Unsuccessful trading with full-time job

Quote from SIUYA:

A question.....currently you are trading for intra-day moves.
but you end up scalping?
If so stop right there.....and as others suggest develop a plan for either scalping OR trading intraday moves based on what you want to do.
If you scalp with a profitable tested plan and watch the markets for 1 hour and there are no scalping opportunities - so what - go to work. Come back tomorrow. Then based on what you would have done later that night see if you would have made money had you been there all day. (be honest with yourself as denial is strong)
If you intraday trade with a profitable tested plan and find you need more action and hence meddle then fix that problem, by getting the trading style that suits what you want to do.

....but hey - as this advice is free it must be dishonest, unhelpful, and only given for my approval. :)

- if you prefer to keep sending your cash into the market - that works just as well for me.

I suppose I should clarify that I watch for intra-day moves and scalp those. Typically there is always a scalp, but either its overpriced/reverses too fast. One of the things I am trying to improve is finding a good scalp that doesnt reverse too easily
 
Quote from dbphoenix:

Well said.

If whoever you're reading isn't telling you exactly HOW and WHY he's entering a trade, you're reading fiction. Why people weave these tapestries may be a subject for extensive discussion, but none of it will make you a dime.

Aside from the ethics of cheating one's employer, can one trade at work? Yes. Can one make any money doing it? Of course not. If one wants to make money trading, he has to put in the work. But only a very few are willing to do the work. Thus those who frequent these forums transition from extreme gullibility to extreme skepticism without ever having bothered to do any actual work other than reading posts.

If whomever you're reading has been at this for two or three or five or ten years and still isn't making anywhere close to a living at it, you're being fed a line of bull. Study the market. Develop a plan. Test it. Develop it further. Trade it. Tweak it. Anything else is a complete waste of time.

You are all about the "plan". I don't think it's bad advice. Can you provide examples of plans that have worked for you?
 
Quote from wrbtrader:

When you were doing it part-time, what were your strategies?

This entire forum is full of strategies (in-depth details) by traders that said the strategy works for them. Simply, just do some research and scroll down the forum after you log in. You'll see sections called like Options, Order Execution, Trade Management, Strategy Design and many other threads that may or may not be of interest to you.


If you can't find something specific that you're looking for...use the search function here @ http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/search.php?s=

You just need to spend a lot of time reading/learning/testing to develop your own trading style instead of expecting someone here at ET to do it for you without really knowing if the problem is really your method, just you or a combination of both.

How would you manage your trades when you had school/work?

The same way I task manage everything else in my life. It was simple. I didn't study at work. I didn't try to do work at school. I didn't trade while in class. I didn't trade when I needed to do homework or prepare for an exam. I didn't trade when at work. I didn't ask the boss for extra hours when I could be trading.

If I was in a trade and it was time to go to class, time to go to work, time to do homework, time to go to sleep, time to go exercise, time to fool around with my girlfriend...

Use stop/loss protection (I intended posted this first after the girlfriend statement above). :D

Were you successful?

Yes, I was successful. In order of importance....good grades in college, good employee when I went to work, good relationship with my girlfriend and made profits when trading.

My point above, if you're going to be multitasking, I think it will help if you prioritize your life to prevent from getting lost...seriously. Therefore, considering you only mention your job and trading as if there wasn't an issue with anything else in your life...if trading is more important than your job, another option to consider is that you get a different job that allows you to put in the proper time to study the markets and doesn't conflict with your trading. In fact, there's several ET members that did exactly that because trading was that important to them...they got a different job that was compatible to their trading schedule.

Thanks. I'll consider all of that to create a plan.
 
Quote from RichardRimes:

1) The issue with work is more mental. Can you turn/tune your mind to trading easily during your hours of commute/getting ready/lunch? Or is your job so demanding that you can't focus on trading during your down time?

2) switch to futures options..ES, CL, TF, or others. The ES is suitable for the retail trader just be very aware of the margin structure, need to be very disciplined. You can set up trades like strangles on them and not have to micro manage them, can make adjustments even when market is closed.

3) 25K per 1 option contract, 30K if doing a strangle...don't set $$ goals until you understand what you are doing...let it happen. Sometimes goals become handcuffs.

6) I don't script or code...just have a lifetime of experience and an amazing platform that does all of that for me. I can look at any study and easily visualize option strategies and intuitively know what it will do or not do for me.

My job isn't demanding anymore than demanding my presence for at least 8 working hours.

I'll have to take a look at futures.

Which platform do you use?
 
Quote from k p:

I don't want to steer you away from the great advice of having to develop your own plan and not following others, but this one journal comes to mind that I thought would be particularly useful because this gentleman worked and traded like you are trying to do.

His secret was that he stuck to his game plan. He has a system for money management, he had a track record of knowing how often his trades worked out, and he followed his system to the T and it worked well for him.

It is a long read but essentially he put on trades that he thought would work out, but trades that he knew he was only ever 50% right about. He had a defined profit target and a defined stop loss of 2:1, so he would either make $400 or lose $200. You can see that being right 50% of the time would still produce a very nice profit. Although he couldn't use more automated order types such as an OCO order, this is essentially what he was doing. Once the trade was on it didn't matter what happened because it would either hit his target or his stop loss. The psychology of it all was essentially taken out. Once he saw a good setup he just put the trade on and was done with it until it came time to exit, but he never hesitated to take his profit or his loss. He would put on an average of 4 trades a day, and some days he lost all 4. But he knew his long term average was being 50% right so he wasn't swayed but a slight losing streak. His setups were quite simple, he described them half way into the thread, and he just took them each time he saw them.

