Made a lot of progress, but feel like there's so much more to go...

[themickey]

Everybody is now too slow for daytrading ever since HFT has arrived. Swing trading is the key to beat HFT. Let those HFT bots to earn those half-of-a-cent profit while we earn the bigger money in longer term trading.

Yep, in trading it pays to gravitate away from the crowd.
As day trading becomes more & more mainstream, I'm gravitating further and further long term.
Many people lack patience to sit still, business' demand results asap, "action now" is the catchcry.
"Let profits run" means a few days at most it seems.

 

[JSOP]

I haven't checked this thread in a while. Sorry for the delayed response. You are right! My trading plan is not great not. When it works it's great. When it doesn't I need to exit sooner.

I need to account more contingencies in my plan. I have only simplistic exit scenarios. Now I realized the market can do an infinite multiple of moves. Obviously can't account for everything. But at least the exit plan should include the following:

1) know when you are wrong and get out at a small loss
2) know when to get out to protect profits
3) know when to get out when it's at the high consolidating high points
4) know when to re-enter in a major trend
5) know when a trend continuation is on and hold on just a little longer
etc. etc.

Right now I'm just holding.. it bounces all over the places. I could have exit at the high of the consolidating range multiple times and got back in at the lower band.

It's good that you see the importance of having a trading plan but I just want to caution you on one thing. You won't be able to design your trading plan to accommodate every single scenario that happens. And the reason why is simply that the market IS efficient. Yes we try to predict the market's next move by using technical analysis, fundamental analysis, this and that but ultimately we still have to accept the fact we won't know exactly what the market is going to do next. So don't beat yourself up too much when you see that your trading plan is not able to have a solution for all of the market scenarios that you observe otherwise you might be throwing away perfectly good trading plans one after another and frustrated that you can't design a good plan.

My take: Just concentrate on a few scenarios, focus on simple entries and exists (both stop-loss and take-profit) and you should be fine. There is no shoulda, woulda, coulda, only did in trading. Make sure it's a profitable or as little of loss as possible exit every single time and that's good enough and try again next time.

Good trading!!

 

[trader99]

Today I tried to daytrade on my simulator. I realize even though my signals and setups are good, I'm just TOO SLOW to daytrade. By the time I see it and act on it has already moved. And I get in a pretty bad price. And I'm too nervous and get out too soon. Even though my original pattern works and it goes where it should be going.

Not sure what I was thinking trying to daytrade these last few years. I could have saved myself a lot of headache, pain, suffering, and lost money and time. I could have just bought the QQQs or index funds. And swing trade.

Every single time I've daytrade recently I've lost. Not a lot. But a little each time. This tells me daytrading is not for me. I'm too slow for that.

I sim daytrade again to see what's up. Made 15 NQ points in under a minute. I'm not sure if I can do that consistently and with scale. It's good to practice intraday. Because I barely follow markets now with my busy work schedule, that I ended up not managing my swing trade positions well. I let it go up then down then up. Rather than exit at optimal points.

 

[trader99]

I got up early today did my exercises. Then at 6:30am PST turn on my computer. But I didn't have the urge to daytrade even in sim. After my successful one day swing trade of PCG calls and stocks, I'm on the hunt for the next great trade. I don't need the constant and tiring adrenaline rush of daytrading anymore.

I'm more patient and analytical. Waiting for the right opportunity to pounce on....

 

[trader99]

Let's say conservatively, I catch one of those big moves once a month. Perhaps I can recover faster than 1.5 years. And it could snowball..

That's the optimistic case.

But to hedge that, I will need to continue to focus on non-trading income stream.

First off, I like to say thank you to all the ETers who read my thread and provided words of encouragement. Because of that I chose the right path and now making tons of progress.

I wrote this in Aug 22, 2018. That seems like ages ago in terms of improvements in my trading, life attitude, and life situation! I'm grateful for these positive growth.

