Opinions please.............???

[tommcginnis]

The education you seek is very, very expensive.
Have an exit planned before you enter.
Trade both sides to utilize your margin capital twice.
Don't ever trade your mortgage payment (or your retirement dollars) without a couple of YEARS of daily, busy-assed experience.
Volume = liquidity.
Favor liquidity.
There are only two pieces of data: price and volume. You need both. Use both. "All else is elaboration."
We see -- we *seek* -- patterns. But most of the patterns we seek are LINEAR, while ALL OF LIFE IS CURVILINEAR. Put differently, EVERYTHING HAS AN EXPONENT -- "1.0" is STILL an exponent. Conclusion?? Don't expect straight lines -- expect trumpets, which start out nearly linear, and at the end, bellow out to a broad 'bell'.
Nickels count.
The "probability of [a] touch" is reliably about twice that of expiring ITM.
Make a habit of being a scientist; demand robust evidence; don't confuse or conflate cause and effect.
Never use an "indicator" without being able to precisely describe its empirical calculation, and its numerical outcome's meaning. "A MACD of -2.67 means that...."

That'll about do it.

 

[ADONAI1ST]

The education you seek is very, very expensive.
Have an exit planned before you enter.
Trade both sides to utilize your margin capital twice.
Don't ever trade your mortgage payment (or your retirement dollars) without a couple of YEARS of daily, busy-assed experience.
Volume = liquidity.
Favor liquidity.
There are only two pieces of data: price and volume. You need both. Use both. "All else is elaboration."
We see -- we *seek* -- patterns. But most of the patterns we seek are LINEAR, while ALL OF LIFE IS CURVILINEAR. Put differently, EVERYTHING HAS AN EXPONENT -- "1.0" is STILL an exponent. Conclusion?? Don't expect straight lines -- expect trumpets, which start out nearly linear, and at the end, bellow out to a broad 'bell'.
Nickels count.
The "probability of [a] touch" is reliably about twice that of expiring ITM.
Make a habit of being a scientist; demand robust evidence; don't confuse or conflate cause and effect.
Never use an "indicator" without being able to precisely describe its empirical calculation, and its numerical outcome's meaning. "A MACD of -2.67 means that...."

That'll about do it.

I'm just looking to start with a small account and see it grow. Slow is good fore me. Care to elaborate on the "Trade both sides" statement,Thanks for your input.

 

[tommcginnis]

I'm just looking to start with a small account and see it grow. Slow is good fore me. Care to elaborate on the "Trade both sides" statement,Thanks for your input.

The SPX closed at 2249 tonight.
Had I sold the Jan13 2200 and bought the Jan13 2195, I would have pocketed 65¢, and been required to put up the $5 difference in strikes as margin capital.
But had I also sold the Jan13 2300 call, and bought the Jan13 2305 call (and pocketing 45¢), since it's in the same expiration, but on the other side, that same $5 I put up to cover the puts, now covers the call liability as well. Why? Because the market would threaten only one of those positions at a time. In the meantime, I have pocketed $1.10 gross -- a *position* return of
$1.10/($5-1.10) = 28%, WHICH SOUNDS GREAT, and is really pretty meaningless -- because for every new position I initiate, I stay below 1/32 of my capital engaged. Why 1/32?? That's 5 doublings -- 2^^5. So?? 28%/32 = 0.875% -- I shoot for between 0.5% and 1.5% a week, and favor less than 1% return on invested capital.

 

[motif]

Trading futures with little cash and no experience will put you at a major disadvantage - you probably will not last more than a few hours or days max. Your odds of making it are mathematically nearly impossible. Many successful futures traders started out on equities/ETFs to gain the experience needed to make a go of trading futures.

You need a LARGE bankroll to make substantial profits in equities/ETFs; if you have less than 25,000 dollars, you can't daytrade.

 

[comagnum]

You need a LARGE bankroll to make substantial profits in equities/ETFs; if you have less than 25,000 dollars, you can't daytrade.
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You can swing/trend/position trade with as little as few thousand. The less money you have the more important it is not to eat up your capital in commissions- so you need to keep your trading volume very low. As you account grows you can trade more but you always want to keep the trade volume down - many pro swing traders typically put on 3-5 positions per week max. Besides the real money is made in holding positions over time. The SEC has the $25k rule if you make more than 4 day trades per week because most day traders go extinct and to even have a remote chance of succeeding you need that much $. Most pros will agree with the SEC on this. The few day traders that make it are usually from investment banking or hedge funds that have years of experience, a real edge they developed, and have years of highly developed skills/instincts that go counter to human nature and are well capitalized. Only a rare few could ever achieve this and fewer could sustain it very long.

