How long did it take for you to be profitable in daytrading?

[Rikelme]

Hello,

I am trying to become a daytrader. I ve been training for 1.5 month - low progress yet.
we use

1. Level 2 - that is good for size strategy. but size strategy works 1 time out of ten<
2. Time and sales - that is also often fake,
3. Charts, candle sticks for determination of bottom and resistance, that let us say is working, but still you do not know which direction it will go after reaching bottom or resistance
4. Use indexes like Dow, but there are lot of shares that do not correlate with that index.

All those things are not giving me an opportunity to forsee the happening events though I play chess very good. Advice me, if I need something 5, 6 or even 7, or should I somehow combine all those 4.

Thank you

 

[JMowery1987]

You need at the VERY least a 6 months, more likely a year, and a realization that it just isn't going to be that easy unfortunately.

Chess has nothing to do with trading, you might have your ego on the line with Chess, but in trading, you have your cash, your net worth on the line, it's a significant difference and took me about a year to start getting the hang of it.

Just a warning to you, don't come into trading expecting profits until you put at least a few long months or even years of work in to even break even.

Expectations are like slaps in the face for a new trader I believe, because that is what they felt like to me. I'd suggest a good expectation would be to trade small as possible and learn all that you can with your available funds and once you blow out, make sure you get all the lessons out of that blowup so you don't make the same mistakes again, rinse and repeat until profitability is attained.

 

[Rikelme]

Thank you for the answer. Ok, it has got nothing to do with chess, it is OK. but tell me if there is something more than those 4 things. Simply I fell like stuck in the middle and see no prospect of that. Is it normal way of getting more perfect?

 

[JMowery1987]

Quote from Rikelme:

Thank you for the answer. Ok, it has got nothing to do with chess, it is OK. but tell me if there is something more than those 4 things. Simply I fell like stuck in the middle and see no prospect of that. Is it normal way of getting more perfect?

Confidence is a good part of it, and self doubt certainly is a killer I'm sure.

Mark Douglas - Trading in the Zone, read it, read it again, and read it even more, and try to understand what he is saying and learn from it.

Personal experience is the only way, sitting on the sidelines, provides false hope in my opinion, just as it did for me when I started off with futures, it was a bad experience without question.

Develop your system, test it on a demo for a few weeks, then trade it live with 100 shares, don't test your system on demo for 6 months and expect the same returns, because going live is very different than demo trading, TRUST ME, I had an ego check back when trading futures with that one.

 

[Rikelme]

OK, I am going alraedy live with 100 shares. I work in Swiftrade, ut they re giving just a little of theory. I understand that I must develop it myself. Just tell me it is doable. I am good on analysis and getting things fast, so I think I have material for becoming a succesful daytrader, but again I fell a lack of ideas at the moment

Quote from JMowery1987:

Confidence is a good part of it, and self doubt certainly is a killer I'm sure.

Mark Douglas - Trading in the Zone, read it, read it again, and read it even more, and try to understand what he is saying and learn from it.

Personal experience is the only way, sitting on the sidelines, provides false hope in my opinion, just as it did for me when I started off with futures, it was a bad experience without question.

Develop your system, test it on a demo for a few weeks, then trade it live with 100 shares, don't test your system on demo for 6 months and expect the same returns, because going live is very different than demo trading, TRUST ME, I had an ego check back when trading futures with that one.

 

[coolweb]

Quote from Rikelme:

Thank you for the answer. Ok, it has got nothing to do with chess, it is OK. but tell me if there is something more than those 4 things. Simply I fell like stuck in the middle and see no prospect of that. Is it normal way of getting more perfect?

I went through four periods of this thoruhgout last year
each period I took a few weeks off,
and then come back refreshed ready to improve.

Survival in the trading game is the survival of the fittest,


You are entering a cave and its completely dark
but you know there are people who have exited this cave

You keep looking in front of you and can't see anything because its dark, you keep looking to your left, you get frustrated because it feels the same. But you know some people have found the light! , you hear them yelling from the end of the tunnel telling you there is gold as well, but you can't even see a glow let alone the light.
You get frustrated when you keep searching tirelessly,
You stop and rest, and you keep searching, day in day out, you stop, rest, and search, stop rest and search.

You realize running around blindly is not the solution, you must remember your previous wrong paths so you don't go down that path again.

You feel the paths and you remember each path by drawing a map.
The more paths you rememebr that are wrong, the closer you are to your destination.
You felt up 35 different paths and you recognize all of them are wrong,

One day, 1.5 years later, you pretty much felt up every single wall in there, hungrily and starving, still hearing the traders who have seen the light and found gold yelling out your name to come,

you see the light.

-----------


Most cave seekers never remember their mistakes they made, they keep running down the same path, and expect different results , time and time again.


All it is , is the business of knowledge. He who knows more, doesn't need to walk down the wrong path anymore, he just knows where not to walk to reach his destination.

 

[Rikelme]

OK, I ll see the light. as i understood it is doable and it is the best message for me. thanks for the inspiring speech coolweb >))

Quote from coolweb:

I went through four periods of this thoruhgout last year
each period I took a few weeks off,
and then come back refreshed ready to improve.

Survival in the trading game is the survival of the fittest,


You are entering a cave and its completely dark
but you know there are people who have exited this cave

You keep looking in front of you and can't see anything because its dark, you keep looking to your left, you get frustrated because it feels the same. But you know some people have found the light! , you hear them yelling from the end of the tunnel telling you there is gold as well, but you can't even see a glow let alone the light.
You get frustrated when you keep searching tirelessly,
You stop and rest, and you keep searching, day in day out, you stop, rest, and search, stop rest and search.

You realize running around blindly is not the solution, you must remember your previous wrong paths so you don't go down that path again.

You feel the paths and you remember each path by drawing a map.
The more paths you rememebr that are wrong, the closer you are to your destination.
You felt up 35 different paths and you recognize all of them are wrong,

One day, 1.5 years later, you pretty much felt up every single wall in there, hungrily and starving, still hearing the traders who have seen the light and found gold yelling out your name to come,

you see the light.

-----------


Most cave seekers never remember their mistakes they made, they keep running down the same path, and expect different results , time and time again.


All it is , is the business of knowledge. He who knows more, doesn't need to walk down the wrong path anymore, he just knows where not to walk to reach his destination.

 

[JMowery1987]

All it is , is the business of knowledge. He who knows more, doesn't need to walk down the wrong path anymore, he just knows where not to walk to reach his destination.

I hope you copied & pasted that CW

I think the above just about sums it up.

Experience & Knowledge

 

[Rikelme]

thank you guys. it is a lify thing as I understood, thanks again

 

[Andre]

nbates: This is an interesting discussion and I wish there was something for me to contribute, but sadly I think that I've forgotten more than what I know and worse yet -> now find myself no longer young enough to know everything!

Isn't that the truth? The only consolation for me is that the traders I know, and the ones we interviewed and that I respected, kind of had a Zen like acceptance of realizing they don't know it all and can't know it all. It's like when they trade, they end up being in an opinionless state. In fact, when I've been privy to when they've been wrong, it seems like opinion crept in and took hold.

I dunno if that makes sense.

FYI on living on 48K per year? I can live on that quite comfortably in my little college town. Living large doesn't do much for me. Granted, I'd like to own a little BD-4 one day, and to do so, and travel low-budget style like I'd like too, I figure I need to make 6 figures. Still, not a whole lot to live the way I want.