[If you only want to see how much money I lost please skip to the end] Back in about september of last year was when I started getting really into this thing called the stock market. It was around that time that I decided trading was what I wanted to do for a living (or at least as a hobby until i could do it really good). I began to study everything I could find about trading and I would test myself to see if i could make accurate predictions and analysis. I had some luck but it was mainly hit and miss. It was about Janruary was when i got my brokerage account open. I had 4k to trade with and being an expert at the time I felt prety confident and was ready to make money. I actually made money on my first few trades but gradually realized that in order to statistically make money I would have to expose myself to more risk to make commissions negligible. I then looked for the best stock that looked like it would go up and settled on one that had gone up about 130% in the past few days. This was going to be awesome; I was going to make so much money on this trade! I saw someone put a bid up for 100 000 shares (the average daily volume was about 100 000 shares) There is no way this is going down! So i bought some but unfortunately right after i got involved someone sold 200 000 shares. It started droping like a rock. I saw stars. I decided to get out before I lost an unreasonable amount. In 9 minutes I lost 86 $. I actually would have made money had i stayed in the trade long enough but i would have had to endure a loss of well over 100$ for quite a while. Lesson learned: do not trade things that gone up 130% over the last 3 days. Needless to say at this point I did not think to much about stops or risk reward ratio's or targets I was just trying to get some of the free money the stock market was giving out. Since at this point I had just moved out of my parents house I thought instead of getting a job ill just suppourt myself daytrading.. why not? I had a realistic target of about 50$ a day only 1.2%. Shortly after i lowered this to 30$ .. then 200 a month .. then anything a month... then not lose money.. then I got a job. Unfortunately I work every second that the market is open except for mondays and I have kept up my trading ever since and also opened up a forex account so i can trade when in the evening. I have gotten better but I still have not turned a profit. I have always justified my trading by saying that my prior losses were lack of knowledge and now I know what I am doing... well on monday i hit my breaking point. 4 forex trades in a row each with a setup looking more perfect than the last that all stop me out almost immeaditly as if to mock me and not give me any hope of success at all. I do not belong to the elite class who can just start trading and make money right away. I suck. Thats all there is to it. My losses are not result of bad luck. There is no statistical anomaly here. Every time I re-refine my ideas I just lose more money. Since Janruary in about 50 rt trades in stocks i took my account from 4k to 3.465k Since July in about 30 rt trades in forex i took my account from 465$ to 300 commissions were about 10 $ rt and 3-4 pips rt I have decided to not trade again until i can double my money in a sim account which brings me to my question: where can i find a sim account that actually works (when you use stops they must actually trigger) and can do thing like shorting without just saying they have no short inventory all the time. I would also be interested in sim accounts for forex and futures.
seeing as how i only make $8 an hour filling bins with flour at bulk barn 4k is alot of money to me so i think i will keep my risk exposure low (in fact probably more often in about the range of 1%) given the fact that 1) im not good at trading yet 2) if i were to increase my risk exposure to say 10% then i would have to close my account after several losses (which is very likely). It would then take me about 1 year or working full time to make enough money to get back to where i started.
Dude mayb you should try to live on $8hr and c if 4k or 86 bucks is alot of money, then mayb youl understand. Instead of rushing to juDge some one elses pocket book, its just childish in an arrogant day trader sort of way. have some common human decency and offer knowledge and advice. My advice to you noob save more money and build a nice cushion for yourself. Mayb even consider to continue paper trading until we are completely out of the housing squeeze.
Their all kinds of demo accounts avalable das trader has some simply look through all the brokers if equitys aint your thing seach through the futures brokers etcc... the broker list right here on et will offer you a quite afew possibilities... Even look through the prop threads you may find a demo account for laser. good luck noob
do you have to transfer your money to them and set up a real account to access the paper trade account usually?
Good 'ole stock, always so quick to judge others...Do yourself a favor pal, get a plan for yourself. You have zero discipline, that added with zero money management skills...Throw in a big ego and arrogance, you just made yourself a shit sandwich. To the poor guy who started this thread, pay no attention to our village idiot, his advise is worth what this website costs....zero.