Watch a Newbie Blow his account

Quote from JimmyJam:

This is all wrong.

You have to totally re-orient your mind to what is happening in the here and now when trading futures, not what you think, or feeling like you got bad luck, or whatever.
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You can either learn how to trade using a one-lot, and scale-up from there, or continue BS'ing around here.

Your choice.

Jimmy Jam
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That is true. Dwelling on the past is not helpful. I have been trying to adapt and will need to cool down on the trading for a while. It would be hard for me to trade 1 lot maybe 3 or 4 might be the sweet spot.
 
Quote from laputa:

flipflopper, try go back to stocks for now if it's working for you. Making 300 trades long/short and trippling your account doesn't seem like luck at all and I think you should continue to do it. Why stop doing something that works and do something that doesn't?

The future market is different in that it's an index and has underlying components, and that means it's going to reverse against you much more often than stock (ie. underlying cancels out each other). Also, the daily range of index has been at its low point for many years and that means it is going to reverse against you even more. If you do index, you might need to do fades and it's not the easiest thing to do. I think it's not wise to throw money at it especially you're doing well with stocks.

If you need more leverage with stocks, try go prop, or find a broker that let you use the new Reg-T margin, it should help. I'm not too familiar with it, but heard that 6-8x leverage is possible with diversified portfolio, depending on the so-called Value-At-Risk of your portfolio...
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That is exactly the biggest difference. These indexes seem to turn on a dime. I was able to ride stocks that were trending much easier. Once I get my account back over 25K it will probably be stocks moving forward.
 
Quote from jmjatlanta:

These helped me...

Trading for a Living
http://www.amazon.com/Trading-Livin...8380827?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1179943261&sr=8-1

Trading in the Zone
http://www.amazon.com/Trading-Zone-...8380827?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1179943342&sr=1-1

Both stress these three things:

Your trading plan must have a positive expectancy.

Money management rules will kill, hurt, or save you.

A professional has control of is psycological self. An amateur does not.
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I have and have read both those books. Very helpful. I think futures have been the death of me. But I've learned a hell of a lot.
 
Quote from flipflopper:

The corporate gig was draining. I was up at 6:30 PST to trade. Left for the office at 9 got there at 10 worked/traded till 1 left the office at 7 got home at 8 had a quick snack for dinner then hit gym and straight to bed to do it 4 more times that week.
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A whole 1-hour commute, 3 hours of trading on the company dime (thus an effective 6-hour work day) all for a measly $140k. Rough, I can imagine. :p
 
Quote from Trader KGB:

A whole 1-hour commute, 3 hours of trading on the company dime (thus an effective 6-hour work day) all for a measly $140k. Rough, I can imagine. :p
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No worries!! I just wanted more downtime, time to spend with my girl. She works close to our place so we have lunch together at 1 everyday. I have time for myself between 2-5:30 hit the gym at around 6 watch tivo or movie at night. We have a nice pad on the beach with a view of downtown SF from the bedroom and livingroom. Got a 50 inch pioneer plamsa that I'm finally getting to know a little better!! HD DVD, player series 3 tivo, Xbox 360. Have a nice home office with 3 24 inch lcds, humanscale freedom chair. Why would I want to leave this?!?!

It's a dream. I get to live it for a little while longer!!
 
SLD 6 YM 13623 10:29:19
BOT 6 YM 13603 10:58:45
BOT 6 YM 13592 11:16:22
SLD 6 YM 13579 11:19:04
BOT 6 YM 13560 11:46:38
SLD 6 YM 13576 11:56:51
SLD 6 YM 13565 12:22:56
BOT 6 YM 13574 12:24:40

Summary of Trades:

Took the morning off. I usually do better in the afternoon anyways. Well, it only took the threat of nuclear holocaust to get my 20 point short to work. But I got it. Tried to buy the bounce after the initial Iran panic selling but it didn't hold and I got stopped out. After the next wave of selling finished I put a buystop about 10 points above S1. Hit my target for 16 points there. then tried to scalp a short that got stopped within 2 minutes. Green is good.

