I have 2 strategies currently. In my IRA and 401k accounts, I trade between US stocks, Int'l stocks, and US Treasury bonds based on relative strength, rebalanced monthly. You can read about these types of strategies here
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=962461 and here
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1585517 and here
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2042750 and here
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2244633. Interestingly, Gary Antonacci published his 'Global Equities Momentum' backtest about a year after I had started trading essentially the same exact strategy.
http://optimalmomentum.blogspot.com/2014/01/introducing-global-equities-momentum.html and
http://www.optimalmomentum.com/trackrecord3.html and
http://www.optimalmomentum.com/chart.htmlI chose this because I don't have to check it more than once a month, and most of the time I don't need to switch the allocation. In a bull market like we've been experiencing, I've been 100% invested in US stocks for a while and obviously enjoying the ride up. I don't have to worry about when the next bear market is coming, I don't wonder how long this is all going to last. I just follow the system (after thousands of hours of research developing it) and trust that it will let me know when the time is right to sell US stocks and either buy International stocks or treasury bonds as a flight to safety.
For my trading account, I buy stocks the way Buffett would buy them in opposite land. I buy all time highs, stocks trading at high P/Es, stocks that have doubled or tripled before I buy them, stuff like that. I buy stocks and have no clue what they do, how they make money, and sometimes I can't even remember their name. I just know ticker symbols. It is all price based, because to me price is the only thing that will pay you. You can't trade P/E's or cash flow statements. In the end, a fundamental investor is looking for some historical correlation between fundamental performance and price performance, and expecting that to continue in the future. I skip all that and go directly to price.
Note: I'm not knocking any fundamental and value investors out there, I love value investing, it just doesn't fit my personality at this time. And I can make money without it.
So I look for stocks making all time highs, and many of them have doubled or tripled in price before I look at them. I like the stocks I buy to be relatively new, in a new industry that is changing how we live and do business. The best time to do this is after a correction in the market. These new stocks are typically going to be the market leaders for the next bull run. I look for a logical entry point (called a 'base' by technical analysis folks) with a relatively tight stop and buy with no more than 1-2% risk in any one stock. I will not buy a second stock until the first stock has moved up a bit and I have moved my stop loss to breakeven. This means that I'll have never risked more than 2% of my portfolio in stocks, ever. So after I've moved my stop to breakeven, I'll begin looking for a second stock to buy, and so on and so forth. If a stock I hold makes another 'base' I may add to it, risking no more than the money I've already made in it. I'll keep buying stocks as long as the market is trending up and my stocks are trending up. As soon as a stock I buy stops going up and begins trending down, I sell it immediately. If the bull run is over and everything starts going down, then I'll let my trailing stops take me out of the market. With no new stocks making all time highs, I WILL NATURALLY LOSE NOTHING IN A BEAR MARKET. If there's nothing to buy and all my stocks are sold, I wait in cash until the next bull run.
As an example, let's say I buy a stock XYZ at $50 with a $100k account. Perhaps my stop loss is at $48. Risking 2% means I'll risk $2,000 for every trade. So with a $2 difference between my entry point and the stop loss, this means I'll buy 1,000 shares of XYZ. Yes that means my position size is $50k but my RISK is only $2k. Then let's say it goes up to $60. I've just made $10k - 5x my initial risk. I'll move my stop loss up to $50 and either look for more stocks to buy or try to add to my current stock XYZ. If I add to XYZ, I will not risk more than what I've made, which is $10k. If my new stop loss is $10 away at $50, then $10000/$10 is 1,000 more shares to buy at $60. This brings my position size to $110k, which is 100% of my account, however the most I will lose is what I've already made ($10k). If the stock flies up to $100, then $100 x 2000 shares is now $200,000. I've just doubled my account on one stock, and never risked more than $2,000 to get there.
This is nothing new. Jesse Livermore traded this way 100+ years ago. Nicolas Darvas did it 60 years ago. William O'Neil has been doing it for the past 50+ years. Dan Zanger and Mark Minervini made millions during the crazy tech bubble this way. And little old me is doing it today. There's probably only 3-5 good bull runs every decade. My job is to double or triple my money during those bull runs, and lose nothing during a bear market. Recent examples of stocks that fit my criteria are TSLA, FB, YELP, VIPS, YY, FLDM, HZNP, ICPT. I typically have only 30-50% winners, however my winners can be much, much larger than my losers. I try to lose as little as possible when I am wrong.