My Swing Trading Routine | Podcast Episode #385

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Hey, I’m Ryan Mallory and this is my Swing Trading the Stock Market podcast. I’m here to teach you how to trade in a complex, ever changing world of finance.

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Learn what it means to trade profitably and consistently, managing risk, avoiding the pitfalls of trading, and most importantly, to let those winners run wild.

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You can succeed at the stock market, and I’m ready to show you how. Hey everybody, this is Ryan Mallory with Swing Trading the Stock Market coming at you in 2024 with

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my first podcast of the year. So let’s talk about my trading routine.

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I got an e-mail here from a guy he wants to be called Clinton Tyree that don’t use people’s real names because I try to respect privacy, even if they really want their real names to be used.

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I just don’t know in like 10-15 years that they’re gonna regret that decision. So almost every case, I don’t use their real name.

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There’s only been a handful of people that I have used their real name, but that was because they asked me to.

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So this guy, Clinton Tyree, which by the way, that’s a name from a book. I looked it up.

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I’m not that smart to know offhand what Clinton Tyree is, but from a book called Double Whammy, I’ve never read it, but sure, it’s a good one.

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He riots. Hi, Ryan.

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Merry Christmas and I hope you and your family are enjoying some downtime over the holidays. I’ve been wanting to ask you for a while and I thought it was thematically, thematically.

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I think that’s the right way you say it. Thematically appropriate given the New Year and people’s tendency to recalibrate.

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What is your daily weekly routine? I distinctly recall you mentioned that in 2022 downturn you were rarely making trades.

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However, I suspect that was not proportionate to the actual work and study you were doing. I’m trying to develop my own rhythms and would really like to know how you structure your days in

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reference to trading. I hope this question is one that you find appropriate for your podcast.

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Thanks as always for the great content and as a pre 2020 listener your production quality continues to improve.

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Although I do miss the whiskey reviews and I don’t even drink it. Sincerely, Clinton Tyree.

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So quick mention about the whiskey reviews. I used to do those all the time for the new listeners and I would incorporate that into the stock

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trading. I would drink whiskey and talk about stocks.

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I do miss that to a certain degree. The problem is, is I don’t have anywhere to put the whiskey at.

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So, you know, shells kind of got filled up there and I don’t have enough friends drinking when they come over.

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So that’s kind of where the whiskey reviews went. And I got constantly emails about some people like.

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And it’s some people, not some people, saying that I was causing them to go back into alcoholism. So I decided, OK, let’s just hold off on that.

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Maybe it’ll come back in the future. Would not.

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But any case, my stock market trading routine, that’s what we’re gonna talk about here. So I live on the East Coast.

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And the reason why I bring that up is because it plays a key role in your routine. Stock market on the East Coast opens up at 9:30 AM on the West Coast.

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If I was living on the West Coast, that would be at 6:30 AM. Now that’s a big deal for me because I’m more of a night person.

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Market opening up at 9:30 is ideal. Though I will say this, it’d be nice for the training to be done at 1:00 PM and I could do a lot

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of research at 1:00 PM to from 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM and and still be like a regular day job. But on the other hand, getting up at 6:30 in the morning, that would.

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It’s not so much the fact that I have to get up at 6:30. In fact, I have to get up before the market opens.

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I don’t want to be like rolling out of bed and the the bell is ringing. That’s where it would be difficult.

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I know some traders that live on the West Coast and they’re waking up at like 4:30 in the morning to do their trading in.

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I’m just not built for that. So maybe there was a time and place in my life where I was, but not anymore.

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So I get up about 6:30 because the market opens up at 9:30 and that’s where I start doing a little bit of my research into, OK, what did the futures do overnight?

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What are some of the breaking news? How are my current positions affected?

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If there’s gonna be a large gap down or a gap higher, how am I going to manage those positions relative to that?

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Now back up a little bit and my schedule really starts on a Sunday night. Usually on Sunday nights is when I start doing some of my heavy scanning.

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This is where I’ll do the most watchlist prep work. I keep a master bullish watchlist and I keep a master bearish watchlist.

