Question for successful day traders

T

toad57

A question for the plethora of 'successful' day traders that hang out here: :D

Definition: You made more money than you lost in the last 6-12 months after expenses and can consistantly 'bring home the bacon', not "well, I got lucky today - I'm in the black".

Just curious... anyone care to share how much time & money (and pain?) you spent developing a 'successful' day-trading method/strategy? Did you learn your technique from someone else or develop it yourself?

Thanks,

Mr. Toad
 
It took me about 3 months of consistent losses, frustration, anxiety, depression and insomnia to admit that this was gonna be harder than I thought.

Cost during this period (including data, software, books etc) - $5000 (note: this number would be bigger, but I made $2500 in my second week and thought, "man this is EASY")

After realising and admitting that I was lacking in knowledge and methods it took another 2-3 months of "slow bleeding" before I developed the confidence and competence to consistently make money. Biggest differenc between first period and second? The revolutionary idea of .... wait for it ..... cutting my losses short!
I simply can't stress it enough how much importance I put on keeping losses small.

Cost during this period - about $2000

Where am I today? At the point where I make money - ie, am net positive for the day - 70% of the time. (Because my method is, I believe, fundamentally sound, and it takes 15-25 trades a day, the odds are that I'll have a positive day a lot more often than not.) The good thing is, having say 2 or 3 losing days in a row, which, I admit, does happen, doesn't really shake my confidence much.

Currently working on myself, with a variety of "self help" methods(go ahead - laugh!) to play bigger size. That's something I have trouble with, as in my early days, as soon as I felt I was "on", I would bump up my size and inevitably have my biggest losing days. (And if this doesn't work, well, I can always open a chatroom! :D )

BTW, I developed all of my methods by myself. It would've been great to speak to some successful traders, such as some here on ET, but at the time I didn't know places like this existed.


Daniel
 
Hi there,

No one would teach you a successful trading model, or at least that's my personal opinion, but rather many would teach trading tools (technical or fundamental tools), then with a set of trial and error you'd hopefully build your own.

I kept winning at the beginning as I was managing other people's money, but once started managing my own, I won some lost some for at least a year, before finally taming myself to abide by my descipline as if I was managing someone else's money. "Discipline" is the word !

Meanwhile, it took me 8 years to build my automated trading model, which saved me a tremendous amount of daily time wasted on visual inspection.
 
It all started in a little shack in the hills of West Georgia. I was born in...........well the rest is history. I think there was a thread very similiar to this awhile back. Someone may remember the name of it.
 
Originally posted by easyrider
It all started in a little shack in the hills of West Georgia.
More...

<i>Huh? I am not a bum, I'm a jerk. I once had wealth, power, and the love of a beautiful woman. Now I only have two things. My friends and... uh... my thermos. Huh? My story? O.k. It was never for easy for me. I was born a poor black child. I remember the days sitting on the porch with my family singing and dancing, down in Mississippi...</i>
 
Toad,

About two years to become profitable consistently. Just under $22K in capitol and $5K in educational materials nd software.
 
I think there was a thread very similiar to this awhile back. Someone may remember the name of it.
More...

If someone finds the above topic, please post a link.
 
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