Take the money and run! Well, maybe not literally, but it would be safe to take the majority of the balance and just save them up for your children's education. You can leave $10,000 for trading. You have took $5,000 and grew it to $400K+ in a few years. I have no doubt you can replicate this achievement with this $10,000. Take it easy! PA
IMO he should stop trading for a little bit, then jump back in with his full balance. Of course he can handle it - it's not difficult. Neke doesn't like listening to the many bits of good advice here though either.
Those school fee demands will come regardless of your P/L.. you cant fight the market and force it to give you money. "There isn't a man in Wall Street who has not lost money trying to make the market pay for an automobile or a bracelet or a motor boat or a painting. I could build a huge hospital with the birthday presents that the tight-fisted stock market has refused to pay for. In fact, of all hoodoos in Wall Street I think the resolve to induce the stock market to act as a fairy godmother is the busiest and most persistent. Like all well-authenticated hoodoos this has its reason for being. What does a man do when he sets out to make the stock market pay for a sudden need? Why, he merely hopes. He gambles. He therefore runs much greater risks than he would if he were speculating intelligently, in accordance with opinions or beliefs logically arrived at after a dispassionate study of underlying conditions. To begin with, he is after an immediate profit. He cannot afford to wait. The market must be nice to him at once if at all. He flatters himself that he is not asking more than to place an even-money bet. Because he is prepared to run quick -- say, stop his loss at two points when all he hopes to make is two points -- he hugs the fallacy that he is merely taking a fifty-fifty chance. Why, I've known men to lose thousands of dollars on such trades, particularly on purchases made at the height of a bull market just before a moderate reaction. It certainly is no way to trade. "
With all the problems neke has last two years - I suppose, that some kind of additional learning, mentorship, ... would help him a lot. As those problems are quite common to all active traders - what types of learning classes should any experienced trader with longer term losses need to take?
No doubt, PA? It's such a rare feat that to do it once in a lifetime is amazing. No, that's probably not happening again, but is exactly what makes him overtrade with leverage, hft, or too many stock in his watchlists.
Past performance is not a predictor of future performance To finance fixed family costs it is preferable to invest in income producing assets. eg. 400,000 can be leveraged to control 3 millon in income producing real estate in any college town to produce the required income for family costs Based on anecdotal evidence, for every 1 person that became a millionaire day trading the markets, there are 99 millionaires who went bankrupt day trading the markets Further, for every 1 person that became a millionaire day trading, there are 99 others who became millionaires investing patiently in real estate.
Delusion is not just a river in.... His record for the last 9 weeks/2 months is slightly negative (-1.6%). Now we could look at it as an improvement compared to the September losses, but for all practical purposes, he doesn't have an edge (or consistency) right now.
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=113413&perpage=30 Pekelo knows what he's talking about.