Prop Firm Proposal

One reason people leave websites like this is this long lived truth. I can't count how many of these fools I've put on ignore because all they want is you to do their trading, they lose money habitually and if you learn one thing from me, just this one thing, please "don't share your pearls with swine or cast holy things before dogs!"


Jesse said many things, I think his one gem stands out most to me. He said "It's not until you learn what not to do, that you will eventually learn what to do!" I think that phrase has helped me more than any. Your doing the right thing, keep trading and using your brain, don't rely on others and please don't share your ideas with losers or hoodoos! There's many good folks on Elite Trader, I like men like NoDoji, Xandman, Blakpackman, newwurld,Market Surfer, Maverick will help you, ignore those guys here that only bring their appetite to a dinner, Misers or Scrooges of Trading, too cheap to study or share!

"
But the average man doesn’t wish to be told that it is a bull or bear market. What he desires is to be told specifically which particular stock to buy or sell. He wants to get something for nothing. He does not wish to work. He doesn’t even wish to have to think" Jesse L.
 
Humor of the Day:

1) $20 downtown parking
2) $10.11 lunch at Jury Food Court
3) $2.92 for post-lunch snacks
4) $1 given to homeless #1
5) $1 given to homeless #2
6) Daytrading Profit $415.50

Knowing you can take money out of the market on any given day: Priceless!
 
trader99 said:
No, not sure if I'll even open a Suretrade account and even if I did open one probably not that much given they are not well capitalized and not in US domicile do not make me that comfortable. So, it looks like maybe IB, but since IB is only 4:1 it will be a ways from now to build up to that level...

BTW, I'm "not" rich by and stretch of the imagination. Just a working professional who has good financial discipline, savings rate, and investing/trading knowledge.
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I would say, stay away from SureTrade, we can talk another time about them if you feel the need to open up with SureTrade. Rates on borrowing extremely hard to find Shorts is crazy plus often they can't locate them anyways so why brag about having the resources to help us Short from Pink to wild low float Exchange stocks if you can't find shares to borrow? That's one of my issues others are the customer service, your smart, you will figure it out soon
 
JesseJamesFinn said:
I would say, stay away from SureTrade, we can talk another time about them if you feel the need to open up with SureTrade. Rates on borrowing extremely hard to find Shorts is crazy plus often they can't locate them anyways so why brag about having the resources to help us Short from Pink to wild low float Exchange stocks if you can't find shares to borrow? That's one of my issues others are the customer service, your smart, you will figure it out soon
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Thanks for the words of caution. I'm NOT going to open a SureTrade. They don't seem as big and stable as IB. I'm pretty sure I'll open a second IB account. I already have my IRA on IB.

I'll open a taxable margin account on IB with probably at least $30K. But I'm waiting to make more money from my zero comm platform Robinhood before I do that.
 
JesseJamesFinn said:
One reason people leave websites like this is this long lived truth. I can't count how many of these fools I've put on ignore because all they want is you to do their trading, they lose money habitually and if you learn one thing from me, just this one thing, please "don't share your pearls with swine or cast holy things before dogs!"


Jesse said many things, I think his one gem stands out most to me. He said "It's not until you learn what not to do, that you will eventually learn what to do!" I think that phrase has helped me more than any. Your doing the right thing, keep trading and using your brain, don't rely on others and please don't share your ideas with losers or hoodoos! There's many good folks on Elite Trader, I like men like NoDoji, Xandman, Blakpackman, newwurld,Market Surfer, Maverick will help you, ignore those guys here that only bring their appetite to a dinner, Misers or Scrooges of Trading, too cheap to study or share!

"
But the average man doesn’t wish to be told that it is a bull or bear market. What he desires is to be told specifically which particular stock to buy or sell. He wants to get something for nothing. He does not wish to work. He doesn’t even wish to have to think" Jesse L.
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JesseJamesFinn,

You seem like a decent fellow and good trader. Good words of advice and wisdom. I've been on/off of ET for years. I know who the legit and cool guys are and who are the screaming losers.
The list of names you provided sound about right. Those guys are good guys.

I'm not planning to share my trading ideas, etc. I'm all about development and progress. No matter how good your trades have gone there could always be improvements. I could have sold more shares at $30. And another idea in terms of trading improvement is if I had more capital/leverage at my disposal, then when I realized that this was going to be a good mover I would doubled up and bought even more shares. Initially it could be 500 shares at 28.47 and once it starts to move I could go wild and buy 2000 to 5000 shares more and ride it. Or in a true prop, I could have build up a position of 10K-50K shares. There were enough liquidity there. haha. Only if..

So, there are plenty of opps for improvements.

Always be humble and constantly strive to improve.

Then the money will automatically come.

I barely looked at my P&L during the ride. I just want to make sure it's trending correctly and I'm getting out at good chart points. And I feel more proud of being able to hold that long for an intraday trade than the fact that I made $400 and change. That to me is nothing compared to the good trading skills I reinforce. Once I get those good trading skills down to a habit, then making tens of thousands(hopefully one day) per day will be automatic.

Or as Jesse Livermore said:

“It is literally true that millions come easier to a trader after he knows how to trade, than hundreds did in the days of his ignorance.”

