, cut your losses and sit back.
2. Managing Targets & Stop Losses - Always protect your swing profits by shifting your trailing profit on the upside. Revise your targets depending on market situations.
3. Trade the trend - Always trade in the direction of the long term trend. Do not take a trade opposite to the trend
4. Records - Keep detailed record of every trade and analyze your mistakes on a weekly basis. No matter what stage you reach, learning and improving never ends.
5. Never Average down - Never ever average on the downside. Always average on the upside.
Other Requirements - Usually ignored by many
1. Lowest commissions possible along with the best service one can bargain for.
2. Opting for brokers who provide a Desktop based trading application. Web based applications are slow.
3. Sufficient trading capital to start with. Anything less than 5 Lacs in my opinion is difficult to make a living from.
4. Reliable Internet connection with backup, installed on a high end Desktop/Laptop
5. Using appropriate softwares for Technicals. Web based softwares are just not good to analyze.
6. Making sure that Data is clean and Accurate. Data from some free sites are full of errors and are unvalidated.