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And then throughout the week, I’m working off of those two watch lists. Now it doesn’t mean that I’m not adding to those during the week, but I do the heaviest amount of

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screening on Sunday night. This is where I’m probably sitting down and going through 56700 stocks.

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It’s a ton of stocks, small caps, large caps. You need them going through a whole bunch.

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Outside of my scans, I also keep a must watch stock list and that’s about 100 or so stocks that I’m always going to wanna be reviewing each and every day for the most part.

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But I definitely go through them in greater detail on Sunday night. The reason why I like doing it on Sunday nights cuz by that point I have a couple of days behind me.

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If I had a rough week of trading the week before, even if I had a good week, that’s now kind of behind me.

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I feel a little bit separated from it. Sunday night, it’s usually really quiet.

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People are getting ready for the week, so in my household people are starting to go to sleep at that time.

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And like I said, I’m a night person, so I kind of relish the quiet time at night. And I’ll start to go through all these watch lists and doing that before the market opens on a

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Monday morning where you’re starting to feel the pressures of the gap higher or the gap lower or just whatever news might have broken Monday morning with downgrades and upgrades on a Sunday night,

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you’re not really being influenced by any of that. It’s still pretty quiet.

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Yes, the futures have opened up by then. I used to also go, this is before I started doing it on Sunday night.

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I used to do it on Friday nights, and I was also single at that time, But I would go out to Moe’s, fast food restaurants, a Mexican restaurant.

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I had this little corner booth. You’d think this was like 5 dining, the way I’m explaining it.

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But I’d go into the corner booth, I’d bring my laptop with me and I’d just go through the charts. And at the time I was using a notebook and I would jot all my stuff down in there of the stocks that

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I was gonna be watching for the next week ahead. But I also found that sometimes when I was doing those scans on a Friday night, I was exhausted.

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I was exhausted from the week that had just completed. I still felt some of the emotional toils of that week.

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So I think doing it on Sunday night has really been helpful for me. So Sunday nights I do the heavy screening, then Monday morning waking up 6:30, maybe.

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Sometimes, if I was up late the night before doing some of those screens, try to get about 7 hours of sleep six to seven.

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But I also have to be, as I’m doing this podcast, I also have to be consider the fact that my approach is gonna be a little bit more unique than the regular trader.

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Not because I’m any more important, but because I also do a lot of charts and a lot of research for the public that I offer through trading block and through Swing Trading the Stock Market as well.

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So there’s a lot of research that’s ongoing throughout the day. So even during the trading day when the market’s open, I’m still doing tons of research.

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But during different segments of the day, I’m usually doing different types of trading. So from 6:30 to 9:30 in the morning, I’m waking up making my coffee, eating a little breakfast

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sandwich or something, get something in the belly and then I’ll go upstairs. Always curious about news that might be breaking in the morning or happened overnight.

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Looking at the pre market, seeing where the futures are, seeing where maybe the VIX is going to open up at, what are the yields doing in the bond market.

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Those are the kinds of things that I’m watching. And I’m also putting together a watch list of stocks that I might be able to trade during the

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regular trading session. I’m starting to look at that watch list.

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I’m compiling that and that’s going to usually entail anywhere between like three to six stocks that I’m really honed in on.

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And then once the market opens, usually you’re going to get a couple of them that just fall by the wayside.

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They open up and they just go straight down When you were looking for a breakout. They just aren’t performing.

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So you’re gonna take some of those out. So then by the time the market opens, I’m probably looking at somewhere between like 2 to 4 stocks

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that have my attention now at 9:30, and I’ve talked about this in previous podcast episodes, how I use a top down trading strategy.

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So at 9:30, I’m really trying to get a feel for where that market’s going that day. Because if the market’s just gonna sell off the whole day, why bother with new long swing trades?

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Doesn’t make much sense because I’m gonna be like a fish swimming, you know, against the tide or, you know, swimming upstream.

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So it doesn’t make much sense for me to try to initiate new swing trades when the market’s just selling off hard and fast.

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I definitely don’t wanna do that because more than likely that trade setup, if it does break out, it’s not going to stick.

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So the market direction’s gonna play a huge role in that. So I’m looking at the market direction.

