Hi Swing Trading community,
A little background about me: I have been a trader for over 10 years, primarily trading SPX options professionally. Apart from that, I’ve traded crypto and some FX in the past, but currently I’ve just zoned in on options. Recently, however, I have been doing a lot of studying of the swing trading greats (KK, Bonde, Zanger, etc) and have been getting interested in diversifying my trading into stocks as well. I’d like to add that I have been using/employing technical analysis and quant techniques for a decade now and I also have a masters in financial engineering (worked on Wall Street for a few years in Risk/Analytics). However I am fairly new to \*successfully\* trading stocks (anyone can buy and maintain a portfolio - which I do too).
So for swing trading, the screener I use is pretty simple because I don’t like to complicate things. I simply look for stocks that are up at least 20% in the last 6 months, have an ADR% of over 5, 10 EMA > 20 EMA on the daily chart and ADX > 30 on the daily chart. From here, I look for orderly pullbacks to the 10/20 EMAs and then a bounce day. After careful analysis, I look to enter towards the end of a green candle day (with 5 min or so to go until market close).
Recently, I entered these names on the dates mentioned: CIEN on 4/23/2026, VIAV on 4/23/2026, VSAT on 4/23/2026, TSEM on 4/27/2026 and LWLG on 4/27/2026.
My goal is to enter with a half to a third of my intended risk amount per trade (i.e. I want to risk 0.5% of my account per trade but in the first entry I go in risking 0.25%) and then scale in on a second entry if and when the stock makes a next leg up and another pullback.
I set my stop losses below the recent pullback swing low. They ALL have been stopped out as of today due to the S&P taking a dump. This is extremely frustrating to me as multiple (seemingly) good entries all got taken out within a day of each other. It seems like they are all heavily correlated to the S&P’s moves even intraday. If this is the case, how do you guys actually swing trade successfully without getting trampled by every little dump of the market? I mean I understand if the market is in a downtrend, we need to be vigilant and take fewer trades, be defensive, etc. But when the market is at ATHs and you’re trying to enter some good entries, what can you do if the next day the market gaps down and you get screwed out of everything?
I am looking to learn from some experienced swing traders. I want to learn how to really compound your capital properly without taking too many stops and bleeding out money on every little market drop. Would greatly appreciate having meaningful conversations with traders in this community.