Quote from NoDoji:
Let's just say if we were transported back to high school, there's a chance I might pass you in the hall.
Would you say hi?
You have a good point there. Not only did I announce yesterday on the ES Journal I was leaving my desk, better yet, I snuck back to my trading platform to put on another trade during a very boring range, knowing full well what happens after I leave, and grabbed another 6 points.
LMAO, you go girl. I need to send you my # so you can give me a heads up the next time.
They're only dangerous if you make eye contact with your screen after a trade is on. Geez has the right idea; as soon as your order is filled, you bracket a stop and target and quickly avert your eyes to avoid the seizure potential of seeing your P/L rapidly flash red and green.
Bracket this! No, I will not donate $ for your pooch! At least not yet.
Trading - like riding a bike?
- Thread starter oldschool
- Start date
$350 a day?
With all your background experience it doesnt matter one bit. Its pretty obvious you are undercapitalized. Trading with a sub $50,000 account will be like most on here - a bunch of gamblers who will churn their accounts being active traders when they need to be passive.
Good luck but I think you need to get real with yourself and choose another profession.
With all your background experience it doesnt matter one bit. Its pretty obvious you are undercapitalized. Trading with a sub $50,000 account will be like most on here - a bunch of gamblers who will churn their accounts being active traders when they need to be passive.
Good luck but I think you need to get real with yourself and choose another profession.
Let's me answer by saying that I'm not capitalized at all. If you noticed, I never stated what my starting cap is. I hope you can read between the lines. After 9 years, I know it'll take time to get used to today's markets.
Thanks for your input, and no doubt new traders should heed your advice.
os
WE 5/7/10 recap: (WE = week ending)
I certainly picked a good/bad time to trade again. Still having problems with LS, mostly with the hotkeys and the horrible charts. One of the biggest challenges is trying to figure out all the variables for the hotkey configuration. I don't remember having so many options. With the vol pickup, it was difficult to get comfortable with the mkts moving the way they did this week.
I did increase my size to 200 lots from 100. Unfortunately, this was probably not the best week to do so. My executions sucked. Fumbling around with the hotkeys is a bit frustrating. Like many of you, there were times when I added to a position rather than getting flat as well as some other usual suspects. All operator errors, no one to blame but myself. On a brighter note, I have managed to at least layout the screens to reflect what I'm used to seeing. Learning a new platform is taking a bit longer than I expected.
Setups: I used to trade about 5 setups. 3 of them are totally useless now. 2 of them still seem to work. No secret here, for now I am only trading 2 setups. Hopefully without the operator errors, I should have better results.
I wish I had some good #'s to report given the week's action, but didn't happen. I'm learning that although riding the bike is the same, the bike itself has changed. So rather than learning how to ride again, I think the better analogy is learning about the new bike. Kind of like riding an old 500cc thumper vs. a modern full liter bike with an on-board computer controlling the way a bike functions.
I'm going to post my #'s rather than the blotter.
I will post the blotter once a month so it can be verified.
The copying, editing the acct # and posting is a bit of a chore.
WE: 5/7/10
(329), (601), (553), +622, (539) = (1,399)
YTD: Start 4/21/10
(1,350)
Have a great weekend everyone.
os
.
I certainly picked a good/bad time to trade again. Still having problems with LS, mostly with the hotkeys and the horrible charts. One of the biggest challenges is trying to figure out all the variables for the hotkey configuration. I don't remember having so many options. With the vol pickup, it was difficult to get comfortable with the mkts moving the way they did this week.
I did increase my size to 200 lots from 100. Unfortunately, this was probably not the best week to do so. My executions sucked. Fumbling around with the hotkeys is a bit frustrating. Like many of you, there were times when I added to a position rather than getting flat as well as some other usual suspects. All operator errors, no one to blame but myself. On a brighter note, I have managed to at least layout the screens to reflect what I'm used to seeing. Learning a new platform is taking a bit longer than I expected.
Setups: I used to trade about 5 setups. 3 of them are totally useless now. 2 of them still seem to work. No secret here, for now I am only trading 2 setups. Hopefully without the operator errors, I should have better results.