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I’m looking at the breadth in the market, so advancers and decliners. That’s one of the aspects that I like to look at pretty closely.

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You know, what is the number of stocks advancing on the NYSE versus the number of stocks that are declining?

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I wanna look at that ratio. Is it 2 to one in favor of advancing?

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That’s a pretty strong reading. If it’s three or four to one, it’s a really strong reading.

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But if you got a market that’s advancing higher but you have a negative breadth, that’s gonna be a little bit of a red flag for me.

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I’m looking at the ticks at the open. How strong is the buying and the ticks?

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For those who don’t know, your ticks are going to be the net difference at any point in time in the market of stocks that are going higher versus lower.

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It doesn’t mean that they’re higher overall on days. Just at that moment they ticked higher.

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Looking at the 10 year, that’s gonna be important. Looking at crude, that’s important as well because that’s gonna drive the energy sector and it could

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also hurt some other sectors. Gonna look at commodities like gold and silver.

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I’m also gonna look at whether it’s the small caps moving the market or the large caps. If it’s small caps, it’s gonna have more of a effect on breadth because there’s so many more smaller

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cap stocks than there are larger cap stocks. And then of course the volatility, How is the volatility lining up with what the overall market’s

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doing? Is there any divergences there?

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And then I’m looking at what sectors are leading, because if the market’s rallying, you got 8 out of 11 sectors rallying.

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But the one sector that’s failing to rally is, let’s say, healthcare. Well, I don’t want to be trying to get long on healthcare stocks, so that might scratch another

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stock off of my watch list with ones on there. So I wanna see what sectors are leading, which ones are lagging.

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And then I also wanna see too, what are the big tech stocks doing. And the 8th that I’m most concerned with is the Fang stocks that you hear.

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Some people call them the Magnusson 7. I think that’s kind of crazy.

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They’re really like the FOMO 7. But I also like to include Netflix, which is dropped off of a lot of people’s radars in terms of

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including it in the big tech plays. I still do.

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Maybe I’m just a traditionalist, but for those who don’t know what stocks I’m talking about, it’s meta.

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Formerly known as Facebook. You have Amazon, Apple, Netflix, NVIDIA, Google, Microsoft, and Tesla.

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Don’t think I forgot any. Those are the stocks.

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So if I’m seeing negative breadth where, OK, we got 3 to 1 breadth to the downside where three stocks are declining for everyone, that’s going up.

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But I’m looking at the large caps and you’ve got 7 out of eight trading higher. OK.

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I have a feel that either it’s a flight to safety with the big techs, that’s something that we’ve seen a lot of during 2023 or if the markets rallying, it could be and we have negative breadth.

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It’s really just a handful of stocks that’s moving it. So I don’t know if I want to be putting a lot of faith in other stocks outside of the big tech

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place. So that’s what I’m looking at.

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From 9:30 to 10:00, it’s a lot. I do some of my most work during that period of time.

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And then after 10:00 or for the the West Coast, that would be 7:00 AM. Then I’m starting to look at what am I going to trade, What, what do I want to get into right now?

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What’s breaking out? If it’s gonna be a while before it might break out, maybe it’s.

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I’m waiting for that break out and it’s a couple bucks away on a $50 stock or something. I’ll put an entry price for it.

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And then from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM, that’s gonna be your dead time in the market. You know, if you don’t have any other obligations, then that could be the time to get a quick

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workout in, get your lunch in because that’s where the volume really sinks down. Doesn’t mean that there can’t be any wild action during that time.

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There can be, and we’ve seen it plenty of times. But overall, that’s where you have a lot less volume, where the market tends to settle in a little

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bit after whatever direction it’s trading in, following the first hour and a half of trading, and then it picks up again from 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM.

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Now, news has become a lot less relevant to me just because there’s so much of it. If you were essentially saying, OK, I’m not gonna trade around any major news events, you’d probably

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never trade. There’s something every day, whether it’s CPI or PPI or PCE or OOP.

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Yeah, you know, there’s no OOP, but that’s a crisscross reference from the 1990s. I think some of you guys will get that.

