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I don't know the details of your firm. Why are they pushing volume? My personal belief is "less is more". if you want to make money, you wait for solid confirmed price action. Sometimes my best days are days when I only have 1 or 2 trades. My best day this year ($1200) was 2 trades. The...

Recipe for failure IMHO. Here's my result when I trade like that (my max loss is $500/day): http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=132626&perpage=6&pagenumber=338 Fortunately I only lost my mind like this 3 times in many months. If your firm pushes high volume...

This is true and I rarely hesitate anymore and I always place hard stops immediately. But trading with an edge and making a decent profit requires you to take all valid setups. It's the probability factor that places the odds in your favor. One of my biggest problems to overcome (still) is...

You're welcome! I too wish I had a live mentor. Considering the tuition I paid in losses... I still make the same silly mistakes. I short a lower high, then suddenly realize a) oops, it previously made a higher low and I missed that, b) it's later in the day, and c) there's still a major...

Yes, you have to trade less size, so you can afford the cost of admission to the trade. Since you have a daily max loss that affects what you can afford, first choose the proper stop loss price, a price that the trade can survive, then size the position according to what you can afford to...

That bigger view was helpful. You really didn't have a "bad" entry, because in fact that pivot low was higher than the previous low (from the open). You just needed to place your stop below the previous pivot low. Just before you put on a trade make sure you're comfortable with the full cost...

You've only attached a snapshot of the chart, but from that piece of price action, I see a couple mistakes right away: 1) You entered deep into the first bounce off the previous low. You basically bottom-picked. When you bottom pick, you need to place your stop below the pivot low. You...

Mechanical trading seems to have two advantages (our ATS isn't running live yet, so I don't have personal experience with the reality of it): 1) takes all setups without hesitating, 2) it doesn't suddenly decide to move stops, average losers, let winners turn into losers, read the news and...

You know, if your having trouble with you're "your" and "you're", you can always study some books on grammar; the reason there their is for they're incredible usefulness in helping master yore proper usage :D

Toughest lesson for me to learn (still working on) is as soon as you think it, DO IT! That part of you that recognizes patterns with a high probability of success is what made you think it. If you take the trade as soon as you see the setup, you're in at a good price and risk less if your stop...

Two years ago almost to the day, I traded for the first time ever. When my husband set up our IRA accounts with Etrade in the late 90’s, he researched some high quality dividend stocks, bought them in our IRAs and we never gave the accounts much thought until the selloff from Oct 2007 highs...

+ $511 Only traded early in the day.

+ $511 ES and AAPL gapped down in pre-market. Looking for short entry on AAPL. Off the open, price nudged up just a bit and stalled at a tiny pullback from the high. I jumped in quickly @ 198.32, just 200 shares because I was top-picking, although I could’ve gone larger since I had a .12...

Can you post a screen shot of an example?

Slippage on a rogue move is my main concern. I use .10 - .50 cent stops, so those losses I can handle, but a 2.00 or more slippage would be painful...

What is the worst slippage you've gotten when a stop was blown through on a move against you on, say, 400 shares of a pricey stock like AAPL or GS? That is definitely a concern of mine trading these things.

I never know what will happen to stock prices. I know that price dropped on the news and bounced right back again. I do know these trusts have provided income from dividends and covered calls for a long time. By now they've paid for themselves.

I'm trading a $50K account. Until quite recently I rarely had winning days over $500, so it doesn't make sense for me to allow losing days over $500. If I average all my losing days since implementing this rule it comes to around $170. I only had one $500 losing day. When my average stop on a...

I recently settled into 4 stocks I trade daily: AAPL, AMZN, POT and X. They have decent moves even on range days and once they start in a direction the momentum tends to carry them. You can trade quite small and still make money.

I second this recommendation. We've played these for years this way in our IRAs :)