Mark Moskowitz was interviewed by TraderInterviews.com to talk about how to be a more consistent trader.

TraderInterviews.com: Hello everybody and welcome back to TraderInterviews.com. Thanks very much for joining us for another show this week. As always, the intent of all of these shows is to give you traders out there something to think about and maybe add to your own trading strategy and arsenal out there so you can become a better and more consistent trader. And our guest today is Mark Moskowitz and he's a trader and he's going to talk to us about his overall approach to the markets. You may have remembered an interview we did with Dr. Doug a few weeks ago. And Dr. Doug actually interviewed Mark as well, so we got our interest in doing that same thing. So, Mark, thanks very much for joining us on the show today.

Mark Moskowitz: You're welcome Tim, thanks for having me on.

TraderInterviews.com: Well, can you talk about kind of your overall approach to the markets. Do you consider yourself a technician, a fundamental trader, how do you categorize yourself?

Mark Moskowitz: Well, Tim, I am an intraday trader, mostly equities, long and short sided, and I've obviously almost a 100% technical in my nature of trading. I use one strategy which is basically looking at pivot points. And pivot points, I use the previous days open-high-low and close that will give me four sets of pivot points. Two of them are long points and two of them are short points. And when I get signals based on that, I will make trades again on either the long or short side going into there. From there, I will use moving average lines 20-, 50- and 200-day moving averages to look for levels of support and resistance. And the chart that I use are typically short-term in nature. I use a three-minute chart, a five-minute chart, a fifteen-minute chart, and then again I look at a daily chart with those same moving averages, all just simply looking for some level of support and resistance and hopefully getting some confirmation of the pivot point signal.

TraderInterviews.com: So, how many of those things do you want to line up? You'd listed out quite a few of the moving averages and then three or four time frames, how many do you like to see telling you that it's time to trade?

Mark Moskowitz: Well, I like to call the pivot point as my general on the field. So, once I get a signal from the pivot point, its usually going to give me a chance to get into a position with some sort of size. If I get a moving average where I'll get the confirmation from a lower moving average moving up through a higher moving average, typically I'm looking at the three- and five-minute charts. But again, if I have no overhead resistance from any of the moving averages, it will be a full steam ahead pretty quickly. But the way I trade is also, I'm a very big believer in scaling in into your positions, so that way when you're wrong you have very few shares and when you're right you have your max number of shares and I believe that's what helps. Put the ratios in your favor and really turns the key on to becoming a very profitable trader. So, if I get a pivot point signal but my moving average lines look a little tenuous at this point, I may go in with a 15% or 20% position, and then as soon as I get those moving averages moving back in the direction I need them to go, then I'll typically scale up into a 75%, 80% or 100% of that position that I would like to get into.

TraderInterviews.com: And so what does 70%, 80% or 100% look like in terms of just pure share size?

Mark Moskowitz: Well, again it depends on capital, and I do all those calculations before the market opens and what I kind of call my pre-game strategy session. I trade very high beta names. I like the movement, I like the action. I've been trading a lot of the leveraged ETFs lately, the SKF and the FAZ, SSO, as well as I like to trade Apple and Goldman-Sachs and Google, so I don't need to trade a lot of shares to get a nice movement. On a stock like Apple, I'd say a full share size usually lead a 1500 to 2000 shares, so depending upon how much room there is between the pivot points depending upon how much stop loss there might be. So, that's really where I calculate everything is amongst the stop-loss level.

TraderInterviews.com: Are you scanning the whole market for a pivot point opportunities or do you like to focus on these handful of stocks and the leveraged ETFs that you follow?

Mark Moskowitz: For me, it's primarily looking at the handful of names. I will look for some other names in the news especially during earnings times, but I am a big believer in getting to know your names very well, getting to know them better than anybody else, and I think that gives you a little bit of an extra edge because sometimes you just realize you just know when some doesn't look right. You know that there is an offer out there that just is not true. You've seen it there a million times and if you go flapping back and forth to the last different stocks you're not going to really ever get that feel. So I probably have a core of 15 names that I look at and do my pivot points everyday, then I look to see what else is in the news and maybe try to sprinkle in a couple others here and there, as well as I will do pivot points on the S&P 500 futures, so I get just the feel for where the general market is going.

