The reason people warn against fixating on money is because having a fixed monetary target will often make someone overtrade, espeically for the discretionary trader, which I am. Rather than looking for the ideal trade, you end up looking for any trade that will put you over your "quota". Focusing on money also leads a person to trade larger size than they are used to. I've found that whenever I trade size larger than I'm comfortable with bad things always happen. For example, if I'm holding twice my usual NDX futures contract size, then a small pullback might make me nervous and make me get out while I probably would have held in the trade if I was trading my normal size. Obviously money is very important and its probably the reason many people get involved in trading. But paradoxically, in order to accumlate money you can't make it the key focus of your trading. Don't ask yourself what trade will make me $X amount, but rather ask yourself what is the BEST trade out there.
A trade is only a part of trading. Htrader, I completely agree with you. I'd also like to add that, you make money in the market. You are part of the market but not the market. So making a projectile is simply naive. It's like trying to get laid at a club. You try to get laid and try all these things. Because you did all these things, you expect to get laid. Sometimes it works, but sometimes it doesn't. The more you are attached to the girl and more you are naively expecting, the more emotionally you get hit. Still, we have the desire to get laid, so move forward. Well, once you lose the desire... well... don't get laid for the night.
And the key is not to get too fixated on a particular trade......or is it too frustrated at not getting laid??? What was that!
LOL... my perverted mind works in different ways... This just popped out of my head: Is there a thing called perverted trading? If there is, am I doing it?
Well fiachra, $10,000 is quite a stretch. You inquired about trading strategies..well i have been looking at some mechanical trading strategies to reduce the emotional aspect. These systems run on Tradestation and can be used to trade the e-mini futures, and ETF. Tradestation also have a backtesting feature so you can see the performance history. Good luck to you in your trading.
Of course, with current volatilty its actually much more. 1 mil account traded as 500k. Patterns, Price, Time, and Volatilty analysis. Contra Trader, Trend Trader. good luck.