Interesting, how do you swing trade pairs? I've not seen this offered on any platform I'm on.
Is it time to throw in the towel?
- Thread starter TheDailyTrader
- Start date
Ohmigosh, you and your "mentor" are using a strategy from Meir Barack? And I had just come across Emmett's review on Colmex & TradeNet again on tradingschools.org a few days ago! I think I even saw a recent yt ad too. These scam artists are full of it. Most, if not all the testimonials are full of it or paid actors, or at the very least enthusiast first-timers who have some luck their first week before they lose the rest of their account later. I'd suggest you read more reviews exposing these cons on tradingschools, maybe even 50 more reviews out of the hundreds already done. You'll soon see, there are far more trickery that these con artists do to fool audiences and clients and they've become very good at it. They can not trade for a living, and probably have no , or past losing live accounts. In fact, Emmett along with involvement by the CFTC and FBI have exposed a number of these scams with judicial procurement of documentation of their losing live accounts often alongside other illegal financial activity. They make their living selling dreams and strategies that don't work or own shady financial organizations like Barak does with those CFD sites.
The good thing is that you have had some live screentime at your younger age. You may just need to work on your trade management and get your r:r ratio higher. Learn ways to set a stop that doesn't have to be based rigidly on a number of ticks but also based on context you can figure out on your own. At this point, I suggest you get back to regular employment and work part-time on developing your trading and strategies in sim mode for the next few years. You can get more trading ideas from cheap trading books and then make your own private strategy i.e. no one shares their secret sauce except to close friends and family, if even that; the con artists are the ones selling to the public and strangers. And ditch the "mentor" who I think is doubly now full of it, perhaps an already wealthy guy on a lonely dream of pretending to be consistently profitable daytrading and wanting to share his delusion with some neighbor. No need to rush, becoming a trading millionaire at 30 is still beating out 99.9xxx% of all traders.
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Great post and I totally agree with your sentiment on trading live but with small 10 share lots. Forget demo trading, that's just for testing strategies or learning a platform.Was this real money? I guess 300 shares of TSLA would be the outer limits of the daytrade buying power in a $25Kish account.... but man if this was real money...you are friggin nuts to even consider 300 shares of TSLA in a 25K account.
Look I don't know what method you've learned... but just going by your post... its not going to work trading TSLA. First of all, you entered at $303.50 with a stop at $305.01... even if you are 100% right in the directional call, the bid/ask spread on TSLA can reach $1.50 (or damn close) in a blink. That close of a stop will be triggered (on TSLA) on a day when its in a flat-line coma, let alone 9:40 AM on a Friday.
So you go in with 300 shares.... and 5 trades later (paints on the tape) someone buys 100 shares at $305.10 as it moved up a bit and the spread widened..... the next offer on the book is $305.80... which is where you just filled. In this example you just lost $690.... damn near 3% of your account...and you could have been 1000% correct in that TSLA was heading down. 5 minutes later it could easily be $302 on the offer. But you're out and you lost.
I'm not telling you to throw in the towel, but man don't try cutting your teeth day-trading trying to scalp TSLA. Its a beast unto its own and you are no more than a wounded bleeding guppy swimming with sharks. TSLA loves the "news" trade. It takes people money on "news". Both long and short. Never trade TSLA intraday based on news.
Now that I said all that... while writing this I thought about it... and I am being dead serious here..... maybe you should cut your teeth trading TSLA. Real money. BUT... only use 10 or 15 shares. IB commission is like $0.35 tops, less if you add liquidity, but don't even worry about that, its tuition.
Why do I say this....because I already have a read on your personality. At this point in the game its not about how much you make, its about learning. So what if you only make $10 or $15 a trade; or lose that much. What you want to see is the color green on your daily balance. Period. Not the amount. The color. The sim doesn't get it, its useless for your style. You'll never learn on the sim.
Use real money with real trades. Try it for a week. Forget about trying to make a few $100/day for now. Don't look at it like that. Its not your goal. Only trade TSLA. BUT USE 10 SHARE LOTS. Consider a $20 win a MAJOR accomplishment, because it is and you should. If you can do this.... ie master TSLA... with a green balance at the EOD... you will be able to trade any other stock out there successfully and with size. I can't think of a more formidable foe for day-trading stocks than TSLA. Its the best and hardest to beat. And the action is there, everyday. Its never a sleeper.
You wanna be the best... then you train against the best. The only way you are gonna learn is getting in that ring. No mentor, no sims, no YouTubes. Get in the ring. 10 share lots buddy. As many trades as you want. Let me see you be green at the EOD 3 days in a row fighting TSLA.
G/L my friend, I hope you do this.
The thing is to start trading with real money but at a level where losses won't hurt you. Get some skin in the game.
Great post, thanks.
I don't think that the poster saying he should reduce size to 10 shares was saying he would care any less about the trade. It's more about staying in the game while you are still learning.
In a way you are contradicting yourself by saying "Proper size allows you to make rational decisions." Isn't this what trading 10 shares does?
I think you are scalping too heavily, $0.40 on a $350 stock is nothing, heck the spread is sometimes greater than that (after factoring in HFT activity), you will just end up enriching HFTs and your broker if you continue to trade this way.
You need a different strategy if you hope to make any money, the math alone makes this a pointless endeavor.
because information in a vacuum doesn't do anything for you. You always need context
10 shares is pure piker. Whatever the success percentage of his strategy allows as a reasonable percentage of his account to risk per trade is proper size. It gets improper by averaging in, buying too much initially on hopium etc. I think trading piker level encourages one to throw more at the wall hoping it sticks instead of maximizing your successful core.
No, but you'd see it in some format or variation at just about any relative value equity Hedge Fund. So, for example, FDX is up 1.26 % and UPS is up 0.21% on the day as I type this. You develop a theme backed by statistical analysis. You try to insulate yourself from broad market index directional to the extent possible. And there are, quite literally, thousands of potential combinations. That's essentially what a relative value portfolio manager does. And retail specs can make money doing it too. Mild might be DUK vs EXC and wild might be ICE vs CME. I would think that you might want to choose similar market cap companies in the same market sector. Buy the star and sell the dog.
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