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But there’s Fed minutes. There’s the Beige Book from the Fed, There’s FOMC, there’s the FOMC presser, there’s the Fed talk

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going on with all the governors on a regular basis. I mean, sometimes you’ll have like 7 or 8 Fed governors talk, OK, if if you’re gonna wait till all

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those things pass, you would always be waiting. You got GDP, you’ve got employment numbers, you’ve got jobless claims.

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It’s a ton of stuff out there. So it’s not that the news is not relevant, there’s just so much of it you can’t really trade around

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it. So it’s kind of it comes with the it’s not like earnings, for instance, where OK, a stock reports

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earnings 4 * a year. So obviously I’m not gonna be in a stock that’s reporting earnings.

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Like if I wanted to be constantly an apple from a Sweden trading standpoint, I’m not going to be in it at least four times during the year because of the time that it reports earnings and the

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influence of the Fed too along with all the news pieces that are constantly hitting us all the time. It seems like the Fed’s influence is so heavy on the market now markets especially in 2023.

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So much less about earnings and profit potential and long term potential for a stock and much more about what is the Fed doing with interest rates.

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I mean that’s really what’s the main driver of the market these days. So then once you get closer to the close then what around 3:00 PM, I’m starting to get an idea for

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what I’m gonna be closing out, whether it’s a partial position, a full position, or what profits I’m gonna be taking or what losers I’m gonna be closing out.

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That’s really what I’m prepping myself for from about 3:00 PM onward. Now throughout the day I’m doing videos and maybe this is a good segue for promoting

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swingtradingthestockmarket.com. This is a great service that gives you all of my stock market research each and every day.

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I mean, it’s really good stuff. So I would highly encourage you to check it out.

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And you’ll gain a lot of good insight from the research that I do throughout the day. I mean, we’re talking about multiple videos and watch lists that I was just talking about.

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You get all those things. So check that out.

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You’re gonna support the podcast and the process. And then.

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All right, so we get through with the session. Ding, Ding, Ding.

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The closing bell has come and gone from about 4:00 to 4:15. I just like to take a breather, man.

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I really do. I mean, it’s like, OK, we got through the end of the day, I’m usually just gonna kick back.

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Maybe I’ll open up my phone and do Wordle or something. But I just wanna take a little bit of a break.

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I’ll go downstairs, see the wife, see how her day was at work. And then from 4:15 to 5:30, I’m going back up.

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I’m doing research. Or I’m just, you know, updating charts, updating some of my reads on the market overall and just

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kind of prepping for the following day. So that’s pretty much what my day looks like in terms of daily routine.

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Now sure, there’s a lot of stuff that I do along the way, like doing this podcast, but usually that’s stuff I do at night.

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So I hope you guys enjoyed this podcast episode. If you did, make sure to leave me a five star review.

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I really appreciate those things. I can’t get enough of them.

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It really does help promote the podcast and to get it somewhere views and check out swingtradingthestockmarket.com.

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And like Clint and Tyree did here, send me your questions. Tell me your stories.

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I wanna hear about them. I wanna make a podcast episode out of them.

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They mean a lot to me. And I would be willing to bet that the questions that you have for me are probably ones that are

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being thought of as well by others. They just don’t want to e-mail me.

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So if you have a question, send it to me. Very good chance I will make a podcast episode out of it.

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So thank you guys and God bless and God bless you in 2024 too, man. We got a long year ahead of us here.

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Hopefully not in a bad way, but you know, 365 plus days. I think we got 366 this year.

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There’s a lot that can go down in that time, so stay the course. Thanks for listening to my podcast Swing Trading the Stock Market.

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I’d like to encourage you to join me in the SharePlanner trading block where I navigate the stock market each day with traders from around the world.

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With your membership, you will get a seven day trial and access to my trading room, including alerts via text, e-mail and WhatsApp.

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So go ahead, sign up by going to shareplanner.com/trading Block. That’s www.shareplanner.com/trading-block and follow me on SharePlanner’s Twitter, Instagram and

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Facebook where I provide unique market and trading information everyday. If you have any questions, please feel free to e-mail me at ryan@shareplanner.com.

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All the best to you and I look forward to trading with you soon Microsoft Mechanics.