My high school summer job: trading the NQ

"Hey, this is just an open ended question to everyone who's been kind enough to respond to my thread. When you guys first started or if you are just starting, did you have sweaty twitchy fingers when you switched to the live deal? I look at my hand and it's sweaty and twitching, and I came close to pressing a market order button even though I had no intention of doing so."


Definitely...I felt like a chicken with my head cut off most of the time and I made lots of dumb mistakes (buying when I meant to sell etc). After awhile you really do get desensitized to it as someone mentioned before, and it becomes very automatic. I trade very volatile stocks now and make hundreds of trades in a day and don't really even think about it anymore, but that came with a lot of time and practice and many, many frustrating days.
 
Ever think about scalping FX?.. you get tons more leverage, and even less $ required up front. Find a nice ECN broker with very low spreads. I dont scalp, but I'm just throwing it out there.
 
You can get just as instant of fills in stocks, just gotta know how to route the orders. The PDT rule is why I suggest getting with a prop firm that trains you. You usually need a series 7 license, but it might give you the best option of making it as a trader on limited capital.

Since you plan on scalping again tomorrow, here is something that might help. Watch a 15 minute chart of the dow, S&P, and the Nasdaq. Only trade when all three of them are moving together, and only trade in the direction of the trend. You should still get enough signals on your shorter time frame to keep you busy. Because you are trading with the trend you should be able to go for bigger winners.

Good luck!
 
Quote from cashmoney69:

Ever think about scalping FX?.. you get tons more leverage, and even less $ required up front. Find a nice ECN broker with very low spreads. I dont scalp, but I'm just throwing it out there.
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Well, first of all I can't do that because I heard that forex is even MORE risky than index futures, lol, why would I ever want to do that with my limited capital?

And also, I am becoming more and more familiar with the way the NQ works every day, why stop learning it now? I want to learn it from the inside out and totally master it, and then start learning other instruments (be it gold,oil, ES, or forex)
 
Quote from baggerlord:

You can get just as instant of fills in stocks, just gotta know how to route the orders. The PDT rule is why I suggest getting with a prop firm that trains you. You usually need a series 7 license, but it might give you the best option of making it as a trader on limited capital.

Since you plan on scalping again tomorrow, here is something that might help. Watch a 15 minute chart of the dow, S&P, and the Nasdaq. Only trade when all three of them are moving together, and only trade in the direction of the trend. You should still get enough signals on your shorter time frame to keep you busy. Because you are trading with the trend you should be able to go for bigger winners.

Good luck!
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That's a pretty good idea. Sure, I'll do as you advised and look for correlation between the 3. But don't they always move together like 95% of the time?

About trend following, I don't like to do that, at least on paper I have had bad experience personally, even though it might have worked for you. No, I think my breakout/pullback strategy will suffice for the moment.
 
ZDawg..... make sure when you trade tomorrow you do not trade "not to lose" but trade "to win".

There is a big difference and I think you might be leaning towards the first category.

I think you know what I mean by this. Be as aggressive as you were in sim, but realize your psych is going to fuck with you.

That said I've been trading nq on sim for ~8 months and still haven't gone live though I've swing traded equities a little while before that. So... my experience with a grain of salt. I'm 20 as well so realize when people say "time is on our side" they probably mean it, but I still put 50+ hrs into this a week regardless you know :)?

Good luck man...
 
I'm not suggesting you change your strategy, just trade in the direction of the trend even if it is the same strategy. Think of it as trading with the wind at your back.

Especially today, when you are in do or die time, it is best to take only the highest probability trades.

Look foward to your results today, hope it goes well.
 
Go get 'em today dawg. Whatever happens, I appreciate you sharing your journey. This has been a really refreshing journal to read and I wish you the best!
 
Thanks guys for the positive comments here. Once again I am feeling positive going into this thing today; I know I have said this for the last three days and got crummy results but I hopefully this day will be my first diamond in the rough.
 
zdawg: at the moment every day feels like it is very significant. But remember you will need to put in hundreds of trading days if you wish to be a successful trader. One day is not significant. Even blowing this account will be only a small obstacle to you, if you really want to be a trader and are prepared to do what it takes.
 
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