2steps...That is not accurate. Big players don't have ALL the information. They are just better capitalized. You are gaining experience but hopefully you will trade a sim account (in the future) with a lot more money to learn how to trade. It takes time, experience in different markets, knowing the stock/etf/future (of choice) better than you know your wife or child, and a few reliable technical indicators to give you confidence in direction. Patience and prudence to know when you are right or wrong. Its a tough business.
2Steps, If all your "blow-ups" are true you have my sympathies as those were not unfamiliar experiences I had myself when I started trading futures with relatively small accounts. It seems apparent that you just throw the dice. You need to define what constitutes an opportunity (setup) and then refine such definition again and again. Refinement comes from observation of price behaviors real time day in day out. Print a chart at the end of each day to study the characteristics and behaviors before reversals or on continuations. Use a ruler to connect points. After studying hundreds of charts you will form a belief that will serve as basis of your reasoning for entering a trade as you've seen it hundreds of times. Test your belief in real time in your mind to see if you are right, without jumping in with real money first. Some say sim trading can help but personally my disciplines slip in sim for obvious reasons. I like to practice trade in my mind in real account. Trading is not easy. Many pieces must be in place to be successful, particularly well-defined setup and trade management. Like someone said, if you squander your money now, you will have no money left after you have found an "edge", so preserve your money and find your method first. I wish you luck. OC
it was a free fall if you had no plan if you were wrong,in other words ,you couldn't be,market is always right,if lucky ,you will be right 51%,u need a plan 4 the other 49%,if you want to survive being taken,happens often,survivor will keep losses small,you're at a carnival and the barkers are there to take your money as you are theres,the game is rigged,we are not in 2nd grade and Sr. Mary Margaret has a beard and a glass eye,look past the nun's outfit
In the past few months, I changed my 2 steps method into 1 step; then from 1 step to 2 steps; then back to 1 step; then to 2 steps; then changed the content of the 2 steps: part of step 1 goes to step 2, part of step 1 remains step 1. Step 2 remains part of step 2. Anyway, I now declare that I have found the holy grail of trading. Yes, that's right, I will use the newly found holy grail and start trading next week. I will post the result at the end of the day.
OK. The Market is all about risk. You capture the risk premium that hedgers pay for certainty that they will be immune to price fluctuation. You take the other side - sailing on price waves - fading human fear and greed - a student of humanity and a practitioner of behavioral science. The Market will pay you for helping it make transactions. It will go where it goes, where the transactions are, where fear and greed take it. You take the other side.........
I kind of like what you are saying, though I am not sure I get all of your meanings. But thanks for believing me! You really think I've got the holy grail? I was kidding, you know.
Only you can know. Everyone's answer to the trading riddle is different. You like that brain teaser above? Do you know that trading is a losing game and a certain anonymous (successful) trader once said: "Never let The Market prove you wrong, only right" - in other words, don't stick around to have your losses multiply - get out if The Market is not immediately proving you right. This is a hard rule to follow, which is why it's so profitable. Capturing risk premium is a hard job, only for the disciplined who can go against their natural tendencies. You're allowed to quit when it's not working out. That's a very good tactic.
In my youth of "thinking", early 1986, I was one of the smartest guys around, I was so sure my new system was so incredible the Holy Grail of trading, I had placed a short in T-bonds, after day one, I was down $300 bucks, I said to myself, Oh that is ok, every trade starts out this way. End of first week I was down $1500, was thinking "should I sell another one?", luckily broker convinced me not to and said I should get out of current short, shoot what does he know, he doesn't trade, I'M the trader here. Couple weeks later, I was down over $10,000 thinking, WTF is the top for this thing, kept wiring in money(going to bank for loans) for margin each week, now I am down $15 grand for a one lot, could have went on a world vacation by now, people kept asking "are you on a diet", the strain and stress made me never to have appetite, it was months of contract rollovers before it came down to a one tick profit. See, see I was right all along!!!! I did learn something about trading during this timeframe, it ain't fun if you don't have a clue what you are doing, it ain't fun if you are a dumb-ass, all markets will return to extremely low prices again, but it might take decades. This experience did start my quest on learning how to trade long term commodities of selling tops and buying bottoms and lost over $100 grand for the education. I look back now and laugh cause I learned eventually, but the dreaded years of discovering all the horrible emotions of constant financial loss, I truly wished I had just stayed with long term stocks on Monthly/weekly bar charts. So much less time involved.
Sometimes I am like a zombie. Recently I found myself, while driving, changing directions due to trivial reasons, as if I were trading: a slight movement of the market would trigger my reaction. I am going through those horrible emotions, please tell me the reward is huge at the end of the tunnel???!!!!