Which buttons do I press? When? Answer those two question would be exacting. On some level that is all you do.
Some questions :-
What is your objective in trading? A career or just a hobby?
What time frame do you want to trade. Intraday, swing, daily, weekly etc.
What instrument do you want to trade? Indices, stocks, currencies, commodities etc as it is very difficult to trade them all.
What is your risk tolerance?
What advantage/disadvantage does leverage offer?
That's one of the first things you will specify in your trading plan.
Trading plan specifies;
What to trade
When to trade
How much to trade
When to sell.
You want to write it so that you could hire someone to trade for you and they would know exactly what to do.
Ok, here is what I have come up with. Im sure some things I will need direction on:
I would like to make it a career, and I am going to work like it already is.
What to trade: To start, I need cash flow because I will not have the funds to pass the PDT rule. So I was thinking of doing futures on ES. I also like the idea of it being open basically 24hrs. WHat I dont know is if there are decent "active and inactive" periods at "odd hours" (im in the US). Id like the idea of being able to wake up/work at whatever time. If i cant make that happen then I can adjust. Eventually Id like to go to trading stocks while I also start looking long term.
When to trade: To start, either scalping/day trading. The only reason Id do scalping is so I can hone my abilities faster - considering how many trades can be done in a day, not to say a lot of volume for day trading cant be done. Lets not forget, Ill be doing this on a demo account to begin with so I can start getting feedback first. As I move to stocks Id probably switch to swing trading. I like the idea of being able to have days where I can sit down and work if I want, or trades I dont have to pay THAT much attention to considering their nature. I do realize the idea of what I want may not be practical once I actually start doing it.
As far as when to actually trade. Im not going to put on a trade until my TA (whatever TA I end up finding) confirms it. Once confirmed, I am then obligated to put on the trade, regardless of how i feel about it.
How much to trade: 1-2% of available capital. Once a good TA is down and I feel comfortable with it after looking at my sample sizes, then its just all about scaling. I will not do any leverage to begin with because I dont know the ins and outs of it and I do not want to owe a broker anything. Maybe once I have some XP I can dabble in using half the available leverage and see what happens. A lot depends on how comfortable I feel with my TA and how consistent Ive been up until that point. Leverage I dont control sounds like risk to me.
When to sell: At a predetermined SL. Although Id like to know if there are any good ideas on how not to get stopped out early. Say you have a SL in and right when the market opens someone drives prices down. However, since anything in the market can happen maybe it isnt preventable. If I am on a runner, SL gets moved to the previous profit tear. FOr example, if i am trending up and I am at 4% profit return, SL gets moved to the 2% tier so I am AT least getting the bare minimum of what I want to profit. Rinse repeat.
Let me know what yall think.