Net for the day: + 317
Account total: 17,627
 
Quote from flipflopper:

No worries!! I just wanted more downtime, time to spend with my girl. She works close to our place so we have lunch together at 1 everyday. I have time for myself between 2-5:30 hit the gym at around 6 watch tivo or movie at night. We have a nice pad on the beach with a view of downtown SF from the bedroom and livingroom. Got a 50 inch pioneer plamsa that I'm finally getting to know a little better!! HD DVD, player series 3 tivo, Xbox 360. Have a nice home office with 3 24 inch lcds, humanscale freedom chair. Why would I want to leave this?!?!

It's a dream. I get to live it for a little while longer!!
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You're in a good place, so don't sweat it. I'll add to the consensus that you need to trade smaller. Your success was in spot [equities], so I suggest you trade what you know and paper-trade the index futures until you hit a profitability milestone.
 
BOT 3 YM 13530 8:42:16
SLD 1 YM 13550 8:57:09
SLD 2 YM 13550 8:57:09
SLD 3 YM 13520 10:43:30
BOT 3 YM 13537 10:59:33
SLD 3 YM 13499 11:36:48
BOT 3 YM 13479 11:38:56
BOT 3 YM 13487 11:56:56
SLD 3 YM 13471 11:58:01
BOT 3 YM 13470 12:20:33
SLD 3 YM 13454 12:37:39
BOT 3 YM 13458 12:46:46
SLD 1 YM 13469 13:04:23
SLD 1 YM 13469 13:04:23
SLD 1 YM 13469 13:04:23


1 YM 06-07 Standard 1 and 1 Short 4 4/25/1937 0:00 4/5/1937 0:00 5/24/2007 7:27 5/24/2007 7:39 Target1 382.16
2 YM 06-07 Standard 1 and 1 Short 1 4/25/1937 0:00 4/5/1937 0:00 5/24/2007 7:27 5/24/2007 7:39 Target1 95.54
3 YM 06-07 Standard 1 and 1 Short 1 4/25/1937 0:00 4/5/1937 0:00 5/24/2007 7:27 5/24/2007 7:39 Target1 95.54
4 YM 06-07 Super Scalp Short 6 2/22/1937 0:00 2/6/1937 0:00 5/24/2007 7:54 5/24/2007 7:56 Target1 453.24


Trade Summary:

Not sure why all my trades are not showing up on the Executions section of IB. Caught it in Ninja Trader Report though and I'll attach that. Anyways pretty decent day. This is what I imagined a bad day would have been like if I was a great trader. My first trade was a short of 6 cars at 13360 and again a nasty comment from Iran got me my 20 points. I then shorted another break on sell stop for another 20 points. Tried to scalp unsuccessfully and gave back 8 points on the long side.

The rest of the day I cut my position side in half and overtraded. Did ok. coulda been better coulda been worse.

Net Change: + 716
Account Total: 17,970
 
Trade Summary:

Again not sure why IB didn't capture all my trades. Probably because I restarted TWS during the day. I'm posting Ninja Trader results again. Really traded badly today and still came out positive so I can't complain. Success and failure on any given day seems to be razor thin. Hit a good 20 point trade to start off the day. Cut my postion size in half and tried different risk reward strategies that all ended in failure. I started becoming frustrated and I almost ruined another 20 point gainer when the trade went 19 ticks in my favor (with my cover limit order 1 tick away) and started turning around I lowered my stop to break even then recognized that this was a common mistake I have made in the past so I replaced the original stop. I would have been stopped out for break even. Since I reverted to the original plan I ended up with a 20 point gainer which then left my mind clear and not pissed at a bad turn of events and allowed me to reverse and catch another 20 points on the upside. I hope that I will always remain calm but sometimes its not easy. HAve a good weekend all.

Net for the Day: + 959
Account total: 18,678
 

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