Try reading this entire thread, then read March, Feb, Jan, Dec, Nov, Oct, Setp, Aug, Jul, Jun, May before it and all your questions will be answered. Hitman has given you gigabytes of info you just don't know it yet.
Baron: Please do not delete this, Don should be very happy that I actually reported a bad day for Worldco. >how long are traders given to prove themselves before they are let go? There are two reasons we let go of people: 1) Guys who take 1 point or more hits in stocks frequently. The guy who was let go lost more than $500 a day trading 200 shares on almost a weekly basis. Even today, he traded 400 shares each way total, lost $440 in a single 200 share position. This is despite of me telling him avoid news stories each day, yet he continues to trade the biggest movers every single day and continued to lose big while trading very small shares. If you don't learn to cut your losses, you will be cut, as simple as that. 2) Guys who have bad attendance records, he was out for almost two weeks last month or so, but he spend that time looking for a second job to help with his income so he can stay in the game. That is a lot of heart and his attendance has been a non-issue since then, it is unfortunate that our firm took a huge hit today, and he has one of the worst ratios as far as gross loss versus commissions is concerned (9 : 2). It is just all business. If you are not digging a huge hole before commissions, if you have a solid attendance record, you have at least one year before you even have to worry about being cut, by then you probably need to worry about a new career anyway. The guy who was let go lasted four months. >Are they going to be replaced? Yes, we are doing so as we speak, we are still hiring as usual. You need to get rid of the dead weight once in a while. >Were they trading the company's money or their own funds? Company capital of course, why would we care if they were losing their own money? >What qualifications did they have (besides desire) to trade? The guy who left my team was trained at Generic Trading, he has an excellent education. Even right now, desire is all you need, and discipline (I mean in both attendance and cutting losses).
Thanks for the response, and thanks for answering everything. I really enjoy your posts. Hey, today was tough but not disastrous. Bounce back tomorrow. Trade to win....
Hitman, Why didn't someone quietly sit next to and trade against him with size? If he continued at that rate, you'd be getting a pretty decent 7 cents/share after commissions. Trade your usual 10k-15k shares... Just a thought, Johnny
you should relax a bit. I was down today, and that's pretty rare. it was tough with stocks with my bread and butter, while shorting this NQ would have been so easy (a nice trend down after a gap down break down and short right up this down trendline). but that's no longer my game. you just can't win all the time even though there is always a way to win (the trader's paradox). accepting the fact is essential as you can't win until you really understand loss. I cherish those down days, after the initial frustration after the close (not really during the day), I finally got back to the charts and trades and studied what happened. So I cherish these days because that's when you can REALLY LEARN. Not when you win, it's when you lose. I learned plenty today. no reason to feel down. only the equity curve has a slight bump, the learning curve bent the right way. tntneo