What kind of effort is needed

Quote from Mike805:

Spend the next 6 months developing a systemic approach. Get WealthLab, TradeStation or a number of other systemic trading platforms and get to work. Since its been three years and discretionary trading HAS NOT been working its time to start down the other path. Each entry and exit needs to be thought-out well in advance using a refined and tested process.

Its clear you don't have a methodogly and you will continue to lose until you develop one. Pyschology and money management come after you've developed a profitable approach.

Mike

Tried to do this. but the biggest obstacle is that I have no programming background. And I think I will figure out trading faster than i would figure out any sort of programming. So I abandoned going down this road
 
Lost some money on that one too.

Pretty close to the same prices and situation. Struck me as funny.

Back to the question...
 
Quote from illiquid:

Depends on what kind of results you want.

Put some more time and effort, you'll get more results.

Question is, how far are you willing to go? How determined are you? Give-up-your-wife-and-kids-determined? No joke, it could come to that if you are that deadset on succeeding. For someone already with a steady career and a family life, the key word for you is going to be -sacrifice-.

Be prepared.


Im pretty determined, but will never get that exteme. For me My kids and family are no 1 priority. No amount of money will change that. I willing to do anything other than shortchanging my family to succeed.
 
Quote from lescor:

If trading is your passion, you will be obsessed with ideas rattling around your head and will delve into trying to figure out problems and test new ideas. It will consume you. It's what's on your mind when you go to bed and what you think about most waking moments. You just have to keep banging away until you have an epiphany of some sort. If it's not in your blood like that, I think you have 2 strikes against you already.

Once you are experienced and comfortable with what you are doing, then it's more like cruise control. But the learning curve can be tortuous. The trick is to last long enough until the light bulb goes on.


Iam very passionate about trading. Thats pretty much all I think about all day everyday. I do get lots of ideas. Iam actually pretty decent with picking stocks. My weaknesses are staying disciplined and being organized. thats why i want to make a schedule and stick to doing same things routinely so i can get more disciplined.
 
Quote from Aok:

Well stated Corey.

To the OP the problem with trading is twofold.

First, there are hundreds if not thousands of ways to win. But will they hold up? There is a lot to be said for the golden handcuffs of a job. Uncertainty is the jedi mind trick of trading. Can you deal with it? Thats why the rewards are so great if you win

Second, your mind (the human mind) seeks perfection and in trading there is none. When you win, You will never buy the low tick. You will never sell the high tick.

And when you lose it seems that as soon as you get out, the market turns around.



If you dont have the passion Corey talks about, the frustration will break you.

The single biggest thing imo to surviving this racket is learning how to take the loss while developing your methodology

Understand this...

Even the greatest running backs in the NFL wear pads. Why? Because they're going to get hit. Hard.

There is no running back so fast, so strong, so agile, that they cant be tackled.
Obvious right?

But believe me, a hard hit trading can be MORE troubling psychologically, emotionally, mentally, and physically than a broken leg playing ball. There is nothing worse than a trader who cannot trade. You cant trade if you're trading scared of losing money. Who has lost more money than Warren Buffet? Who has struck out more than Babe Ruth? Yet you dont remember them for that do you? It's a mind set.

Can you control the loss well enough to allow yourself time to perform?

Dont neglect your family. Or your health. Trading is my life but there is no success without those two things.

What you want is few trades but better set ups. Follow a handful of stocks. Everyday work on a methodology that will allow you to anticipate their movements. Because that is all you can do. Remember there are no gurus and there is certainly no magical indicator that never fails.

Would you rather be "right" or make $ ?

The two are not the same thing.

Good luck.



Very insightful post. When I started out it was very hard to take a loss and admit I was wrong. I have improved quite a bit with this. But there are still 2 or 3 times a year when i find it hard to abandon a loser and it bites me.

There are time when I do want to be perfect and sit around not pull trigger on few stocks and usually regret this as the stocks usually do well.

