It's been nearly 5 years since I was laid off and 3+ years since I started trading. My wife and I started this as a team. Now it's just me and some help from my kids. Each year I've gotten better. I've now pulled out all of my initial investment plus enough to buy a house. Next year I'm planning on putting the pedal to the metal. I don't see any sense in just trading for a living when a couple of bad years and you're looking at very hard times. My goal for next year is to make at least 500k gross profit (after commissions but before taxes). Anyone else care to share their goal?
What % of your account/portfolio are you willing to risk on a single trade? with what risk reward? My goal is $100K for 2006.
to break even. been doing bad for the past 2 years. and in the last 7 to 10 trades, all went down the drank. Worst month ever.
It's variable. My baseline %risk starts around 2.25% per-trade. If I'm up 200% of my starting account size then I'll cut the baseline to .5% to preserve the profits. This past year my r:r was 2.5:1 with 44% winners.
what did you do with the wife? my goal is to continue to improve my skills and increase my income every year. dont like the peadle to the medal idea. i used to race cars. if you hold the pedal down too long going into the corner you will hit the wall. you cant win a race if you cant finish.
She couldn't stand the isolation of trading so she started substitute teaching. Now she's got her certificate and is teaching pre-school special ed kids. She likes the interaction and the thought that she's doing something constructive.
1.) graduate 2.) don't catch any more diseases 3.) find a cream for this rash 4.) $50K, but only $10k trading (this next year will be tough for me to find many days on end to trade)
40yotrader -- your goal is quite agressive... hope you have enough capital to achieve it... My goals are rather small compared to yours but would make me very happy...
I am currently (and will be for a while) a very short intradayer...looking at 1min charts...holding for 2minutes - 2hours....so I use around 90-95% of account per trade (usually only have one trade open at a time). So if you want to say I risk that much, then sure, but i find it very hard to believe that the market/stock that i'm in will crash in a matter of several SECONDS. no $$ goal as of now. RT
Goal setting is fine, as long as its reasonable. Personally, the monetary goal I set for myself this year(which was 2x my last year's total) was too ambitious, and I failed to reach it. My overall performance was probably negatively affected because I pushed too hard early in the year in an attempt to keep pace with my monetary goal. I had to readjust my expecations about halfway through the year, and even though my income this year is huge by any objective standard, it still feels somewhat like a disappointment. Its a thin line between motivation and recklessness.