Learn To Take Losses

[tomi01]

Along with the shift key held down I click the buy or sell and then flatten the trade to get out of each trade quickly. Locked and loaded is my usual situation at the keyboard.. when in a trade.

 

[tomi01]

Also I've found that using a 20 tick chart for exiting to be very profitable when trading using my normal 1 minute chart.. Keeping my eye on the ticks lets me know when to exit at max amount practical..

 

[RantaMin]

Think of taking losses as part of the game. It's like sports; there are good and bad days, but what matters is being up by the end of the month. You've gotta see these losses as lessons, not failures. Set your stop-loss limits to keep things in check and remember, it's all about keeping cool and staying on track overall.

 

[RantaMin]

About getting better at this, start with a demo account. It’s like practicing free throws without worrying about losing the game. Write down what went down with each trade, especially how you felt and what you were thinking. Going back over these can really show you patterns in your thinking and help you tweak your strategy. It's all about building that muscle memory, but for trading.

 

[ironchef]

The TOS sim is actually broken and has been for ages. The techs there say it is the last on their priority list to get fixed during this time of transistion to CSchwab.

Try sending a market order for 100 shares or even less and you will see, you can count the seconds until the order gets filled. Closing the trade is frustrating in the sim as it takes forever even using flatten now. All measures of your performance are messed up to the point of it being useless. Now in the past month or so they could have fixed this, but about 2 months ago and last year it was broken. I've gone to using less shares to work out my chinks in trading using real money and gradually building up the number of shares I will trade as I work through my learning processes.

Thanks for your feedback. I am new to TOS. The only reason I am trying it out is Schwab tech support told me SSE will be closed down sometime this year and before I transition over, I wanted to get familiar with it.

Come to think of it, I had some strange issues:

When I traded on SSE, I was live and profitable but when I turned over to continue trading (paper) using the same approach on TOS, I almost always ended up with losses. I thought the fault was my method.

So I had to revamp my method to eke out a profit.

 

[ironchef]

Start off by trading with 1 share and real money. Then go 10 shares. When you have worked out chinks in your trading, over numerous weeks, perhaps several months, go up to 20 shares etc.
This is working very well for me. I use the Active Trader in TOS so I can open & close the market orders for buying and selling quickly and I watch the P&L for that trade so I can close losers fast or know when holding them is useless and get out quicker than my stop. My stops are set for max $3.00 loss which is catastropic protection and gives me wiggle room to work through a scalp. I have tried a lot of different stop settings and since I'm a scalper, the most important thing is to close the trade if it goes against me, but that takes a lot of practice to become robotic about and sometimes I have let it hit my whole stop loss. But this works for me and so far now I'm profitable ALMOST every day now for months... Took a long time to figure this out, that's why I'm passing it on to you to give you ideas that have worked for me.

Thank you.

I appreciate your help.

 

[ironchef]

The TOS sim is actually broken and has been for ages. The techs there say it is the last on their priority list to get fixed during this time of transistion to CSchwab.

Try sending a market order for 100 shares or even less and you will see, you can count the seconds until the order gets filled. Closing the trade is frustrating in the sim as it takes forever even using flatten now. All measures of your performance are messed up to the point of it being useless. Now in the past month or so they could have fixed this, but about 2 months ago and last year it was broken. I've gone to using less shares to work out my chinks in trading using real money and gradually building up the number of shares I will trade as I work through my learning processes.

You are saying instead of paper, go live with TOS but start by trading 1 share?

Tech support told me once I switch over I can never get back so I won't dare switch until the bitter end.

 

[ironchef]

This is the only part of TOS that I use and I have the ladder closed so all I see is this panel. I use Medved Trader for charting and DOM in MT instead of this ladder. I also use haiken ashi and tick on MT along with a 1 minute normal candlestick for monitoring the action, along with a 2, 5 and 15 minute chart and the indexes at the top of my main screen. But this part of the TOS get in and out with market orders and an underlying stop setting that automatically gets put into the trade when entering the trade. Works for me and I've tried so many other ways, but this works and MT charts are the best IMO

View attachment 336711

What is:

Medved Trader for charting and DOM in MT.

 

[Picaso]

Ughhh, tell me about it. This happens quite a lot actually. You know what's even worse though? It can happen to not only your exit stop but also your entry stop.

1. Stop loss: it invariably gets hit and then the damn price quickly reverses.
2. Entry stop: price comes sooooooooooooo close to my entry price (or profit target) but reverses.

WTF?!!

I think someone referred to this (for entries) as "negative selection", that is, if you use limit (or stop) orders for your entries X ticks away from the current price, then 100% of the times when the trade is going to work inmediately your order doesn't get filled, whereas when the trade isn't going to work at all, your order (and subsequently your stop loss) gets filled 100% of the time. (Then there's of course the many times where price chops around for a while, goes a few ticks past your order but doesn't hit your stop loss, then moves towards your target; or when it moves in your favor, but then reverses, etc.)

My personal experience (yours may differ) is that placing orders a few ticks away from the price saves me pennies but costs me pounds (and a lot of aggravation). Now I just wait for the price to hit an area of interest for me (I set up alerts) and then, when I see it, I pay the spread on a tick up (long) or down (short). I still have many small losses, but now I never miss a winning move because just because I wanted to get a few extra ticks out of the chop and later I didn't want to chase.

*Edit: of course, I do miss many trades, every day, my meaning is I don't lose them over a few ticks.

 

[tomi01]

You are saying instead of paper, go live with TOS but start by trading 1 share?

Tech support told me once I switch over I can never get back so I won't dare switch until the bitter end.

I'm not sure what you mean here that tech support told you. A few years back I started out on the TOS sim and it was exactly as quick as real trading, if not quicker, with fills. But beginning around the start of last year their sim started to behave very strangely. Like it would take forever to fill or close a trade. You could count the seconds.. up to 15 seconds or more at times.

I got on chat support about this probably 5 or more times. Each time I had a support tech who was knowledgeable they were honest and said it wouldn't be fixed more than likely in the "foreseeable future" due to an overload of other projects going on with the transistion.

But there is nothing that can be an issue with you going live or sim at any time you want with your account. Some people trade with real money then finish the up the day with a sim or if they screw up with live trading finish the day or week on the sim.. That was before it became basically useless due to not filling trades until you have had time to go make a tea...

TD Ameritrade was purchased by Charles Schwab and perhaps what the tech person was trying to say is that if your account is moved over to Schwab there is of course no going back to TD Ameritrade, but they are managing this in stages and I'm one of those thankfully that will be moved at the very end of May along with everyone left over, perhaps you are in that same group I'm in.

But this has no effect on your using the sim or live trading which ever you choose when you want to trade.

Try 1 share for a while, go to 10 shares then after good progress is made over weeks, reward yourself with increasing the shares gradually. This helps get the reps and experience in and also gives you a chance to try a lot of different strategies until you figure out what works best for you without risking any serious amount of capital.