Anyway.. hope you enjoy the link and hope it gives you some inspiration. From everything I've read on trading, intelligence has nothing to do with it. A plan that has been shown to work that you stick to is really all that is necessary.

Also, if you read a book by Mark Douglas, Trading In The Zone, about the psychology of trading, this might help as well.

http://elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=148752

Thanks for the book recommendation and link. I'll check it out.
 
Quote from th3moneytrain:

You are all about the "plan". I don't think it's bad advice. Can you provide examples of plans that have worked for you?

Here's one way of doing it. It's only a start.

Gringo
 
Quote from cmb:

FDAX in the morning. Also USD/JPY in the evenings. And The Korean Stock exchange indice.

So basically futures and forex. Can you elaborate on how you trade Korean tickers? Do you mean Korean stocks? I didn't know that Americans could trade Korean exchanges.
 
Quote from NoDoji:

I was in a chat room with Geez every day from pre-market through the close for the duration of his journal (which he ditched due to spam) and for many months thereafter.

He traded from a laptop while managing a full time job. Because he was an independent contractor, his work hours were flexible, allowing him to trade the RTH session without too much interruption much of the time, but there were always some work-related interruptions each day and also days where he was unable to trade for several hours.

He told me had 8 years of trading experience and he had conducted a thorough study of statistics surrounding the setups he traded when I met him in early 2009. This statistical analysis allowed him to handle 5 losers in a row without issue, and allowed him to watch price come .01 from a profit target and reverse all the way back to stop him out. I'd ask why he didn't take profit sooner or move the stop to break even and he said that in the long run his experience showed that the method he used to manage trades was optimal.

He had a screener that would alert him to a specific level of relative strength or weakness in the stocks/ETFs he traded. Once he got an alert he would announce it and he would announce the trades in advance (he placed buy stops and sell stops to enter trades), with the stops and targets. He would buy or sell little pullbacks following the signal of strength or weakness, so he was always trading in the direction of an intraday trend.

When a stock or ETF signaled and he knew where a technically reasonable stop loss would have to go, this was used to determine his position size. The profit target would be twice the stop loss.

It was all so mysterious to me to see him apply a pure trader's mindset in real time. At that time there was no way I could imagine myself putting on the trades he did (I was a counter-trend trader who faded strength and weakness to scalp profits off the pullbacks) and when I'd see him buying near brand new highs or selling near brand new lows, then see price end up hitting his target, it felt like pure magic.

I never mirrored a single trade of his because I didn't understand any of it (I had about a year of experience and I use the term "experience" loosely).

His results were far beyond the bet he made, closer to 100% return, despite a $22K hit he took due to forgetting to cancel an unfilled order at the end of the day of a RIMM earnings call.

I think of Geez often each week because I now buy strength and sell weakness, and it still feels like some sort of magic when price runs even further. His words of wisdom are with me all the time.

This is exactly my style. But I'm lacking confidence in it because of my failures and becaus all I hear is buy low/sell high. My experience has been the same as you have seen. Some days the buying of highs goes even higher beyond belief and that's where I have made most of the money. However I lose it eventually b/c I try doing that with similar plays to have those plays reverse on me. I haven't been able to quantify this buy when high move because I don't know how to discern which one will run and which one will turn.

Do you have link to his posts?
 
Quote from Redneck:

“I don’t want to discredit …..”

The hell you say… yet you said it

Be passive... or be aggressive – never co-mingle the two...

And for Christ sakes never fake humility

Mkt will tear ya a new ass on both accounts


Above is by no means an attack or accusation... rather an observation

===============

First one must understand it not so much about the flaws / insecurities / inadequacies one has – we all have them

Rather…, it’s about being able to accept same – then operate in spite of same

===============

As to a few other aspects separating the few from the many

In no certain order mind you....

Trader’s mindset; I use this term…, immediately a few know exactly what I’m referencing – whereas the majority…, think it vaporware / being obtuse / mysticism / guru-ism / zen

Plan / methodology/ approach; few are tedious/ diligent / tenacious / motivated enough to develop a plan / methodology / approach that works – yet fewer can follow same unwaveringly day in and day out till retirement

Humble / adaptable / unbiased / open / focused; few are – fewer are able to remain so (especially once they begin making money)

Detail orientated/ intuitive; few look at a chart and pick up on the nuances – or pick up on participant’s intent / emotion

Uncertainty; few thoroughly understand / accept it – yet fewer are totally comfortable operating in it

No one knows – few completely believe this – see directly above

Losing; few are comfortable losing easily…, or as required

Able to analyze multiple views…, distill to an actionable thesis…, easily abandon this thesis and move on to the next

Thinking one’s opinion matters

Getting past thinking being wrong is somehow bad / demeaning

Objective and dispassionate

Knowing the difference between luck & skill

Success thrives within simplicity..., repetition..., sizing up

Getting past all the bullshit this business espouses

Obsessive adherence to simple honesty

Understanding trading entails managing self – first…, foremost…, till retirement

Respect; for colleagues - for money

======================

Above…, but the very tip of the proverbial iceberg which separates

RN

I wasn't try to fake humility. I just wasn't clear in my writing. I should've said, "I don't want to discredit your response until I know what you were trying to say exactly".

In any case, I appreciate your response and opinion regarding the right mindset. Thanks.
 
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