TraderInterviews.com: The open-high-low and close, you talked about two being long and two being short pivot points, correct? Is that what you said at the beginning. So how did you learn the strategy? Is that something was taught from something else or you learned on your own?

Mark Moskowitz: I was taught by a mentor of mine who started looking at pivot points, and I was primarily a moving average trader. I would typically look at the moving averages and based my trade simply off of that. Being a diligent trader, I learned his system of pivot points. I tried it on paper for about a month just to see while I was using my other trading strategies to see how well it worked, and I found that it gave uncanny results and so I included it and now like I said it's really probably my main thesis for making a trade right now.

TraderInterviews.com: Have you ever thought about automating this system or purely discretionary?

Mark Moskowitz: It's a great question. I have thought about trying to figure out a black box model for this. Right now, I'm simply trading it manually. I am a big believer in trying to attain your own psychology and clearly that seems to be what the black box model does. So, I thought about it, I haven't done anything about it yet though.

TraderInterviews.com: OK. And how many trades a day typically are you putting on?

Mark Moskowitz: I will trade usually 60 to 80 times a day, so I'm a fairly high volume trader. But again, that also includes scaling into position. So, if I buy 300 Apple and that eventually get up to 1500 Apple, that could be four trades, and then I also scale out as well. But individual trade, I'm usually using about 60 to 80. I probably trade somewhere than we have 50 to 100,000 shares a day.

TraderInterviews.com: And how many of those positions are you comfortable having on at any one time?

Mark Moskowitz: I'm a real narrow-focused person. So, I really don't have much more than a couple on at a time. And as fast as my name has moved, I don't need to have too many on a time, plus as we done a lot early because I feel that stocks tend to be very highly correlated to each other, so if you're getting the general markets moving in a direction, odds are you're probably just doubling up your stress levels by adding to too many positions on at a time.

TraderInterviews.com: It's interesting that when I hear you talking kind of freely about the way you trade and listeners who have been listening to me for a couple of years now know that I drill the traders pretty good about what they do and some people are really free to talk about what they do. They realize that this market is big enough for everybody, did you ever have any concern about saying, "Here's exactly what I do..." Because it seems like the most simple the system and the guys are successful and they don't care if everybody looks the same thing because it's not going to harm their strategy. What are your thoughts there?

Mark Moskowitz: Personally, I would love everybody to use my strategy as long as I can get in first, right? I have no problem with that. Once again, my size relative to the market is relatively small. And I'm trading names that are very...trade names that have a lot of volume in them, so my 1500 shares of Apple that trades 20 or 30 million a day is not going to make a difference one way or the other. I think, for me, trading is all about understanding yourself, understanding your own mentality and learning what works well for you and then trying to find the system that fits that best. I mean like I said, for me, my attention span maybe shorter than the average person, so for me to be a micro trader I like that. I like to be in. I like to know if I'm wrong right away. I like to know if I'm right pretty quickly and I'm happy to take profits when they present themselves. Of course, I miss some larger moves, but that's just my personality, that's my style. But as you said just before, I mean, keeping it simple as, it's such a big key in this business. I've talked to some guys, I've sit next to people who watched 20 different indicators MACD and stochastics, and I think those are all good for everyone individually. For me, personally, I have my pivot points, I do them every morning, and once I do them I don't need to think about them for the rest of the day once they make their crosses. I look at my moving averages. I also do a lot of tape reading which is something that maybe can get a little more technical in terms of looking for support and resistance that's not necessarily showing up on the chart. If I keep seeing a level that a stock keeps getting to and can't quite get through it, finally get through it, I'll feel that's pretty comfortable at the stocks and then continue to moving at higher direction. So, again, I try to keep it very simple, try to make my game plan in the mornings before the market open so I can get the feel for what might go wrong. I think planning is a very, very important part of my day. And then once the market opens at 9:30 I'm ready to go, I know what I'm looking, trying to earn for the day, have a pretty good feel for that and I know pretty much what stop-loss there would be. So, once the market opens I'm ready to go and just the matter of plug in the right trades.

TraderInterviews.com: Let's talk about that stop-loss. How do you find an area on the chart that you're comfortable putting something to know if you're wrong quickly?

