what I did was: 1) did not use any stops..I figured if you use a stop the market makers will see it and take your stop out and bounce it back up. 2) I was trading way to many shares at a time from 2000 to 5000 3) When I buy I told my self when it hit 15.50 sell it I never had a sell order in so when it did hit my sell I froze up. 4) I held on to a loser thinking it would come back and never did. 5) I bought at there lows thinking this was a bottom point only it still went lower.. okay there you have it it's hard to confront your losses I been in a daze a little while ...it's time to wake up and smell the coffee and move on... Ed
Doesn't matter if MM knows if you have stop or limit orders. 2000 to 5000 is like pennies to them since they trade in much larger numbers. MM have advanced system to place buy/sell orders that most of us don't see it until it's too late. They do that to throw us off forcing many traders to sell and MM buy back at much lower price. Better trade in smaller number like 100 to 1000 until you know what you're doing then up your ante. Always discipline yourself... sell when you must preserve your capital by locking in your profit or loss. It's much easier to recoup $500 loss than $5000. If you do nothing and let your emotion take over then you're SOL. Market doesn't play nice and they're brutal. What makes you think it'll go back up since this is a BEAR market. Almost all stocks are bottomed out and it will continue to fall some more. Never assume anything without studying the pattern from past few days to give you an idea where it's going. If it's doing downtrend for the past few days then don't buy until you see the steady uptrend. That's why we have charts to see how the stocks are doing in the past few days and read the news too. If the news media is planning to release any bad news that day then don't trade because the stock will most likely fall. Read the news about the company's financial profile and if it doesn't look good then don't buy their stocks. If they're going bankrupt or stop their dividends payout then don't buy it. Always use trailing stop loss order if you can't control your emotion.
Typical. There are people with all professional skills that don't want you to learn, they would rather sabotage the competition than risk being surpassed. It's called insecurity. When I was learning to play drums as a kid, I would hang out with a kid who was a little older and already very good at drumming, I would watch and learn. One day I said to him, "Look, I got the snare part down for this song, took me awhile, but I got it!" He said, "You could practice ten years and still not be able to play that." I just thought to myself, "Yeah right you fuckin' asshole, you're just scared of me. I already do this better than YOU do!" I grew up to be a highly-skilled and well-respected drummer. Still, I never made much money as a drummer and at 26, needed a skill to carry me through life so I got in the plumbers and pipefitters union. This story is the opposite, I did this against my OWN self-doubt. As a plumbing apprentice in the union, people would talk badly about me, I would get brought before the board for poor performance...I thought I would never learn the trade. Other apprentices would tell me that journeymen spoke of me as "a good kid but not mechanically inclined". I was programmed to mess up. Give me a 50/50 chance of getting it right, 95% of the time I would screw it up. I eventually broke it down over time, meditated on what I am doing wrong and needed to change and then decided that I need to be more consistently successful than unsuccessful, not just think it, BE IT. Over time I turned the tables and became a competant professional journeyman. I am now a licensed contractor (non-union) and have done very well for myself. Once I left the union and started my own business, I found the time to do what I always wanted to learn to do....trade. So in my three years of trading, recently I decided that there was a similar problem in my trading psychology that I experienced as a newbie plumber. It was the same need to develop a winning attitude and to make the transition from net loser to net winner. If I see a plumbing task that requires special tools, more help, WD40, whatever it takes to do it...I will take the time to do it right, I will not RISK taking a 50/50 chance that will substantially cost me in materials and labor if it goes wrong. I will not RISK damaging a very expensive part trying to "force it", or use the wrong fitting or wrong part for the job just because it would be "inconvenient" to do it right. I have recently carried this attitude and practice over into my trading and have had drastically improved results. Just had my first net positive year (well not in futures but in stocks and stock options). The best things in life, as far as careers go, usually come from years of true dedication, searching, and learning. 240K and a stock account just gives you the opportunity to win or lose. Not the hard-won skills to be a winner.
All traders have lost their money at some point but that's the point of learning our mistakes and not to repeat it again. Stock market trading is an acquired skill by learning the trade and listening to other peers like the people here. If you're looking to do 50/50 bet or something like that without learning then go to casino. You got to know the market to do the trades... like is today a good day to trade gold, silver or oil? What about pharmaceutical companies? Biotech? etc... Know your market before doing the trades. Investing in gold while the USD is gaining strength is one bad example. If China cancel the bulk shipping orders then don't invest in shippers. There are many signals out there to tell you whether to invest in a specific company. If you don't bother to read the world news, financial news, get involved in investment groups or forums.. then don't bother investing because you will more likely lose everything. Do your homework then you'll be successful... be lazy then you're better off going to casino. That's my 2 cents.
It's about releasing yourself from the emotional attachment of money. You can't even think about money (making/losing) when your trading, only what the market is telling you to do. Money is only the by-product or result of the decisions you make while in the market. If you lost a million dollars on a trade, it still wouldn't dictate your future results. Past trades have no bearing on present trades. You can most certainly be successful, you just need to change some of your methods. Money Management is everything. Disclosure: I've only been trading ab 15 months so take my "advice" FWIW.
a few months ago I had the biggest drawdown of my career 50 % ( too much leverage in one name ) but I decided not to quit ... and have become a better trader and have made back 3/4 of my drawdown http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8yGGtVKrD8
Do yourself a huge favor by printing out the following excerpt from Marcel Link's High Probability Trading (2003) and get the damn book when you can.