**Trade like a ninja.  Study the target, plan the operation, get in and out of the trade quickly with the most objectives accomplished and the least harm to oneself.**

Executive summary: Capitalize on wave action, trade on pivot points and VWAP, watch out for SMA lines converging, always keep an eye on volume, aim for $0.10 - $0.50 moves depending on # of shares bought, and do not hold overnight.

As I learn day trading, I've found myself repeatedly trading $TVIX as I not only keep grabbing profits from it, but it has also become a great training ground for honing my skills which I will use elsewhere.  Here are some of the strategies I've been using, specific to this symbol, which have been working for me thus far.  !![Caution: $TVIX can be a vicious beast.  Do not trade it lightly and I'm writing this solely as personal commentary on my own trades in the past.]!!

One of the reasons why I like $TVIX is because it can have a wave-like chart throughout the day, allowing me to pick 1-3 long entries which have a high chance of some kind of profit throughout the day.  Here's the 5-minute chart from yesterday.

First of all, the general impression is that it has an overall up trend until 2pmish and then it drops.  But that's as seen after the day is over.  During the day, we don't know how this will act.  Yet one can see perhaps seven waves that happened, only a few of which I will take as a long trade.

Although it is hard sometimes, I generally avoid trading before market open on $TVIX.  I have both won and lost doing this, but the Level2 is too spotty or the action is too frothy for me to rely on that.  I'll take my profits during the day instead.  However, examining the pre-market trading sometimes gives me an indication of how $TVIX will act at the open, and what I'm looking for is the high and low of pre-market trading while keeping tabs on the prior day's closing price.  This gives me a general bracket to see how the first waves might move between.  Given the nature of $TVIX, I mainly focus on the current day and one day prior.  It's too variable for me to base a decision on multiple days.  However, I think one should look at the year and see, as a whole, this is a terrible performer and one should avoid holding overnight.  I've been burned enough to just not do it anymore.

During the day, I wait for an increase in volume and a bottom pivot.  I flip between 5-minute and 1-minute charts.  If you notice, the bottoms are generally around the VWAP or one of the SMAs.  On my charts, I'm using 9, 20, 50, and 200 SMAs, lighter to darker color lines, while VWAP is green and last closing price is red. 

Yesterday, I only traded two pivots and made over $900.  My first trade was right at the open.  That's dangerous because the 1-minute is very wild so I always put in a stop limit and a trailing stop.  This often knocks me out early but I still start the day with some profit.  The second trade I bought just after 11:30am.  I had missed the earlier wave at 11am, but I watched the wave go up above VWAP.  When it started going down again, I set a limit order just above VWAP with a 0.50 stop exit.  Because the earlier wave at 10:30am went above VWAP, I was betting  that this trend would continue and the overall chart would stay above VWAP for awhile.  $TVIX seems to do this, where it will stay above or below the VWAP for an hour or more before crossing.  The days it stays right at or near VWAP without definitively crossing are the days when the SMAs all seem to converge and volume drops.  When SMAs converge and volume is below 1 million on a 5-minute chart, I stay away as the waves aren't big enough for me to grab profit.

For my second trade, I was regularly adjusting my trailing stop as the trend went up.  I did this to ensure I will make a few hundred on the trade.  However, by doing this, I did get stopped out before the upswing was over at the big drop at 1pm.  Although I could have made about $200 more if my trailing stop wasn't at 0.15 by then (started at 0.50 and I shorted it a few times), there wasn't a way to tell at the time if the drop at 1pm wasn't going to cross below the VWAP.  Notice I did not trade all seven upswings, only the two where I felt I could get into good positive territory, and I'm always ready to get out. 

Given that I had two successful trades for the day with decent profit, I decided to stop for the rest of the day and just watch it.  I was quite tempted to get back in around 2:30pm, but I stuck to my guns and sat out, which probably saved me from giving back profits in the big drop at the end of the day.  Remember, 3pm is a trigger point for another wild ride.  In the few days prior, it went up during this window.  But $TVIX is a beast and this time it dropped quick.  So I don't hold overnight and I try to be out of all positions in $TVIX by 3pm.

Although I try to be very cautious with this ticker, and I can go several days not trading it at all, I'm finding enough days with somewhat predictable waves to be able to trade like a ninja and profit.