Mark Moskowitz: Well, again, having a lower number of shares and why it was needed to feel more comfortable within a trade. So, if I enter a trade with a few hundred shares and it went against me what am I really losing if I'm losing a dime or 20 cents that's really not a whole lot of money - $40, $50, $60. So that's really the purpose for me of going in with a smaller amount of size. What I look for is moving average lines on the chart, really if I come down to 200 day, I may add in to that trade just because I'm sitting right on some heavy support. So, if I were to break that 200, I know I could pretty much get out of it very quickly. And then if it bounces off to 200 a day, I know I probably have a very good level where I can keep buying stock at. My stop-losses will be usually pretty quick, like I said, maybe 15 or 20 cents, but a lot of it depends on what I'm trying to earn on the upside too. So if the pivot point is telling me that I should be able to make a dollar or dollar fifty, I'm going to give it some room on the downside, I'll give it 40 or 50 cents on the downside. As long as I'm keeping my ratios at a high level, three, four, five to one, I'm usually pretty happy with that.

TraderInterviews.com: Can you talk about how you use that pivot point that would tell you, do you think it's going to go or has room enough to run, say a dollar, can you kind of explain how that works?

Mark Moskowitz: When you go to do your pivot points, you will always get a 2:1 risk-reward ratio. So let's say that you do a pivot point on Apple and the buy pivot is a $120 and it gives you stop-loss of 19.50, so you're risking 50 cents. It will automatically tell you that an area where you're going to be looking to get short will be 121. A simple dollar movement. So the pivot points give you always a 2:1 ratio. Now, it's up to the trader and it's up to the trader's professionalism to figure out a way to get to that 2:1 up to a more acceptable and higher ratio. For me, sometimes I will add to positions as we're getting closer to that stop level, obviously keeping if the stock goes to 19.75, now my stop is 25 cents and clearly my ratio has just become quite a bit better. It just become 5:1 from 2:1. So, if I can continue to do that then I will buy stock all day long with a 10 or 15 or 20 cent stop while giving me a dollar and a half of upside.

TraderInterviews.com: And if you meet that profit target, are you out pretty quickly or would you take some of that off and just the same way you would on easing in, you scale out as well?

Mark Moskowitz: I do scale out and typically this is a lot of where the art comes in to being a good trader. As you know, there is a science to it and there is an art to it. And the art of it, and I believe, is scaling in and as well as scaling out a little bit. I usually have this calculated before the beginning of the day. So, what I look to do is take 25% out on the first 50% of the move. So, if I'm looking to make a dollar in total on the first 50 cents, I'll take 25% off. When it reaches what I consider to be my first target which would be the full level or full dollar in this case then I'll take another 25% now. My new stop-loss in my own mind now has become my first level where I sold. So basically guaranteeing myself another 50 cents if the stock were to come all the way back down. My second target is typically three times what my loss would be. So, if my loss is 50 cents, I would exit a full position with the remainder of the full position once I got to a 3:1 level.

TraderInterviews.com: OK. And it sounds like you just mentioned a stop in your mind. So these are stops that you have in your head, but you're not inputting into the system.

Mark Moskowitz: I don't use manual...I mean I don't use automated stops. I use everything as manual. So it's all calculated before I get into the trade and then I just use everything. A lot of it is feel, so like I said that's part the art of it. It's feel and understanding where things are getting a little top heavy maybe a level that you noticed before that you don't like so much, it keeps going at this level, but can't seem to quite break through it, so you wanted just be cognizant about it. And obviously the numbers that I point to there that's the science of it, but then when you get into the hard of the day sometimes you got to go by feel a little bit and if you think just because it hasn't gotten to your 2:1, but all of the sudden looking a little bit happy and you can see some size coming in on the offer, are you going to sit there and wait for your profit to run down? Of course not. You're going to look to exit it and try to get it back in at a cheaper spot and maybe see if the run will continue.

TraderInterviews.com: Well that feel that you mentioned is obviously a huge part of having success in trading. A trader can learn all the systems he wants and have the indicators that he wants or have the moving averages and pivot points, but that feel, how did you develop that for yourself to get that aspect of the equation?

