[If you only want to see how much money I lost please skip to the end]
Back in about september of last year was when I started getting really into this thing called the stock market. It was around that time that I decided trading was what I wanted to do for a living (or at least as a hobby until i could do it really good). I began to study everything I could find about trading and I would test myself to see if i could make accurate predictions and analysis. I had some luck but it was mainly hit and miss.
It was about Janruary was when i got my brokerage account open. I had 4k to trade with and being an expert at the time I felt prety confident and was ready to make money. I actually made money on my first few trades but gradually realized that in order to statistically make money I would have to expose myself to more risk to make commissions negligible. I then looked for the best stock that looked like it would go up and settled on one that had gone up about 130% in the past few days. This was going to be awesome; I was going to make so much money on this trade! I saw someone put a bid up for 100 000 shares (the average daily volume was about 100 000 shares) There is no way this is going down! So i bought some but unfortunately right after i got involved someone sold 200 000 shares. It started droping like a rock. I saw stars. I decided to get out before I lost an unreasonable amount. In 9 minutes I lost 86 $. I actually would have made money had i stayed in the trade long enough but i would have had to endure a loss of well over 100$ for quite a while. Lesson learned: do not trade things that gone up 130% over the last 3 days.
Needless to say at this point I did not think to much about stops or risk reward ratio's or targets I was just trying to get some of the free money the stock market was giving out.
Since at this point I had just moved out of my parents house I thought instead of getting a job ill just suppourt myself daytrading.. why not? I had a realistic target of about 50$ a day only 1.2%. Shortly after i lowered this to 30$ .. then 200 a month .. then anything a month... then not lose money.. then I got a job.
Unfortunately I work every second that the market is open except for mondays and I have kept up my trading ever since and also opened up a forex account so i can trade when in the evening. I have gotten better but I still have not turned a profit. I have always justified my trading by saying that my prior losses were lack of knowledge and now I know what I am doing... well on monday i hit my breaking point. 4 forex trades in a row each with a setup looking more perfect than the last that all stop me out almost immeaditly as if to mock me and not give me any hope of success at all. I do not belong to the elite class who can just start trading and make money right away. I suck. Thats all there is to it. My losses are not result of bad luck. There is no statistical anomaly here. Every time I re-refine my ideas I just lose more money.
Since Janruary in about 50 rt trades in stocks i took my account from 4k to 3.465k
Since July in about 30 rt trades in forex i took my account from 465$ to 300
commissions were about 10 $ rt and 3-4 pips rt
I have decided to not trade again until i can double my money in a sim account which brings me to my question: where can i find a sim account that actually works (when you use stops they must actually trigger) and can do thing like shorting without just saying they have no short inventory all the time. I would also be interested in sim accounts for forex and futures.
Back in about september of last year was when I started getting really into this thing called the stock market. It was around that time that I decided trading was what I wanted to do for a living (or at least as a hobby until i could do it really good). I began to study everything I could find about trading and I would test myself to see if i could make accurate predictions and analysis. I had some luck but it was mainly hit and miss.
It was about Janruary was when i got my brokerage account open. I had 4k to trade with and being an expert at the time I felt prety confident and was ready to make money. I actually made money on my first few trades but gradually realized that in order to statistically make money I would have to expose myself to more risk to make commissions negligible. I then looked for the best stock that looked like it would go up and settled on one that had gone up about 130% in the past few days. This was going to be awesome; I was going to make so much money on this trade! I saw someone put a bid up for 100 000 shares (the average daily volume was about 100 000 shares) There is no way this is going down! So i bought some but unfortunately right after i got involved someone sold 200 000 shares. It started droping like a rock. I saw stars. I decided to get out before I lost an unreasonable amount. In 9 minutes I lost 86 $. I actually would have made money had i stayed in the trade long enough but i would have had to endure a loss of well over 100$ for quite a while. Lesson learned: do not trade things that gone up 130% over the last 3 days.
Needless to say at this point I did not think to much about stops or risk reward ratio's or targets I was just trying to get some of the free money the stock market was giving out.
Since at this point I had just moved out of my parents house I thought instead of getting a job ill just suppourt myself daytrading.. why not? I had a realistic target of about 50$ a day only 1.2%. Shortly after i lowered this to 30$ .. then 200 a month .. then anything a month... then not lose money.. then I got a job.
Unfortunately I work every second that the market is open except for mondays and I have kept up my trading ever since and also opened up a forex account so i can trade when in the evening. I have gotten better but I still have not turned a profit. I have always justified my trading by saying that my prior losses were lack of knowledge and now I know what I am doing... well on monday i hit my breaking point. 4 forex trades in a row each with a setup looking more perfect than the last that all stop me out almost immeaditly as if to mock me and not give me any hope of success at all. I do not belong to the elite class who can just start trading and make money right away. I suck. Thats all there is to it. My losses are not result of bad luck. There is no statistical anomaly here. Every time I re-refine my ideas I just lose more money.
Since Janruary in about 50 rt trades in stocks i took my account from 4k to 3.465k
Since July in about 30 rt trades in forex i took my account from 465$ to 300
commissions were about 10 $ rt and 3-4 pips rt
I have decided to not trade again until i can double my money in a sim account which brings me to my question: where can i find a sim account that actually works (when you use stops they must actually trigger) and can do thing like shorting without just saying they have no short inventory all the time. I would also be interested in sim accounts for forex and futures.