Search results

I stuck to my new rules today about not allowing more than a $300 loss per trade. My stop losses are like magnets for the market, every time I set one, even though well outside of the logical resistance levels, it somehow barely gets hit and then retracts. I lost my money today in $300 chunks...

In a way these last two days have been good for me. Even though I wish I didn't lose as much, I believe it will ulitmately make me a better trader in the future now I know what it feels like to lose big. It's one of those things that you can be told and told but you have to experience it for...

Another really bad day for me. It started off decent and I should have stopped while I was ahead, but I wanted to recover more of yesterdays loss back. I generally feel more comfortable shorting then going long, and today was the worst kind of day to look for short opportunities. Again it was...

Thanks all for your awesome posts. Reading through them has really, really helped me out today. I am starting to get past the denial phase now, I went back and did some post trade analysis, and it wasn’t pretty. I don’t know what I was thinking,I didn’t really realize it at the time...

Everyone who has been standing by waiting for that “I told you so” moment, it has arrived. Blew all my gains over the last couple of weeks and then some today. First I was long on that sudden mid day selloff that no one seemed to be able to explain today, I was expecting a relatively flat...

Jorge, I see that my Average MAE is -0.03% and my average MFE is 0.05% for today. From 4/10/08, the day I started to present my average MAE was -0.06% and average MFE was also 0.06%. At the risk of showing my ignorance, What is MAE and MFE and what does this mean?

Thanks for the advice. Without going into specifics, I use stochasitcs, moving averages, resistance levels and general candlestick pattern recoginition as my indicators. I generally prefer shorts over longs by about a 2:1 margin. I am still struggling with how much I should let myself...

It didn't take a whole lot of skill to make money today, with oil hitting a record high, I just kept going short when i saw the setups and kept winning, it was my best day yet. I was able to keep it to a maximum of 6 contracts open at a time too, so I was happy about that. I am pleased that I...

Thanks Jorge, IB charges me $4.70 per round turn and all my numbers are net numbers after subtracting commissions.

Well the weekend was good and trading went well today. I barely even saw any drawdown, which is rare for me. Part of it was luck I think, but part of it also was that I tried not to jump the gun on my trades and I exersized more patience. I still have been taking my profits very early...

Thanks for the comment, I need to do some more post trade analysis to figure this out.

Thanks pointing that out Pivot, that's a good way of looking at it. I have been thinking about why I keep getting into these big holes and I think part of it was due to impatience in waiting for my signals to fully form, I was trading too sporatically.

Today went much better, I learned from some of my mistakes this week took some smaller losses when the signals reversed on me. I took some bigger chances when the signals were better, and i traded less. After 6 days I am up $1965.40, but to be honest I'm not sure this is for me, it was the...

Yes this is nothing to be proud of. I am realizing that I become much more risk tolerant when I am down $1000 or $2000 because I really want my money back. But when I am at $0 or +$100 I make very small trades and just go for $50-$100 at a time. I should probably reverse that and go for...

Thanks for the positve comment MandelbrotSet, it's always encouraging to get one of those from time to time.

Today was my worst yet, I did something really stupid, I’m almost too embarrassed to post it. But I hope I have shown by now that I am pretty good about not sugarcoating anything, I really am treating this as more of an open journal and I try to admit my weaknesses and the stupid rookie stuff...

Thanks for another insightful comment Pivotas, I can tell you did some research on that one, you'll get through to me sooner or later.

Thank you very much, excellent comments. I plan on keeping my exposure lower going forward, I had a couple days that got away from me. Hopefully I will be able to recognize when it's happening next time and take appropriate action.

Well, today definitely went better, and was less stressful then yesterday. As many can attest, live trading is very different from paper trading. In order to futher your education, you just need to take the leap some time, you’ll never be completely ready. Even though I’m obviously...

This shows how green I really am, but apparantly there is a name for the system I'm using, The "Averaging Down" method, which as I stated in the beginning was taught to me by a buddy of mine who has experienced alot of success with it. I came across this thread from a few months ago...