Mark Moskowitz: That's something very, very hard to teach. It's very hard to learn. A lot of it again is coming to know your names I think. It's coming to understand, not giving yourself...You don't have to watch 200 stocks. You can get to know certain names, get to know how they feel, get to know what's the big move for a name because certainly a 10-cent moving Apple is not a very big move but it's a very big move in GE now at this point. So, getting to know your names, learning to read the tape, I think, is a very important scale and I know that a lot of people say, "Well, there's no specials on the floor anymore and there is no book to look at, there's..." I just find that understanding how the tape looks, watching real prints go buy, and not just looking at the ECN box where you see a lot of noise, a lot of times where you'll see fake bids or offers, but actually really watching the prints go by, I think gets you that marked, I guess, savviness is really what we're trying to say and understanding that there are a certain trades that look a little bit better than others and understanding that there are a certain levels out there that you just need to become cognizant of and once you do then it kind of gets in your memory banks, but there's no replacement for good experience. And that's really what we're trying to do as traders is as new traders, people that I see coming to the office that are new traders, a lot of people tell them and I feel the same way, that a lot of this game is just staying in it, getting in and don't lose your capital especially don't lose your capital on stupid moves. Be smart with your capital, stay in the game as long as you can because that's when you give yourself the best chance...You give yourself the best opportunity to learn these things because you're not going to learn them from reading a book. You're not going to learn them day one. This is stuff that you need to see hands on, watch the people in your office, ask questions, take notes. I keep a journal everyday. It's very, very important to me. I learn from that journal and I read those journals. I look at them on the weekends. I go back, I look at week's past, month's past and it's all just a great learning experience.

TraderInterviews.com: What kind of things do you write in the journal aside from what you're getting in at and got out at?

Mark Moskowitz: I actually don't journal specific trades. I don't journal all my trades, I should say. I really try to just pick, cherry pick a couple of good and bad trades during the day, some things that I made some mistakes on. The technical aspect of my journal is I just like to always look at my volume for the day. I like to look at my gross and net P&L. So, so I make sure I'm trying to be as efficient as possible. But then for the most part it's writing down what mistakes, I think, I'm making. What am I doing that's perhaps that I could do better tomorrow, understanding what good things I did and how I can continue to maximize those and it's simply just asking myself some questions. What can I do tomorrow to be a better trader than I was today? It's a very simple question, but it's one that you can get a lot of good feedback from your own mind with. A story that I like to tell people is that from my journaling I have learned that I will not trade Friday afternoons. For me, it's the black hole of trading. I don't know why it is, but I was finding that 40% of my losses from the week were coming from that four-hour black. So, primarily I just, 11:30 or 12 o'clock comes and I get up from the office, turn my machine off and go home. So, I think if you don't journal you might not get to know that, you might not realize that. You might never pick up on that little indication. So, for me, I think journaling is a very integral part. I know a lot of people talk about it, but it's very important to do everyday and you get in the habit of doing it and it pays in spades as far as I'm concerned.

TraderInterviews.com: Yeah. That's interesting that you say, you just kind of push away from the desk and you're done for the day. I think a lot of traders would say, "I've got to master Friday afternoon, so I'm going to dig in there and trade it and figure out what I'm doing wrong." When I hear a lot of successful traders say, "No. That's just for whatever reason, I don't care why, I'm just going not to do it." Did you ever thought of anything of trying to figure out why or you just at some point said, "The best thing is not just to do it at all."

Mark Moskowitz: I got to the point where I just said it's not even worth my trying. I understand that mentality - push through to see if you can breakthrough because look there are definitely times where I feel stupid for not being around Friday afternoons, but those times I don't think I weigh the other times where I'm losing money. And the other thing which kind of also came from Friday afternoons was just the concept of that being the end of the week, you have no...If you blow yourself up on a Friday afternoon, you have all the weekend to stew about it. So you have 48 hours until Monday morning or leaving a little or until Monday morning to really just day, "How did I do that? Why, I had a great day going? Why in the world did I just, pissed that $2000 away for no absolute reason?" And then you have to basically sit there until Monday morning thinking about. So, I just think, for me, personally, I'd rather just get up from the desk. There's a lot of opportunity in the day or in the week. You don't have to be here and tied to the chair for the entire time the market is opened. I mean, most of our intraday traders, we have the ability to trade pre-markets. So, guys come in at 7:00 or 7:30 and start trading, but I don't really need to trade pre-market, I'm comfortable 9:30 to 4:00, and I'm comfortable in not trading Friday afternoons and for the guys who push through and do that kudos to them, but I've learned my limitations so to speak.

