Your account is too small to trade. Save some more $ and keep practicing while you save some more.
Sup guys im trading with a small cash account with about $1000. Obviously i have a limited number of trades i can take due to limited funds, so scratches is something i have to avoid. That being said its affecting my judgment when im in a stock. i would hold my losers longer knowing i wont be able to get back in. And my winners are small due to small position size trying not to use too much capital. Does anyone has experience in avoiding scratches? or are scratches inevitable as a day trader? thanks
Excellent advice, OP should pay attention.i would reccommend you develop a method, management rules and disciplined mindset. take a setup and paper trade it 30 trades and track the wins, losses, and break evens. then enter the market based on the setup.
its really about being ok with losses and accepting them as opposed to avoiding them. if you have a process and risk management where every stop is less than 1% of account size and a set target, ie. 5x your risk. ie. risk $200 to make $1000 on every trade, you can still make progress breaking even and losing several times.
what's important is that you are following the market rather than predicting it and then trading your setups.
be sure to test a method rather than randomly testing multiple ones. you can start with a simple 50 day moving average and buy it when price hits it. again test it and be consistent.
Scratches aren't always a bad thing. When in doubt,get out. If you're feeling uncomfortable about the way the price is behaving close the trade.
Thanks guys all good answers… so risk management, discipline, save more money, and be ok with the scratches is what I got here. I’ll work on it.
You sound like someone with a background in automated trading? I'm a full discretionary trader,mostly swing trades and if I gave a trade a chance to work but the stock is just dicking me around I wont wait around for it to hit my stop I'll just close the trade. To each his own.i respectfully disagree. a trade setup has an entry a stop and a trade management process with an ultimate target. your stop is your trade exit, not a "feeling".
You sound like someone with a background in automated trading? I'm a full discretionary trader,mostly swing trades and if I gave a trade a chance to work but the stock is just dicking me around I wont wait around for it to hit my stop I'll just close the trade. To each his own.
Excellent advice, OP should pay attention.
OP, in case you didn't know, I failed day trading a decade ago, dabbled a few times since without success and finally, at the beginning of 2023, decided to take a systematic approach, started with a clean sheet, just like a new day trader, as my final stab at it.
I first developed a method, then a process, then backtested for a few months, then real time paper traded for three months and finally went live with small size (~$1K) three weeks ago. If everything goes as plan, in two months, I will start scaling up.
Will I succeed? According to statistics, I have a 1% chance.![]()