While I'm not making millions(yet :) :D), my profits come more easily to me now than during my lost periods when I struggled to break even and had negative days on end plus saddled with high platform fees and charting software fees.

So, there's hope guys.

PS Still stuck here for jury duty. Can't wait to go home!
 
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How was Jury Duty? I like how you have the "Eye of the Tiger", the zeal many of us old geezers are lacking is refreshing! Your doing well my friend, we can help each other!
 
JesseJamesFinn said:
How was Jury Duty? I like how you have the "Eye of the Tiger", the zeal many of us old geezers are lacking is refreshing! Your doing well my friend, we can help each other!
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Jury Duty SUCKED! Was there all day. They didn't let us out until like 3:45PM. Waste of time. Tomorrow I gotta catch up on a lot of stuff for work!

Who said I was young? I'm NOT young. I'm not old geezer either.

I'm doing OK. Not that well. I'm just starting to build my account up. Don't want to get ahead of myself. I'm still on the journey. I said it would be nice to be able to swing a lot more shares. Hence this thread.

But today showed me I better diversify my strategy. While my swing trading has done well, there are days when it's highly VOLATILE. So, I need to move money to an IB account in order to do intraday trading and get more leverage.

I need to smooth out my equity curve. The swing trades have high variances.

Also, I think Robinhood is robbing people blind on market orders. I'm investigating why some of my market orders are WAY WAY out of line. Fortunately, I use limit order 99% of the time. The prices are ridiculous. But who can I complaint to? SEC?

I see this as a long journey. Started back in 2001 when I first started doing prop trading. Then back to corporate world in 2005. Since then being trading on/off on the side while working a FT corporate job. Only this year has everything clicks. So, I don't want to get ahead of myself. Bad trading habits and demons seemed to have subsided or been replaced by good trading habits and correct market thinking.

So, I think it will probably take me another 4-5yrs before I can really say I'm in the top 1%.

I know I feel like I've turned the corner. But it's not enough to go FT. I'll probably never go FT. It's nice to have the security of a well paying corporate job. It makes trading almost stress free.

I highly suggest all newbies to get a job and trade on the side. You view risk differently. And you can be more patient and focus on the skills and not worry about having to make enough to pay your bills every month and take unprudent risks. See trading as a long life journey to mastery. Get a job! Make your life easier. Enjoy yourself. Markets aren't everything.

Anyhow, I think I'll start opening an IB account. Move money over and eventually shut down Robinhood or leave just a smaller amount. I can't trust their execution and prices now that I did a deep dive of my earlier trades this year. Let's see..

Check back in 6months and hopefully I'm in a better shape.

Then again in 1 yr.

Hopefully in 4-5yrs, I will have a great story to tell how I used to be a piker losing trader and then overcame a lot of obstacles.

At least that's the dream.. let's see..
 
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Just Stay Alive and learn how to see the Market, nobody can put decades of watching time/sales and Level 2 action there. How did Traders make cash telegraphing?

Market Orders can be wicked, I think your Broker might be trying to avoid paying ECN fees or waiting to fill. The bigger Brokers have a 1 second execution agreement, how many $5.00 trades costed me $500 because their routing system sucked? More than I will share with you, good luck and hope you have a good day.



I am moving in to CCL, RCL, UA, HAS and NKE by adding slowly to those stocks since this morning, be safe!
 
Testing out my intraday strategies on test IB account. My Robinhood account I swing size. In order for me to do daytrading, I gotta be pretty sure it will work.

The jury duty intraday trade was nice last week on my Robinhood account ,but I want to find a consistent methodology before I dive back in to do larger scale daytrading. But I still feel like I haven't figured out a great workflow for daytrading. I'm looking at scanners. Some days there are great movers and today it was lackluster. So, I'm AMAZED at how you guys(daytraders) do it!

How can you guys find good movers every day?

Here's what I got so far before I have to head to work. haha.

Intraday:
MRK P&L: $104. Short @57.88. Covered at 57.78 to 58.74
LOW P&L: -$211 Short @69.17 Covered at 69.37. Now it's in the $67.42s. Cut losses short. Good.
GOOG: P&L: $231. Short $665.48 Covered at $665.19, $665.15, and $663.79. The spread is like 60 cents wide at times! Of course, now it's at 658.71! So, what I learned is that in daytrading there might a lot of small scratch trades. And when you have a good winner you gotta hold onto it!
Net daytrading P&L : $124. Kinda sad. But if I think about it, it's actually GREAT PROGRESS from my losing daytrading days when on any given day I would lose money gross(net is even worse!). Now, on any given day I can still make profit on test daytrading. It's a good sign.

Swing Trading: P&L in the thousands

So, until my daytrading P&L gets to be $1K-$2K on a test account, it's not worth to do larger scale daytrading yet. I don't want to move money to open an IB margin acct until I feel confident with daytrading strategies. I need to figure out a consistent workflow and methodology. But I feel like I'm doing the right things. Cutting losses. Holding onto winners. Identifying right trends.

It's just that with daytrading I have to constant scan and get in on what I think might be good movers..

So, again, how do you guys do it day in day out? Impressive if you can do that consistently.

P.S. Of course, GOOG is now $655.45 and MRK was $57.57. Hold onto winners. Works for swing trading and works for intraday swings! Good lesson learnt. Work conference call. Work from home in morning.
 
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