TraderInterviews.com: Was there anything through your trading journal and just through your education and practice as a trader that you really struggled with and then kind of be able to overcome and get passed, anything you can think of that comes to mind?

Mark Moskowitz: I do think that the concept of giving back money was very important. I did notice that a lot of times my day would peak around at 10:30, 10:45 in the morning, so really just the first hour, an hour and a half of trading and I usually came to my high water mark in the day. And of course again that becomes as we all talk about the midday doldrums, 11:30 to 1:30 or 2 o'clock, so I just started to realize that and I don't really get up from the desk and stop trading, but maybe what I'll do is if I was really looking at a couple of thousand shares a stock, well maybe I'll bring it down to four or 500 max position for the middle hours of the day. But I did notice that my P&L would get to certain levels and then variably I would give a lot of it back because I was being the same...I was using the same sort of aggression during a quite period as I was using during the heavier, thicker periods of the day. So I kind of realized that if I kept doing that, I just keep spinning my wheels, charging myself more in commissions and ECN fees and just getting more frustrated. So, for me, it's really just, that's been a very important aspect, understanding when to put your foot on the break a little bit. Every trade doesn't have to be a maximum share position trade. Notice what's going around you in the markets, be aware, take some time, go to the bathroom, get a drink of water. Take care of yourself during the day. Make sure you eat enough food. Breathe. We all have to breath. Don't be afraid to get up, you're not going to miss it. Unless you do it, it will be there again, it will be there for you 20 more times in a day and it will be there for infinitesimal times the rest of your life so.

TraderInterviews.com: Yeah. It sounds like you've really kind of gotten that part down where a lot of traders missing a trade is almost worse if not worse than a losing trade for whatever reason that those dollars left on the table for really bug people it seems, and that seems to be something. Do you see that in a lot of traders who trade around you? Because it sounds like you've pretty mastered that aspect though.

Mark Moskowitz: A lot of times, it takes pain to master these things. You have to beat yourself over the head a few times which is again why I go back to making sure you stay in this business as long as you can. Don't lose your capital on stupid things. Don't be up a thousand dollars a day and then go home down 500. There's nothing more debilitating than that. Having a good day, having a decent day and then all of the sudden you give it all back plus you lose money. Dr. Doug talked to me about that a lot. It's like, "Don't turn a winning day into a losing day. There's nothing more discouraging than that." So, if you're having a good day, keep your day, set a level where you're willing to give something back. For me, personally, I try to always earn at least twice as much as I would take on a losing day. So, if my goal is to make $2000 a day, I don't ever want to lose more than a thousand in a day. So it doesn't mean I'm going to stop when I get to 2000, it just means that on the bad days, I don't really ever want to go into losing much more than that because once you...People sometimes flip flap their ratios around. They lose a lot of money on the bad days and they make a very little bit of money on the good days. That is clearly a recipe for disaster in this business.

TraderInterviews.com: So, will you stop on the downside though if you make...if you lose a thousand dollars, will you stop for the day?

Mark Moskowitz: Well, I've kind of tricked myself a little bit. And what I'll do is as I feel like I'm getting close to my level of where I would stopped out at, I will tend to very much lighten up, and I might even stop trading for a while just so I actually don't have to get up and leave the office because you never know what opportunities are going to be out there especially if it's early in the day, if it's 11 or 12 o'clock, you have a full day to go. You have full four hours of the market being open. So, if you're losing a thousand dollars as your limit and you get a 700 down, you really take your foot off the brake. Relax. Take your time. Breathe. Make sure that you see only perfect trades, whatever a perfect trade is to you. If that means, "I'm only going to buy stock right on the 200 day where I know that there is a very, very little risk four or five cent downside," then that's what you do, then wait for that and take your time. Those trades will come, again it's about being patient, it's about taking your time, waiting for those trades to come and they will come. And then, hopefully, you can will that 700 back to getting yourself to even then when all of the sudden the market going in the direction you wanted to go, where the stocks are going in a direction you want them to go. Now, you can have a good day and you've turned a bad day into a great day, so now you're feeling, you're going home you're skipping. It's easy for you to get home because you're flying in the wind, you're happy. You took money out of the market on the day where you might have been going home with being loser.

