very true
Do you have any piece of advice for a novice trader? Anything that could be helpful?
- Thread starter newbie003
- Start date
yes
and you have to be very clear in what time frame it is trending and in what time frame it is ranging.
this is the trickiest part of trading and it is also the most difficult part of it to understand.
because in some time frames markets do both-trend and range: you have ranging trends
I will second that. Having been a lucky investor in tech stocks early into the dot com bull, I gave back a small fortune from my 6 year run day trading for a living when my focus was on entry signals.
Evolved into trading 85+ instruments (futures, Fx, equities & ETFs) through a shorter, & two longer time frames applying numerous trading strategies. The 'edge' is from the risk/trade mgmt overlays, extensive experience as a discretionary trader, & consistency in executing the processes of trading. 10-15% of the trades account for most of the profits.
Last edited:
Most of the forum don't have clear concepts of how to parallel park their car let alone know they been trading their entire lives and done a poor job at that. They, including you, come here asking for help, those who know how to trade seldom post and ones who have top ten percent of posts on the forum have way too much time on their hands when they should be back testing. You either do your own work that you can judge to be accurate or you rely on misfits of the lost on this forum.
Price is an indicator of the past, most indicators are a delayed of Price.
Anything can be difficult to trade cause lack of knowledge and this gained by self doing as in practicing. Form stats of what works and what doesn't. Either learn the Greeks or learn how to trade underlying and use options to trade instead of underlying. When gotten better with the Greeks, throw them into underlying methods to buy discount and sell premium.
By end of year, be doing 10% of what once was doing intraday and going to much larger timeframes, can make same daily monies with much less commissions.
Good luck
if you aspire to trade options directionally you need strategies - set of rules with the which you can demonstrably trade the underlying instruments profitably (even when anticipating brutal slippage and commissions against you because that's what you will find in the real world). if whatever you intend to do can't be simplified to a set of rules and coded and backtested in a serious platform like ninjatrader then it won't ever work (this implies developing and refining your strategies on as many years of historical data as you can find (at least 5) and then evaluating them on at least 2 years of out of sample data).
the second challenge comes from learning how to trade strategies that are profitable for the underlying instruments on positions in options, and it is also a massive challenge in its own right. this very weekend i replied to other members asking these same questions, so learn to use the search function in this forum as well.
the second challenge comes from learning how to trade strategies that are profitable for the underlying instruments on positions in options, and it is also a massive challenge in its own right. this very weekend i replied to other members asking these same questions, so learn to use the search function in this forum as well.
Last edited:
- Have a dedicated trading room if you can
- Go to work every day
- Completely shut your trading platform when the trading and PM debrief is done. Don't linger on it.
- NEVER, EVER leave that trading room without feeling good at the end of the day. No matter what happened. When all the lessons have been learned, it is time to feel good. To this end, I recommend a mix of old music that makes you feel awesome. At my old age, that is some Nirvana, Soundgarden... and an odd mix of really cheesy loud "yacht music." Which kind of surprises me.
- Avoid indicators and learn to trade based on price action and perhaps trade volume
- Always put a stoploss order with your position. If stopped out, take it as a learning lesson.
- Begin with few broad-market ETF or most liquid futures as E-mini o Micros-mini
- Try to learn the fundamentals of options, perhaps it suits your style further.
- Try to develop your own system, and if achieved, try to automate it as an Algo.
- Look for basic books to learn about systems, trading strategies.
- Patience.
- Accept right away that you will have very disappointing days. Prepare and learn.
- The first rule is to keep your account healthy and operative.
These are just the immediate few that I can think of.
Even though I think you might have a fair bit of trading knowledge. I'd have to completely disagree with this statement. Indicators, if used correctly are very powerful. I can prove that to be accurate.