Then there are times when the market is usually euphoric and i get suckered in watching everything go up only to get in at the top and hold the bag when everyone runs to the exit

hmm I just realized most of my problems are all psychological. After I make the mistakes Imake the effort to correct them but months later I forget the lessons and do the repeat some of the mistakes. I think I need to spend time psychoanalysing myself and see what i need to correct
 
Ace, earlier I said my question was whether you had a useless method or you were useless at trading your method...

...you wanna tell what on earth you were thinking of when you bought and sold asti?

The Green is where I think you bought and the Red is where you sold.

Tell me what you understand of market structure - even simple things like support and resistance?

Tell me about Buy and sell signals like tails and engulfing candles, broken trendlines and pattern breakouts.

Tell me your thinking - for it sure has me stumped.

If you'd used Millard's software it would have drawn channels and cycles for you and a prediction of the next direction - but even without that this chart is screaming.

You're hit rate is just above breakeven - I think you're about to tell me why!!
 

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and here's the weekly with a Bol Band.

tell me what you see and why you "watched" it run to 24!

You wanna learn psychology or learn to trade? Coz if you don't learn what you're doing wrong, better buy lots of books on positive thinking ;)
 

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Quote from yoohoo:

and here's the weekly with a Bol Band.

tell me what you see and why you "watched" it run to 24!

You wanna learn psychology or learn to trade? Coz if you don't learn what you're doing wrong, better buy lots of books on positive thinking ;)

At the time I was very bullish on solar stocks. It looked like Asti was about to break out. If I remember carefully The reason the stock took a dive was becuz Lock up period for the insiders was lifted and they sold their stock. I had no way of knowing this. Other solar stocks were running wild at the time and i obviously picke the wrong one.
 
Quote from ace210:

trades made 5% or more - 21
trades made 0 -5% - 13
trades lost 5% or more - 16
Trades lost 0-5% - 11

Analysing the trades only 3 or 4 trades were responsible for pretty much all of my losses. One of which was Asti. I bought lot more shares than i should have near 10.50 watched it go down to 7 and unloaded all of them. And watched it zoom to 24.

I would say based on this you already have a fairly decent system in place (at least a good start at one) there one major thing to tweak immediately. The 29 trades between (4.9% and neg 4.9%) pretty much cancel each other out. If you can eliminate those 11 big losers you will start to build your account much faster.

You are averaging roughly 2 swing trades per month so pulling the trigger on entry isn't the issue. You have to get better at pulling the trigger and getting out of losing trades faster. Yes it sucks to exit a losing trade only to have it turn and go in your favor but it's better than losing 1/3 of your account on 1 trade too. had you eliminated those eleven 5% losers (even IF they turned and went in you favor afterwards you would have still had the 21 big winners carrying you through.

The other aspect of eliminating those losing trades is to analyze what went wrong. Looking at the ASTI charts I assume you bought the stock around 7/17/07. If so, the previous high swing was only up to $11.34, then it sold off to $7 and had rallied back to $10 when you bought it. In hindsight you bought it at the end of the rally just as it was coming up to a resistance level. This stock wasn't a stong signal buy until it crossed above the 11.34 mark on 9/18/07. On that date it broke it's resistance and had good volume coming into it. Knowing this and watching for this in the future should also help in not making that same mistake again.

So in short I think you have your entries pretty good, your trigger finger is ready to go, your for profit exits are workable, the main focus right now should be the loss exits. If you can master that you will be profitable. Then begin to hone the entries and for profit exits to make it even better. Just my 2 cents.
 
ace, you've been a pretty humble and honest guy and if you're teachable then those are great qualities to have - hats off to you mate.

But if that's a full and complete answer to my questions...

you just failed your most basic traders exam!

I'm not being a smart ass here - honestly - you get 0/10

You acted on what was happening in the sector and didn't qualify your trade. There are a bunch of screamers here, and if you don't get a trading method I'd be really, really surprised if you survive.
 
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