Quote from djxput:
Well even thou you cant trade for the full day; least you are getting your feet wet.
I think most people cant trade the full day (ie job) unless they are so good trading is their job.
I dont know if its advised (you can ask your mentor); but you could hold overnite and set a stop. But that could leave you open to more risk then perhaps you want.
... just trying to come up with some ideas
What program are you going to use to trade JM; did you say esignal? Mind sharing some things your mentor is showing you?
Problem is, it is 2500 to hold overnite. I will only fund my account with 2,000 *the minimum*. Now from the looks of things on how I'm doing. I should be able to average around 75 at an extreme minimum per day. I like looking at the charts, and it seems like that is a very small goal to accomplish.
I'm only PaperTrading, and unfortunately, there are very few brokers that allow you to do this. I have been doing papertrading with proactivefutures.com with TradeMaven. My real broker is greenstreet.
I have a 15 inch monitor. I don't know about you guys, but it is a huge pain to trade with this. My very first goal, is to make enough money to buy a dual, tri, or even quad monitor set-up, could send me up to the $1,500, to $2,000 range, so I'm looking to make enough while i'm in school, so before I get out of school *i'm graduating first semester, and graduate in January*, I will be set-up and ready to go.
I use eSignal for charts. I consider it the best, and my mentor uses it. He shows me his charts while he is trading by using gotomeeting.com, and he can show me his screen and it is very useful as he helps me and others identify support and resistance.
I am either going to end up using CQG Trader or TradeMaven. I like TradeMaven, so I might stick with that. I costs $50 a month to use it from Greenstreet, but i'll see if I can handle CQG since I haven't been able to test mini-dow trading with that.
As for some hints.
There are no technical indicators like MACD, RSI, Moving Averages, or Fibonnaci *spelling* Retracement and stuff like that.
It's all about price. It's all about finding support and resistance.
Support and Resistance, I have found with help through my mentor is the ONLY thing you need to be a successful trader. If you can trade from the ONE thing that is really important in trading *Volume is also important in equities*, then in my opinion, you have already beat out others who rely on MACD and RSI. RSI and MACD are only deviations of price, that is all they are, some people swear by them, and to be honest, I did too. I used MACD all the time, but I wasn't successful.
If you can identify support and resistance, you are already halfway there in my mind.
When I first started trading, I overlooked this subject. Books pointed it out, but they didn't make it sound important. I didn't even think it was important. I don't know if I could never identify, so I just ignored it, or if I just wanted something that I didn't need to do any work to figure out, just look at MACD. But I am just astounded at how simple it really is. I have been given a gift that I cannot repay to my mentor and he has just helped me more than what seems 2 years of experience of trying on my own might have done. He also introduced me to Futures.
With equities, in order to be successful daytrading, you need 25k, that is it. I had 2k.
With forex.... Support and Resistance are there, but there are many breakouts, and i got on the wrong side of them, but that was before I met my mentor, and I haven't tried Forex that much lately, but I would be a lot better doing it now.
It's just amazing how hard I made it seem when I first started. It really is simple to increase your chances greatly of where a price reversal will occur and such. Just absolutely amazing. I never would have thought it would be so simple. Now I just use eSignal's tick replay to test myself on identifying suport and resistance throughout the day and I know that the money would flow in if I could actually trade what I identify, and would be low risk trades if I executed them at the right times *close to support and resistance for example*
I can not confirm if this would work on Equities, or Forex for 100%, but for Futures, and what I have done these past few weeks with my mentor, and even one of his students pulled in 1k on the first day of trading. I have yet to do that, but I have yet to trade the full market.
So, I'm just very greatful. I don't come from a wealthy family, I don't have much, but I have the determination to try. And I already know it will pay off, that is why I'm so ready for these next 2 weeks, so I can finally open my account and I may not make 1000's of dollars like other members on here one day. But I am very confident that I will be able to pull in a very nice profit from a day to day basis after getting adjusted to only being limited to the last hour of the market *Which isn't ideal for trading, so it gets a little more complicated, but I am greatful to even have that*
So advice to all newbies that really want to try trading Futures. Forget books. I realize that books were a waste of time. The best book I read was the very first one that explained stock markets, and bid ask, how trading takes place. After that, I realize the rest was all useless, except for books that explain to you how much more mentally it is.
The only thing that could prevent me from being unsucessful now, is emotions, and that is exactly what I will be testing 2 weeks from now. I will admit I was click happy and jumpy when I first started trading. But now, it's a whole new story.
It's just hard for me to think sometimes how much time and effort I put into trading, and how simple it turned out to be to identify good trades.