I've been trading for 7 months now and still...

[Cheese]

Quote from cashmoney69:
I've been trading since January of this year, but have not yet had a profitable month.

No offence, but why the living f**k would a sane person trade without knowing more than sufficient to trade at least accurately enough and to accumulate profits instead.

There is no remedy for the human impulse. This is what happens all the time. It is the latent unspoken drive for the confirmation you need to identify yourself to yourself as a loser.

 

[illiquid]

Quote from Cheese:

No offence, but why the living f**k would a sane person trade without knowing more than sufficient to trade at least accurately enough and to accumulate profits instead.

There is no remedy for the human impulse. This is what happens all the time. It is the latent unspoken drive for the confirmation you need to identify yourself to yourself as a loser.

No offense, but sounds like you have a latent, unspoken drive to identify yourself to yourself as an asshole.

 

[independenceair]

I,ve been at it nearly six years-every day. It takes time, like an art . Your worst enemies are those that try to discourage you- if you are day trading try using a recorder or simulator to help develop your hidden talents. Oh ya, I almost forgot...you can't do that and most of em go belly up, and don't you know that 95 % of traders fail....blah blah blah
Follow your dreams as long as they don't kill ya.

 

[FanOfFridays]

Quote from Cheese:

No offence, but why the living f**k would a sane person trade without knowing more than sufficient to trade at least accurately enough and to accumulate profits instead.

There is no remedy for the human impulse. This is what happens all the time. It is the latent unspoken drive for the confirmation you need to identify yourself to yourself as a loser.

lol... another useless post by the master of inanity. illiquid, cheese is famous for this kind of thing here.

 

[Brian Diesel]

I've been trading for 6 years now.

I first started daytrading stocks and was very profitable. But didn't like sitting in front of the computer all day. So now I swing trade stocks and am very profitable.

I've tried for years to trade index futures intraday, and never made a penny. Lost maybe $30k over the course of a couple years. Not a lot of money compared to what I make on stocks so I consider it an 'education expense'.

I tried trading Forex last year. I opened an account with $10k. In 1 month I was down to $2k. I took a step back and patiently built it back to $10k the next couple months and closed the account.

I trade Crude futures profitably. Can not seem to make money on Gold futures though.

The thing is, there are so many markets to trade and various ways to trade them. The game is to figure what works for you. Remember, it is a constant learning experience.

Brian

 

[lacarpenter]

Trading live forex since February, my account is down just under 3%. The first 2% vanished on the very first day with two bad impulse trades (my first and last!). Welcome to trading school, and leave your tuition at the door.

I immediately cut my position size to 1/10th, and vowed only to increase it gradually when I could show a positive gain for the month. When I have a losing month, I cut it back.

Since then it's been about learning the skills to EXECUTE the trading plan successfully. It's helped me to track everything and do a daily review of my trades in the evening (I average 8-10 trades per day). An excel spreadsheet tracks the number of trades, the win/lose ratio, avg win, avg loss, expectancy and my overall execution performance. This last one is hard, because I have to be brutally honest with myself about what I did wrong and could have done better.

Because my position size is so small compared to that first day, it may take a while to bring the account up to where I started -- but I can see from the spreadsheet that overall average losses have declined to an acceptable 17 pips, my win rate is currently at 62% and improving, and expectancy is going up. My biggest issue at present is just simply letting the winning trades run.

From what I've learned in the past 6 months, the quality of my trading has changed dramatically. So even though my account balance is less than when I opened it, the money spent has been a great education.

Much success to you!

 

[krazykarl]

Quote from Cheese:

No offence, but why the living f**k would a sane person trade without knowing more than sufficient to trade at least accurately enough and to accumulate profits instead.

There is no remedy for the human impulse. This is what happens all the time. It is the latent unspoken drive for the confirmation you need to identify yourself to yourself as a loser.

actualy it has less to do with impulse and more to do with recognizing the difference between when a trade turns against you and when you made a bad trade.

also, margin calls on a weekly basis don't help.... (what can i say, i go balls out almost everytime...)

 

[murray t turtle]

Quote from cashmoney69:

I've been trading since January of this year, but have not yet had a profitable month .

On average, I have lost $ 26.17 a month. My total loss is -183.22

This is 6.01% of my account, which is 3,045.00. 6,090.00 if you add the margin.

I would like to know how I compare to other beginning traders on ET who have traded for atleast 7 months,

and from more experienced traders. 6% sounds like a lot, what was your beginning like?

- Nathan

==========================
Cashmoney;

You did better than me because i blew out 2 accounts before I learned to trade. Lower frequency trading requires larger stops

And its amazing , as Nick noted,how almost all of us traded too big when we started;
even if one has several accounts.

There have been fortunes made with less start up capital than $3k,
and probabkly will be more made with less capital;
but for many, TRAD says $50,000 for active trading.

Hopefully you are keeping a notebook[your broker gives you a statement also, which illustrates this];
may want to focus on either occasional daytrading [several per week], or swingtrading DEPENDING on which you have done better on. Yes, cut a swingtrade short if profit is threatened

And if it takes 5 years to learn;
that could still be better than average.

 

[murray t turtle]

Quote from Brian Diesel:

I've been trading for 6 years now.

So now I swing trade stocks and am very profitable.

I've tried for years to trade index futures intraday, and never made a penny. Lost maybe $30k over the course of a couple years.

I tried trading Forex last year. I opened an account with $10k. In 1 month I was down to $2k. I took a step back and patiently built it back to $10k the next couple months and closed the account.

Can not seem to make money on Gold futures though.

The thing is, there are so many markets to trade and various ways to trade them. The game is to figure what works for you. Remember, it is a constant learning experience.

Brian

==============================

That was a REAL shocker for me , couldn't find much anything on paper with gold futures or NEM options , even though traded NEM profitably.

Was even more shocking since Mark Boucher , a top hedge fund manager did real well , real young with buying gold stock options, and some CAN SLIM principles.

ER2 was over all to wild for me, another index derivative;
ES, has been more profitable. Glad i didn't start with that kind of leverage. Did not like to leverage my ignorance that much

 

[Cheese]

Quote from illiquid:
No offense, but sounds like you have a latent, unspoken drive to identify yourself to yourself as an asshole.

Illiquid, there is no pleasure or sanity in encouraging someone to carry on with losing his money.