TraderInterviews.com: So, I was just about to ask you, what's your perfect trade look like, it sounds like it's something that bounced off to 200-day moving average?

Mark Moskowitz: My perfect trade would be a pivot point giving me a signal and then pretty much at the same time, getting the moving averages to pair up with that. So usually what I like to see is a 20 moving up through the 50-day at the same time, and I like to see those levels with a lot of support right underneath that level. So, to me that's a wonderful trade, but even with a good trade like that, I'm going to still piece into it just to make sure I'm right because look, no trader is going to catch the bottom tick or the top tick, we all know that. What we're trying to do is put as much of the odds on our favor as we can. So, if I'm looking to buy a couple of thousand shares something, I'll buy 500 right off the bat especially if it looks real good I'll buy 500 then I'll quickly get into another 500 or even near a thousand then leave the last 500 when I really feel the confirmation is there. And that scaling in could take a total of 30 seconds, it's not like I'm waiting 10 minutes for that confirmation. I just really want to see it moving in a direction I wanted to go.

TraderInterviews.com: I guess that's where the tape reading comes in to be able to see that quickly.

Mark Moskowitz: Exactly. And I guess real time I'm keeping it simple, so maybe in that part of the conversation it seems a little more complex than it really is and maybe it's just a question for me doing it all these years, but it is more simple to me than it would be, so it's just a question of practice, understanding your markets and keeping within your rules.

TraderInterviews.com: Now, when you did talk about the 20 and 50 and the 200, you were talking about day moving averages, do you ever do any of those kind of time frame moving averages on the three-minute or the five-minute?

Mark Moskowitz: Oh, no those are on there as well. They are all simple moving averages and they're all on all my charts.

TraderInterviews.com: OK.

Mark Moskowitz: I really use the three-minute primarily. The five, the 15, and the daily, those are just really to give me more levels of resistance that are out there or support. The three-minute is really what I'm looking for the most to see the confirmation from.

TraderInterviews.com: And three-minute is long enough I guess that it eliminates some of the noise because for some people I think they would say even the five-minute is a little too short, too much noise that's why they stick with the 15-minute.

Mark Moskowitz: Sure.

TraderInterviews.com: But you're comfortable with the three-minute obviously?

Mark Moskowitz: I'm comfortable with the three, but as I tell people all the time, trading is again about being personal and it's all about what your brain process is the best. And for me, the three-minute looks great to me and I definitely understand that people see too many candles or something like that, like you said the bars are too short. But remember, I'm trading high beta names so that's going bake my time frames different. If I was trading slower moving names, then clearly I would probably want longer time frames, but you can get some pretty big candles with an Apple or a Google even on a three-minute time frame.

TraderInterviews.com: You talked about the goal that you set and you mentioned off hand of $2000 a day goal, has it always been kind of a flat monetary goal that you set for yourself or how do you judge success on your own trading for yourself?

Mark Moskowitz: No. I'm not really thinking in terms of dollars. I think in terms of percentages typically. So, my stop-loss is going to typically be 1% of my capital. And I'm usually going to try to make anywhere from 2% to 3% of my capital everyday. So, just to keep the numbers round, if I have an account with a $100,000 in it, I'm going to loss no more than a thousand and I'm going to be trying to make somewhere between 2000 to 3000 everyday. And for all you guys who love leverage out there, I'm not talking about your leverage capital, I'm talking about your actual capital. To me, if you're willing to loss 1% a day and you're able to make 2% to 3% a day those ratios are great. You don't need to be 80% right with those kinds of ratios, you just need to have good trades, good solid trades all day long. Once you get into that area where you're getting close to being down $700 or $800, you got to start to re-adjust like we talked about before. So I look in terms of my capital. So, if I have in the middle of the month, if I build my account up from a 100,000 to 120,000 that may change, that's going to eschew my numbers. It all depends on how big your capital gets.

TraderInterviews.com: On the business side of things, how do you decide, do you pay yourself a salary, do you take money off the table every once in a while, what do you do?

Mark Moskowitz: I try to keep as much money on my capital account as I can. So, I usually will pay myself a set salary and then anything above that I will keep in my capital account.

