MGB:
First and foremost I give you all the respect in the world to your result on this journal. It takes a real man to admit their mistakes, whether big or small.
One piece of advice, next week, cut your size down to 500 shares, no ir's, but's or maybe's. Be disciplined, do not make any excuses, you were blown out, and on Monday if you try to make this money back at all more often than not you will take another big hit. Think survival, think break even, you upped your size way too much before your skills are fully developed, personally, I would bring it down to 300 shares, because in a stock like NVDA, you will be surprised how much you can lose trading 300 shares.
You are bleeding, you must stop the bleed, and you want to cut down your sizes until you regain your confidence. I repeat, your goal for Monday is to finish the day in the black, even if it is $31 after commissions, I know exactly how you feel, because I was blown out for 4K 2 days after my best day of 5K. Sleep, get a lot of rest, come back fresh on Monday, CUT DOWN YOUR SIZE! I am DEAD serious about this, what is lost is lost, when you are losing, you need to get a STOP, STOP losing, give yourself less pressure by putting less on the line.
Last but not least, if you can not trade without worrying about living expenses. I would suggest stop, get a job, any job, cut down your living expenses, save up some money, then come back to this when you can afford to go 3-6 months without making a dime. Trading in August is hard enough, if you put pressure on yourself to pay bills from trading profit before you are even profitable, you are NOT going to make it. Sorry, but that is the way it is, cold hard truth. You got mortgage? family? kids? You have to find a way to take care of them from income other than trading profits, because in trading, there are no guarantees. Even the best of traders can go on a losing streak, you MUST have cushion.
I also recommend a slower stock. There are many fast moving stocks that are just plain impossible to trade on a daily basis especially starting out. Day trading is about making money not "who has the fastest vehicle". Try something more manageable, like a tier 2, slower, thinner stock. You are only doing 1000 shares you certainly don't need anything trading between 1-2 million shares a day. NVDA is about as tough as it gets . . .
I also noticed that your game takes a serious hit when the market is tanking, mine too and I have bullets, I think it takes at least a year to completely get rid of that long biase. In the morning if the market is mixed I tend to look for longs, instead of going for the best positions. Gotta be discriminating.
GaretJax:
Datek + Quote Tracker for intraday trading is like bringing your swiss army knife to a gun fight. Go with IB, their commission rate CAN NOT be beaten by anybody including the professional firms. As a newbie your commission is the thing that will kill you. Forget paper trading, do 100 shares, you can not learn day trading on paper because the fill is such a big part of the game.
Someone else on this board can probably recommend a chart package. My company provides mine. DO NOT "upgrade" to a better broker, you gotta start with IB to have any chance of survival.
I have to tell you one thing, the bigger the size of the trader at my firm, the simpler their chart. There are many many super size traders at my firm using nothing more than 5 minute charts and tape. Getting a dozen screen shots is useless because it is not the indicators that make the trader, it is how the trader use indicators.
You play the game, you get smoked, you learn, hopefully before you lose everything / run out of living expenses, that's the rule of survival for a new trader. Don't even think about making money, think about breaking even. Most of the day trading books are total garbage with systems that plain don't work, the most important element of any style is that you have to be comfortable with it. What works for a million dollar trader at my firm definitely doesn't work for me. This is not about finding the magic combination of indicators, it is about getting smoked enough times to see the thing coming next time around.
You DO NOT need a lot of indicators. Whatever default settings of your indicators work just fine. Whether you use a 5/15 SMA or 10/20 EMA doesn't matter, none of the indicators out there work more than 50 percent of the time and your job is to know when to use what indicators. Are you comfortable with your screen? If you are, it is fine, don't change it, stick to it.
As someone else suggested, TRADE AN EASIER STOCK! The fastest stocks are the toughest ones, and if you trade NVDA every day and can pull cachingo off it consistently I am mighty impressed. There are easier ways to make money, like trading stocks that don't spread you a point or two for no reason . . . You do not need a very large trading range to make money, as your mentality as a new trader should definitely not be making multiple points or full points, try to pull off 25-50 cents before you even attempt point(s).
For the last time, DO NOT DAY TRADE WITH DATEK + QT!