To recap the losses:

1) Robinhood:
I was down HUGE. Almost gave up hope. But my return in 2018 was 110.72%!!! Well, albeit this is from a smaller base. But even on a non-percentage basis it was a huge return dollarwise. It would have been even bigger had I swing traded more frequently instead of position trading. That is if I had sold at the local highs then got back in and sold out again. It's hindsight.
At point one, I thought this account had no hope of recovery. But it ended up being on of the best performing ones. Hopefully in 2019 I will recover all of my losses and go beyond that. I feel confident and optimistic given my edge now.

2) IB IRA:
2018 Return was -9.83%. At one point I was down over -16% in 2018. I'm still down from my euqity highs. I could have done much much better had it not for IB IRA margin restrictions. I have decent size amount of capital but for some reason IB IRA accounts margin requirements are several times HIGHER than taxable IB account. So I couldn't even trade YM, NQ, etc even though I have several times multiple margins. In 2019, this needs a lot of work to get back to even(my last high)

3) IB Taxable account:
This is total loss. Basically wiped out. It hurts. I kept trying to daytrade to make it back and kept losing more. It wasn't until I realize I'm better at swing trading. I swing traded my Robinhood account to 110% gain in 2018 from its lows. I will add more this account once I go positive on my Robinhood and IB IRA account.

4) Crypto accounts:
Positive baby! By far the best risk/reward. Low risk and high returns. There were several times I missed the bottom on ETH. Had I pulled the trigger I would have made back my entire losses in all of my accounts and more in a few trades! I keep kicking myself for not doing it. I even had it planned and had a price target too. But I got busy and missed the target. I should have just put a limit order and forget about it. My limit price was literally a dollar away from the bottom. This would have been my 10 bagger trade given the leverage I had in my crypto account(5x). But after deep reflections, I realized I was scared of maxing out on leverage to put on these whale trades. My mistake. I could have made very good money even on a non-leveraged trades. Don't need to go maximum 5x leverage even though with that maximum leverage trade I would literally wiped out all of my losses and made whopper 10 bagger in profits!

Again, thank you for all the ETers following this thread and your encouragements.

I'm very glad I picked the right path and went back to Corporate America. It provided me the financial stability I needed and the confidence to swing trade.

Happy New Year everyone! Happy trading in 2019!

 

[trader99]

I saved $2303 in commissions according to Robinhood. I'm not sure how they calculated that. Probably based on expensive brokers. Regardless, it's nice savings.

 

[trader99]

Good day trading crypto this moring. In and out. Made $3K but only net $2550.60 because of commission charges from my cryptobroker. This is freakin' ridiculous! I used max leverage and limit orders. Market orders would have costed even more.

Robinhood has cryptos but does NOT allow any leverage! So I have to use this expensive crypto broker. So until there's a superlow cost crypto platform out there I'll have to pay up...

My gold options was all over the map. And one point I was up $7K intraday then down $7K intraday then closed up only $300. But since I was at work I couldn't really exit and buyback at a lower price.

I'm still riding these gold options. GC is now $1290. I really need it to break $1300... Preferably go to $1350 then things will get really interesting. I hope... Only 16 days left time expiration.

 

[trader99]

Sold out a chunk of my call options. I can't stomach this wild ride. I need to bank some. Even if it goes higher it's ok. I still have a sizable amount left... Let's see

 

[Cabin111]

So until there's a superlow cost crypto platform out there I'll have to pay up...

Yeah, like that is going to happen!! It's insane...Like margins on naked puts!!

 

[Overnight]

Good day trading crypto this moring. In and out. Made $3K but only net $2550.60 because of commission charges from my cryptobroker. This is freakin' ridiculous! I used max leverage and limit orders. Market orders would have costed even more...

That is a pathetic boohoo on your part. You lost $450 in commies using max leverage? Why is it ridiculous? Was it one trade, or hundreds? Put things into perspective? Be glad you made money, and you did not go the opposite way?