Quote from nitro:
JII,
In order to become a professional trader, you have to have all of your shit (skills) "together." Any part where you have a weakness always seems to be the time when the market seems to punish you hard, and weeks of gains can disappear in a trade or two.
There are skills that all of us have to master in order to become good traders, like the "cliches" that are stated in my signature. You have to remeber though, that I am a pure daytrader and therefore some of those things will make less sense or be of less importance to someone with a longer time frame. For example, the longer your time frame, the less important is the _exact_ entry into the market. Also, "costs" are not likely to be an issue, etc. I at least wanted to comment on that aspect of my "philosophy."
In either case, if you are trading intraday, what possible other motivation could you have other than a _psychological_ one for entering and exiting a trade in the smallest time frames? Does the value of GE change from 1 minute to the next by millions (billions) of dollars? Do the spoos? I think not, and yet GE moves by millions of dollars from one minute to the next?
In my time frame, it is clear then that trading is a human activity (except for program trading for arbitrage opportunities ,which is a huge part of the market) Also remember, the reason the particular market _exists_ - e.g., to allow hedgers to hedge themselves, to allow us to have retirement money, etc. Most people work their way _forward_ from learning systems or technical patterns, etc. I instead have worked myself _backwards_ from the psychological aspects of trading and the reason the particular instrument I am trading _exists_, and the context of that instrument in the world that is the rest of the market. That is, I ask myself, _when_ do I want to buy and _when_ do I want to sell (in the presence of knowing that trading is a human activity,) and _how_ aggresive do I think this trade deserves? Once you answer those questions, the whole of my signature and all of technical analysis will start to make sense to you.
nitro
.) Impatient exits? Hardly, more like "strict discipline on stops." 1 lots yes. I do not feel comfortable trading more than 1 - 5 at a time at this moment. When I trade equities, 2000 shares at a time is my sweet spot when the liquidity is there. As I get my commission structure down, I will bump my size up to 3 - 8 as my risk tolerance warrants it.
!)