Hey guy's I was wondering, in your struggle to become profitable, or still struggling, how many of you busted accounts? Or have made a trade so bad, you stopped for a while to re-think, or make a new strategy? Thank you for any replies
Kastro, piece of advise, instead of being trader just try to be an investor - one cannot bust his account there.
Fully incorporating these guidelines into my trading regimen helped me a great deal: 1. Identify a style of trade you want to implement. Make rules/guidelines, test them and stick to them once you start trading. 2. Examine your past trades: Make a list of all trades and analyze them in order to observe patterns. For example in my discretionary trading > 90% of my profitable trades were initiated before 12.00 PM eastern time. Profits were smaller after 10.30 AM. Most of my losing trades were fairly small, a few large losses accounted for 70% of the total $ lost. This info enabled me to create some rules which have improved my profitability. Such as no trades after noon, smaller targets after 10.30 etc. tighter trail after a certain profit threshold. Low risk limit per position, etc. 3. Define an acceptable % of $ risk per trade and skip all trades that are too risky. I plot my equity, my average win, average loss, average trade , standard deviation for all the above and several other stats. This has helped me get to know the idiosyncrasies of my method. When things are going well they tend to go well for streaks likewise when things are going poorly. I scale down quickly once the bad streak threshold is crossed... The key is to define an approach and stick to it. Otherwise the measurements will be meaningless. I hope this helps. Best regards, Alex
Have you tried S&P 500 or Rusell 2000 instead? In case you didnot know Russel 2000 doubled its values since 2001 market crash.
I lost plenty when I started (on a simulator). What it taught me was I didn't have a clue how to trade. I spent countless hours going through technical analysis approaches. When I realized I needed someone smarter than me to help me out I bought a system with a long profitable track record. I analyzed it and tried to figure out why it worked. What I learned was the system made money mainly due to statistical analysis. As soon as I changed my approach I got better (on a simulator). After many many hours of work I built my first system that made money (on a simulator). Only then did I bother risking a penny. I also got rid of all screens with charts to avoid overriding my system. Since I had no sensory inputs all I could do was follow my system. That system has been very profitable for me (only a few losing months since I started). I now have multiple systems (to get more trades) and they are all based on statistical analysis. Only now (more than 2 1/2 years after going live) have I tried a little discretionary trading (so far with worse results than just following the systems). I'll probably abandon discretionary trading because I don't think I'll ever get a feel for the markets. I'm in this for the money and I guess charts are just not for me. Blindly following a well thought out and tested system is very boring (no great elation on picking the bottom or top) but is very profitable. 43yotrader
None I guess but 8 months into it right before turning the corner I was down about 10k in my account. I never risked any of my own money, it was a prop account.
I never busted my account in the process of learning but I lost 50% of it until I finally became profitable