Blow up at least a few times? Wow you need to hang around better traders, what are these guys trading 5K questrade accounts? LOL
There are plenty of traders on ET who have a more impressive 2008 P&L than just 200%. and 2007, and 2006, and...
I've been trading since the mid 90s and trading US stocks intra day since 1999 for a living and I've never "blown up". I was training a driving instructor to trade on Wednesday and this subject came up. As he said, "You don't say you have to crash your car (automobile) a few times to learn to be careful driving, so why do you have to have big losses or blow your account trading before you learn to be careful?" Spot on in my view. Richard
Great Post! Clearly anyone that's blown up more than once is gambling with too much money and doesn't have a thorough understanding of risk management.
LOL No mate, its 200% per month, not per year!! (Not really compounded % though) And i haven't ''blown-up'' as you put it... lol I started trading completely fulltime in med-late july, it was late august when i withdrew and paid for 3months rent in a brand new stylish flat + over £1,500 security deposit n fees. Ok i had 2 bad days this week with my very low capital account, not due to my failure to read technicals or anything like, my losses were pure down to the fact that i had no way of getting access to teh info that i woul have needed to avoid it. (Live stream to the miami hurricane centre to when they upgraded gustav, oil up $6s, i tried to call top around 115s. And yesterday IEA say in special alert they will release oil in emergency, oil drops $5s) Ok i dont use tight stoplosses like lots people do, but thast my style of trading, and it works for me and the way i like to trade. But i never ever leave my screen while trading, never look away, and constantly watching and re-evaluating trades in regards to nearby S&R levels. And both those bad days the closes i made, while i did lose alot of money for my account size, that wa sonly cos i got foolish n greedy in taking out 3 seperate contracts at same time. I took closes of barely over 200ticks, and in oil $2s is barely a few seconds move often. And if i had been 'bullheaded and been some idiot who never closes losing trades id have lost my entire account on both days! But i instead made extremely good closes wheni didnt liek what i was seeing in teh way of support being tested and broken, and was correct each time and saved alot of money being lost! And so just to conclude i haven't ''blownout'', quite the opposite infact. In my 1st month of fulltime trading, including all the losses from last 2days and last weeks big £900 loss that i made back in 1 n half days, i ended up the month earning over £2,500 pure profit, even with all these losses there. £2,500+ profit in 1month, my 1st month of fulltime work, all from a starting account of just £700 that i made up to £5,568 all at £1 - £2 tick, and when unlike you that wasnt just a spare bit of cash, that was all my money in the world, so the pressure was constantly on. So for all the people who are trying to speak like they are so great and im a failure, while you are ofcourse entitled to your own view, why dont you yourself try this and see just how well you do; Go to your bank account/saving/all the money you have, n give it all away to charity. Then give away your house and car, move into a very cheap 1bed place and barely have any food in your fridge so you can only have enough for 1meal per day. And then keep just £700 in your trading account, give the rest to charity. Ok now thats you, thas all you have, you lose thats your fucked so its upto to just make sure you dont fuckup if you want to eat and live. K now 1-2-3 Go..... Start trading with that, and see how much you can earn mate. if you dont do good enough well you fuckedup so you gta pay the price. Theres no safety n security net that you have now, no comfort cash or spare savings. I would genuinely be interested to see how much you could earn mate. Btw you can say 'i would get a basic job instead', but its not that easy to just 'get into even a shitty crap job'. Even if you have all the A-levels n work experience and stuff, you go try and see how well you fare. +You would also be forgetting that you dont have the luxury of sitting around sending time applying for jobs, since if you dont earn well you wont eat. When that cash ran out you would just then starve or be homeless. lol
i blew up twice. bad trade. very bad trade. i think a lot of guys have blown up at least once. first one was a naive blind 19 year old trade in october when i borrowed 20k and invested in 3 stocks. here i thought id do the whole analysis they teach at uni and make a little money on the side. anyway invested in a company called centro that opened one day significantly lower. i bought at 5.50 was about to sell at 6.00. the next morning they went into a trading halt and a few days later opened at 60 cents. so much for the uni! second time was after i developed a system and i was day trading. ran up a 500 dollar account to 10k in a few weeks. didnt realise how much risk i was taking. lost it on a trade. a very bad trade. i think they are great learning experiences. i do hope i will never blow out again, but then anything can happen. a meteorite can hit new york while im long equity...
P.S On a slightly happier note ladies i have had rather a nice windfall of cash.. £326 profit from a transaction that was completed and paid into my bank account this morning from the business i run. £190 from a fannie mae buy trade that i had actually forgotten that id made on my ig account weeks ago when it crashed, and £739 from an aud/usd sell off trade that i had made about 1hour before trichet gave his speech 2weeks ago because i knew that as soon as he opend his mouth he would fuck up his euro. LOL (i did that on igforex cos i was bored, and hadnt been back there till i got an automated email today from them. And i got paid £250 into my bank account today that id had withdrawn 3working days ago form my normal account. So as soon as this hurricane nonsense has blown over im gna have some fun selling the fuck outta il again, using just the good old S&R levels, just like i was for all the previous weeks. Without these lat 2days it was over £4,000 profit for my 1st month of work salary. So this 1st month was £2,500. September target is £4,000.. ALthough now i paid rent till dcember il be happy to make just 1k in september abd build up capital slowly.
is there a grieving widow in that story somewhere that you have failed to mention? all sad stories have grieving widows