 

[ADONAI1ST]

You will need a great deal of money to lose first during your 10,000 hours of screen time, you getting good advise when told Rental Houses, buy 1-2 a year, every year. It is going to take so many years of insaneness to get profitable, can you program? Buy one of the books day trading for Dummies, they are to the point and easier to understand, just the name is dumb. Took me handful years to get to 65% winning traders. And surprisingly that is not high enough for day trading, you will be very surprised how much you will average per trade, it often with me ticks.

"Few videos or readings" ROFLMAO LOL I give this guy 2 months till he is broke.

I've been reading some of your posts and I have a few questions if you don't mind answering.

I have a 4 step plan to start trading.

1) Decide what to trade(I'm going with futures and options)
2) Open a paper account(Done)
3) Start placing some basic trades(Would like to start this by the end of the year, and do this for at least 1-2 years
4) End goal is to generate low monthly income (1-2 thousand a month)

I have a job at this time and don't plan to leave before retirement. I would just like to generate extra income.

I noticed you asked if I could code in a previous thread, I do not, but i have people who I work with that would write a code for me, or at least get me going in that area. Can you advise me in where to start and the direction to go here, end goal?

How much money would you say i need to start out once the above is done.(Least amount)

Note: Step 3 is not on a time basis, I know this includes developing a strategy, back testing, and getting algorithms written.

Does this seem reasonable to you?

 

[pinabetal]

You need a LARGE bankroll to make substantial profits in equities/ETFs; if you have less than 25,000 dollars, you can't daytrade.
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Besides the real money is made in holding positions over time.

i disagree MUCH MORE can be made by multiple entries and exits.

 

[ADONAI1ST]

i disagree MUCH MORE can be made by multiple entries and exits.

This means more commissions right? Who's your broker, if you don't mind me asking........

 

[pinabetal]

This means more commissions right? Who's your broker, if you don't mind me asking........

Comm small price to pay for making more money. The whole theory is discussed in J.M. Hurst book. It is much more profitable to jump in and out than ride for the long haul. Plus you are locking in profits and avoiding the stress of paper losses that can end up being real losses. Look at it this way. You can always enter the market again if it continues to move your way.

 

[Handle123]

I've been reading some of your posts and I have a few questions if you don't mind answering.

I have a 4 step plan to start trading.

1) Decide what to trade(I'm going with futures and options)
2) Open a paper account(Done)
3) Start placing some basic trades(Would like to start this by the end of the year, and do this for at least 1-2 years
4) End goal is to generate low monthly income (1-2 thousand a month)

I have a job at this time and don't plan to leave before retirement. I would just like to generate extra income.

I noticed you asked if I could code in a previous thread, I do not, but i have people who I work with that would write a code for me, or at least get me going in that area. Can you advise me in where to start and the direction to go here, end goal?

How much money would you say i need to start out once the above is done.(Least amount)

Note: Step 3 is not on a time basis, I know this includes developing a strategy, back testing, and getting algorithms written.

Does this seem reasonable to you?

I believe the 2 most bought software's are NinjaTrader and you can sign up for free delayed data with Kinetick and Multicharts. I used Ninjatrader till I had people program charting, back testing, optimizing and platform for me as what I wanted was not available in commercial software's. And I won't say what I had made, but you stay long enough, you know what you need might be different.

Smart move in keeping your job if you love it, after awhile trading gets so fricking boring, you can only water the plants so many times and I hate golf-four letter word when trade don't go as expected, scream "GOLFFFFF".

If you plan to stay in months or years in stocks, $10k ok to start, that is where I started long ago. Only times I really failed badly and for years was learning long term commodities and day trading. You want to triple your demo account three times, then you have a fair shot of becoming profitable, get use to using weekly charts and buy dividend stocks that are optionable. Some weeks ago I bought Sunaco and was paying 14%, as value of stock rises the percentage drops cause you pay more for it, but I bought lower and will get 14%, then you learn about options. Stock trading is about topping patterns, and when you see them, you often get divergence in like MACD, but instead of using trailing stops, I wait till fifteen minutes before end of the week and if close is below the low that is divergent, system gets out. Trailing stops for long term will hurt your long term profits. In other words study to find when not to trade.

Focus on where the market will hurt you, just cause you have a signal to buy, what is to the left of now showing you, I see way too many traders buy just short of previous resistances, also use time of so many weeks for trade to work out and become profitable, if it is just sitting there, and you expected it to go up, I try to get out with enough to cover fees and find something else.

I know you have futures and options, you going to have huge amount of money to trade these when you are inexperienced, it is so not like trading stocks, leverage will kill you by making wrong trades. And I use to recommend day trading, but not any more, the amount of stuff you have to memorize is a mountain and have it down in a second, but again, if it ok to not make money and lose for handful of years, try it out. But Buffett and very wealthy people do it buy stocks, has dividends and optionable stocks.

Good luck