Question for Traders Who's Main Income Comes From Trading
- Thread starter JRL
- Start date
Its part of the FAILFAILFAIL thing I previously mentioned, you are not worthy of a mentor and you are a set fail as already this early in your career you say things on a forum that others don't believe to be true.
With the limited experience you have chances are you will step on a land mine or two, I know people who demo traded for a long time and it all went to crap when they went live, I know others who have been consistently profitable from the start using nothing more than fibs/support-resistance.
They don't have there nervous system fried because there dealing with money, they have rules, they cut a loss without exception, they can let a winner run without acting like a child and being forced to take it, they can cut a trade there and then because they don't like how the market is behaving...that trade can turn out to be a huge one and the fact they missed it matters little.
Trading is boring, lock the opinion out and use nothing but the relevant economic information, observe well enough to know when you are going wrong and learn to quickly correct it..this is all you can do.
Its surprising what can take place if things are left simple straight forward and one doesent spend 90% of there time reading the pains and difficultys of others on forums
Quote from sheda:
Its part of the FAILFAILFAIL thing I previously mentioned, you are not worthy of a mentor and you are a set fail as already this early in your career you say things on a forum that others don't believe to be true.
Its surprising what can take place if things are left simple straight forward and one doesent spend 90% of there time reading the pains and difficultys of others on forums
Yeah, no kidding.
Guys like Jack Hershey can say what they want, with as much arrogance as they want, and try to make people believe that trading is some sort of complex science that only a few genetically advanced individuals are equipped to do, but I'm not buying it for a second. Traders don't split atoms, they attempt to profit from price fluctuations. That's it.
Have you ever heard the expression don't feed the troll? This applies to you.
@JRL: I'm going to attempt to summarize what some people have already said here, omitting the insane and stupid, and focusing on the constructive and helpful:
If you want to learn to trade, specifically with the goal in mind to have it become your primary source of income, a number of things will have to take place. For starters, it will take time. Paper trading is a great way to gain exposure, but you definitely need more than just 10 days. It can take weeks, months, or even years to encounter all of the various market conditions and fluctuations, and this is even more true in today's volatile economic environment. Secondly, it's going to take money -- money you CAN afford to lose -- but at some point, yes, you will lose. Paper trading is nice, but real money isn't on the line. Never invest money you can't live with out or will break the bank if your portfolio suddenly turned to zero. That's not only bad for your financial and personal health, but emotionally as well. Maybe you can keep your emotions in check, whether that's because you're a CPA with experience in finance or not, but in the rather strong case where you can't, you don't want your fear of "losing it all" to add to your worries. Part of trading and developing a plan of your own involves determining proper entry and exit points, and these can get altered drastically when real money is on the life, particularly money again that you determine that you can't afford to lose.
With this in mind, there is nothing quite like real world experience, so if you have the money to invest, start practicing and start out small. Pick one stock to trade, watch it, and try to predict what it will do next. Again, develop your "plan" and determine how you're going to attempt to come up with predictions for price movement, whether that be fundamental analysis, technicals, etc.
The bottom line is, there is no pattern trader or investor -- Joe Publc can be just as much of an investor as Warren Buffet, and vice versa, but it won't happen overnight.
Quote from NJDfan1711:
@JRL: I'm going to attempt to summarize what some people have already said here, omitting the insane and stupid, and focusing on money again that you can't afford to lose.:
Have you ever heard the expression don't feed the troll? This applies to you.
If you want to learn to trade, money again that you can't afford to lose. Maybe you can keep your emotions in check, whether that's because you're a CPA with experience in finance or not, but money again that you can't afford to lose. Part of trading and developing a plan of your own involves determining the money again, that you can't afford to lose.
ahh...there is nothing quite like real world experience
The bottom line is, with this in mind try to predict what it will do next.But remember, again money ,that you can't afford to lose
i just paraphrased you a bit,if you don`t mind
Rather than listen to all of the disparate opinions, many of them negative, do what you think is right, albeit in a limited way. My guess is you want to try it live. While your simulated experience is very limited, it seems to be quite favorable. If I were in your place, and if I could limit the risk on a number of trades to money I could very easily live without, then I would take it out for a spin. The obvious downside is the risk of a limited amount of money. The upside is a quick education on whether you're on the right track. If you are on the right track, then you will continue on it and improve as you go. If not, then you will have cues on the changes that will be required. Either way, you will have added to your education.
People speak about the emotional impact of live trading. While indeed it is very real, you can just as easily get behind the emotional eight ball from reading everyone else's opinion about it. Be circumspect about adding other people's emotional residue to your own, especially that of anonymous others. Form your own opinion in small, affordable steps and ignore the noise.
But don't listen to me.
I suppose your strategy is something in the line of reversal strategy where you put long and short limit orders that are close with each other.
The reason why this kind of strategy will have different real time result than simulation is that you're bounded to miss (non fills) some of the winners where as in simulation you would most likely get filled for every trades that have touched your limit orders.
So in short the losing trade will be exactly the same for both real trades and simulation but you will have fewer winning trades in real life than in simulation.
Hope it helps.
Good point. However, if I am not mistaken, the better simulation platforms give more realistic fills for limit orders. I assumed that JRL was using such realistic simulation software. If he is not, then perhaps now would be a good time to tell him to do so before committing money to the test.
Sheesh, give the guy a friggin' break someone. He's done ok papertrading, so that merits 12 pages of doom and gloom?
JRL, papertrading is suspect for the reasons noted, no skin in the game and fills. My advice is to get some backtesting s/w and code your method and see how it does. If you can't code it, right there that is a danger sign because it suggests you are guessing.
Anyway, CL is a big contract and a fast market given to big swings. Not ideal for a beginner but if that's what you have a passion for, that's what you are going to want to trade. I wouldn't waste a lot of time papertrading. Papertrading to me is mainly a means of getting the mechanics of entering and exiting trades down pat. With IB, it is actually easy to buy when you meant to sell, etc so practice is good but a few days is plenty. I don't think it is a reliable way of proving a methodology.
Do yourself a couple of favors though. Be adequately capitalized. For the big CL contract, I would want maybe $50k in account equity to trade a one lot. I know many here will say that is absurd. The problem is that CL can easily move 50-60 points in a few minutes. You don't want to risk more than 1 or 1.5% of your account on any one trade. So to have a stop that is wide enough, you might find yourself taking 50 point stop losses. That's a $500 loss, so you would need a 50k account to keep risk in check.
Second, whatever you do, do not let one or two trades ruin your day, week, month etc. CL can make enormous moves. It can literally eat you up if you let a trade get away from you. Far better to take a few losses than risk a blowout.
I am not a fan of scalping or taking a lot of trades per day. It will not work over time, that I am convinced of. If you're taking a large number, ie 8-10 trades a day in this market, I would say you might want to rethink things.
Take my suggestions with a grain of salt, as you should everything you read here. Good luck.