TraderInterviews.com: OK. And at the end of the year, are you reviewing how you did...at the end of 2008, did you look behind and say, here's what I could do differently for next year and maybe make some changes to any of your strategies or thoughts about the markets going forward?

Mark Moskowitz: I do that every weekend actually. I don't wait until the end of the year. And I will do an annual recap, I guess it's probably what you're trying to say, but for me I journal everyday like I said before and I review them every weekend and I like to look for recurring themes. I've been doing this for a long time now, so my journaling has kind of evolved from really more of a strategic journal to really more of how can I keep building and moving forward type of journal because I'm very happy with my strategy. I'm not planning on changing my strategies at all. I believe it works in rage in bear markets, rage in bull markets and everything in between. So, I feel very comfortable with my strategy. For me, it's really a question of where I can improve on the mental side of things, maybe I'm not taking enough risk, maybe I need to be taking more risk and also those weekends I'm trying to kind of create a little bit of a macro theme for the following week. What happens last week with the market? Are the bank still in charge? Are there other names that are in charge of the market? What economic news is coming out for the week? Is it early in the month? And we're going to be looking at job numbers, what kind of things like that. So, that's really more or less what I'm trying to look at every weekend.

TraderInterviews.com: And you do the news, it sounds like you watched that and that will impact a trade that you make? How much of a factor is it after you've looked at the technical side of things?

Mark Moskowitz: It's not that much of a factor except for just understanding what's out there and what moves market. So, am I purchasing or shorting Apple because of a jobs number that's coming out in three days. No, not for the 10 minutes I'm going to be in it right now, but I just want to know what's going on. I just want to have a feel for what's happening, what events are out there that are going to impact what happens this week. That way I can just be ahead of it. A lot of times, you'll be in a trade and the President will start to speak and your stock will do something for no reasons. So, if you know that the President or Bernanke is about to speak, well maybe you want to get flatter, maybe you want head just a little bit or come down at near volume a little bit or do something like that. So those kinds of things might impact my decision making a little bit, but for the most part it's technical. It's 90 something percent technical for sure.

TraderInterviews.com: I'm looking at my notes, the one question I haven't asked you yet that I like to ask everybody is what percentages of your trades are long versus short these days?

Mark Moskowitz: I don't really know that. That's a great question. I've never sat back and analyze the actual percentage. Obviously, in most of 2008, it was probably a very high percentage of being short. Because of my time frame, I have no problem shorting stocks that are very big for the day because the market is doing well it doesn't mean I won't short something. I might just...my short might just be very, very quick. I might go in with a lot of size and just really look into the chart to make a few quick pennies on it. So I actually wouldn't have that number for you at this point.

TraderInterviews.com: So, it sounds like you're just as comfortable going short if not more comfortable for you, that's a lot of issue for a lot of traders too for whatever reason they have this thing about shorting stocks, it sounds like not an issue for you?

Mark Moskowitz: I have no problem shorting stocks. To me, it's a natural part of the process. You have to, I believe, be comfortable shorting names because there's just as much opportunity on the short side as there in the long side and just flip the chart upside down if you're having trouble getting around on it.

TraderInterviews.com: Right. I'm finishing up with this that you did mention that leveraged ETFs, how much trading are you doing in those two and three times these days?

Mark Moskowitz: I've been trading them quite a bit very heavily especially with them at these lower prices SKF which was $240 which was $45 or $50 now, so I'm trading them pretty heavily and they were great, I mean the pivots looked beautiful with this and they give you a nice stop out and they're giving you a lot of good upside potential and right now I would say that SKF is probably about 40% of my trading at this point.

TraderInterviews.com: Are you adjusting your size based on risk because of the extra speed in these types of securities?

Mark Moskowitz: I do, but at the same time it's a little bit built-in to the pivot point anyway because again you're getting that calculator, so it's kind of telling you exactly what to...how much risk you're taking, so I'm able to gauge just from pivot point calculations how much risk I will be taking.

TraderInterviews.com: All right Mark, well thanks very much for taking the time to share some of your strategies, I really appreciate it. Listeners, of course, if you want to find out more about Mark, he's got a website you can go to DayTradeWell.com, we'll link too in the transcripts of the show as well. Mark, thanks again for your time I appreciate it.

Mark Moskowitz: You're welcome Tim, thanks for having me on.

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