I wish I had some good #'s to report given the week's action, but didn't happen. I'm learning that although riding the bike is the same, the bike itself has changed. So rather than learning how to ride again, I think the better analogy is learning about the new bike. Kind of like riding an old 500cc thumper vs. a modern full liter bike with an on-board computer controlling the way a bike functions.
I'm going to post my #'s rather than the blotter.
I will post the blotter once a month so it can be verified.
The copying, editing the acct # and posting is a bit of a chore.
WE: 5/7/10
(329), (601), (553), +622, (539) = (1,399)
YTD: Start 4/21/10
(1,350)
Have a great weekend everyone.
os
.
Looks like my P/L when I first started trading with IB a year ago. Let's see, hit buy instead of sell, sell instead of buy, right-click instead of left-click, left-click in stead of right-click, change qty field and forget to change it back before closing a position, position I didn't know I had on gaps against me overnight, and so on. I didn't know until about 2 months later I had a sim account available to me with IB and could've actually practiced without damage.
Or maybe it was my age showing
Quote from NoDoji:
Looks like my P/L when I first started trading with IB a year ago. Let's see, hit buy instead of sell, sell instead of buy, right-click instead of left-click, left-click in stead of right-click, change qty field and forget to change it back before closing a position, position I didn't know I had on gaps against me overnight, and so on. I didn't know until about 2 months later I had a sim account available to me with IB and could've actually practiced without damage.
Or maybe it was my age showing
Hi ND,
Congrats on your record day recently. I have a feeling that your record #s will continue to grow as your skills seem to be going parabolic lately. The most frustrating part for me is that I decided to trade again when I saw the tape starting to act like a big move was coming. Just a shame that I didn't start a month ago to get the platform learning curve out of the way. But there's always next week, month...
Trading SIM: I never traded sim for one reason. Call me a fool, but for me, nothing reinforces lessons like making or losing real money - even small money. Further, trading sim never gave me the "real" feel of being in a trade. Since I have a hard max loss/day, this never bothers me. When I'm' not trading well, I will just shut down on my own before hitting my daily stop. So far, no real complaints, I didn't expect to put up any good numbers right away.
os
PS: Since you're only 27, I doubt it was your age.
Thanks OS. Not long ago breaking $1000 day seemed so remote with the small size I was trading. I had a choice, either size up or learn to let winners run. I like limited risk, so I've been working really hard on letting my winners run. I spent so much time focused on how to lose properly I had no idea how to win properly. Fortunately a few guys here got on my case about it and I hate when people get on my case. It's like saying to me, "I dare you to..." I'll take the bait. (Now feel free to dare me to have a 5-figure winning day.)
I already had my face slammed into sidewalk at length my first year and half trading real money, so the lessons about risk management were firmly reinforced. The experienced left me fearful and gun shy. I had reduced my size significantly and practiced good risk management day after day. I also realized that the way I was trading was not safe and I didn't feel I would have a true edge until I reached the point I could trade anything put in front of me and come out net profitable.
Around this time I found out I had a sim account available to me and decided to hone some strategies. My sim platform looks and feels identical to my live platform and by discovering and practicing successful strategies over and over again while FEELING NO FEAR anchored the act of TRADING WITHOUT FEAR into my psyche. I agree that trading very small size with real money does the same thing, but I was testing all kinds of strategies and didn't want to throw money away during the testing phase.
Once I was over the fear of losing I was free to focus on learning to let winners run.
The boy plunger said that when you stop losing money, you start making money. Think I butchered another phrase. ugh.
Personally, I think the fear of losing comes from a lack of confidence to bail when you're wrong. Some are disciplined enough to close out a losing position manually while others (geez comes to mind) always places hard stops.
I have been trying to create an custom OCO order through Lightspeed, but I'm not sure if it's possible. I did find an interesting thing which I need to verify next week. I had a long position with a hard SL. When the stock hit my profit target, I exited the position. Then I saw the SL I placed get canceled. I'm not sure if I accidentally touched a cancel key or the LS system recognized that i had closed the position and therefore canceled the corresponding SL on its own. I am hoping for latter.
os