Noob Here About To Jump In

Try to learn/design the most basic of trading system/strategies.

Here is a great place to start in My opinion:

1) Pick 75 stocks, and have that as your pool of stocks to trade
2) Choose the top 1 or 2 stocks that has the strongest trend, the most violent move up or down
3) get on board that stock on a pull back (vice versa for shorting)

study these types of moves, also trade in longer term daily chart, 4hr chart, etc. Trade small.

Trend reversals are much harder to learn than trend continuation. Focus on Trend continuation for until you know how to make money that way.

Don't get sucked into short term trading, its very profitable, but also the absolute hardest to learn in my opinion. IF you can't trade long term you definitely can't trade short term.
 
gdubb85 said:
... but can someone explain why this is so hard?
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just do it, man

you did not read the articles of how pleasurable the sex is , you just did it first time and saw for yourself if it was there any truth to it (unless it was painful the first time) :)

the same with trading: do it - open account, put money in it, and trade, the first time, unlike in sex, it goes smoothly :) for most ...then you figure-out the rest

do not be afraid to live your life, be afraid to live the other guy's life :)
 
Thank you all for this varied mix of responses. It really helps to see how people respond to a new guy after they have been doing this for awhile. I know I just need to do it, starting small, and I'll report back, tail between legs and all :). The reason for the post was general anxiety about the high failure rate and wanting to arm myself to maximize chances for success
 
gdubb85 said:
The reason for the post was general anxiety about the high failure rate and wanting to arm myself to maximize chances for success
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it's understood, one wants to avoid to be burned where the other been burned

the reasons for the high failure rate in trading (and it's not 90%, it's imho about 99.99%) is simple - people do not know what they are doing, and it takes a very long time to develop the know how

as to your questions, if we each time will respond with the step-by step explanation as to where and how , when some novice comes here with bright ideas asking to show him where he is wrong, there will be nothing else left to do :)

the beauty of trading - you on your own, is not it why people keep going there despite the high rate of burning out? :)
 
gdubb85 said:
I am itching to get on the Think or Swim paper money sim to see how wrong I am... but can someone explain why this is so hard?
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qxr1011 said:
i
the reasons for the high failure rate in trading (and it's not 90%, it's imho about 99.99%) is simple - people do not know what they are doing, and it takes a very long time to develop the know how
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That is 1000% right. That's the bottom line.
And the only way to know what you are doing is to trade daily. Get in the trenches.
 
gdubb85 said:
Hey there... new guy here about to jump into day trading... so far I have perused a few posts/trading journals on this site, read a few day trading books on my Kindle from Amazon and about to open my TD account, so i can use their Think or Swim platform...

I have heard it stated multiple times "its not as easy as it sounds", "90% of traders lose money" and I just don't "get it." I am itching to get on the Think or Swim paper money sim to see how wrong I am... but can someone explain why this is so hard?

In my head I am thinking: study 1 pattern, make a scanner for it and be disciplined enough to only enter trades that meet that strict criteria, enter the trade with a stop/profit target that's 3:1 and just wait. It either hits the stop or I get the target. I specifically entered into conditions that are probable/favorable in this trade, so presumably I will hit the profit more than 50% of the time. At a 3:1 ratio, the profits are guaranteed. I see post after post of people saying they are grinding this out for years before they break even and eventually get into meager profit. It seems like as long as you pick your stop appropriately, the numbers should work out long term. If the account is 75K and you gain an average of just 0.2% gain a day, that's 6%/4.5K a month. If you have considerably more than this, the % gain requirements are even lower for a decent overall profit.

Alright. Once you are done laughing at my naive view of the world, can you then explain the flaw in my logic?
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The flaw is simple as following: To be in profit you have to be consistently first at receiving important market information right? If you get the news first that the train with apples going into town exploded, you have valuable market information, which will affect supply&demand of the apples in town, resulting in upward change in price. You can make a bet on rise in the price of apples and you will win.

Right? Now imagine there are thousands of clever guys investing millions to get milliseconds edge to get this valuable information first. You see all is played because of information assymetry. How you can guarantee for yourself that you will be first at this contest?
 
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