Once you learn how to trade, there is no fear. Neke has no fear because he has a full time job. I have no fear because I have a solid business plan for my trading.
Holy smoke, you lost $40K (29K+11K) on Friday. If there wasn't Friday's bad luck, you would have a very solid week. CMG had weird movement today. Lot of people lost money on that one.
I've got to second Nodojis post. I rarely trade pre or post market. When there is a gap open I watch to see what happens. With out getting to complex the setup really depends on who is caught on the wrong side of the gap from the prior day. Anyway, what the heck you made money this week and stopped the slide from the prior two. So, instead of beating yourself with a burrito, celebrate a minor victory. BTW and FWIW, I usually just trade the open on Fridays. Friday can be an especially difficult day. Other days to be wary of are Monday's Tuesday's Wednesday's and Thursdays.
When I first started trading in 98-99 it was all dot-coms with options, got crushed many times on stupid plays off the open. I give you credit for your size plays but I think it would be interesting for you to backtest your bad plays in a longer time frame and see how it improves your P/L. Remember positive slippage is good as it confirms your play.
That can be generalized to all time periods, and trading in general. The worst enemy of performance is the "Midas touch" syndrome. Thinking we can "diversify" our trading into new "plays" just because our main business plan is making money so effortlessly. So it must be easy, right? Straying away from the systematic game plan is always gambling. And it usually happens after a period of success - we have more money to risk, so we start accepting untested, one-off trade ideas. Been there, done that. Job, it has to be treated like a boring job, with no scope for diversity. Fun or money, the choice is yours. I think they call it the "house money effect" in the financial literature. Neke, withdraw most of your funds and start over each year very hungry, with the same minimum sufficient amount - this is what prop traders do. Forget the money you made previously, don't look at it. Accept that you will be at it until your retirement, get rid of the get rich quick mentality - it does not work, unless by chance.
What an excellent post, NoDoji! I agree with everything up to and including your observations regarding CMG and the 243.30 level. I would like to comment on the above snippet, but not because I disagree so much. After all, I too would think it exceedingly difficult to day trade as Neke does while holding down a full time job with real full time duties and responsibilities. I myself do work full time, and I trade. Granted, I swing and position trade, rather than day trade (a day trade for me is a swing trade or position trade that gets stopped out the same day as entry). Over time, I believe that I do as well, and in many cases I do better than many of those who set out to attempt to day trade "for a living." I have no firm statistics, of course, but I would bet that for every NoDoji who attains professional day trader success, there are at least another 199 who have tried and failed (the actual number, I suspect, is probably closer to 999 failures for every day trading success). I only chime in here because, as a long time reader at ET, I have begun to wonder how many people come here hoping to learn how to "trade for a living" and instead only find failure, who might otherwise have found success had their goal been keeping the day job and trading with eye toward funding an eventual retirement. To me, it seems much easier to succumb to fear and pressure if one is attempting to trade for the next mortgage payment, grocery order, electric bill, health insurance premium, cable/internet subscription invoice etc. and so on, rather than trading to accumulate wealth for an eventual retirement. In other words, trading and holding a full time, non-trading job are not mutually exclusive. Day trading is not only not the only approach, but for most people, it is probably not the best choice. One still needs to trade with a plan, and one must possess the discipline to stick to that plan. My experience has been that having a full time job makes it easier to develop a plan and muster the discipline to follow it. And as far as returns go, I think many would be surprised by how well they could do if instead of setting a goal of making $xxxx.00/day, they instead made wealth accumulation over time their main focus. Of course, I do nonetheless enjoy reading the journals of day traders such as Neke and NoDoji, always wishing them success.
Reminds me of a Mark Twain quote: "October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August, and February."
I guess you don't know what you don't know. Big money is made through AH. Also, did you see the contradiction in your own advices of "wait for the emotions to play out" and "you don't even have to know"? You are not in a position to give advices to neke, or anyone else.