Well today I offically became a statistic....I have joined the 95% of traders who fail ....My story begins like this. I was a product of Swift trade a while back and moved on to bigger and better things....Rebating just wasnt for me...I joined a prop firm and have been trading with them for the past 4 months....Yesterday AMAT ripped me apart and today it was MSFT.....I was long MSFT and geting wacked, slowly my losses added up...I was scaling my position as I did want to eventually have some size....But it was on the downtrend....At this point I was long 7000 shares at 26.13....It approched 11 a few times and would not break through...I was just hoping to flaten out and re-think my entry..I was gonna scrap it at 11 but to late, now its at 07-08 and im down alot...so I held.....Then I kept holding when it was between 02-05...At this point I was more than ready to bail...But looking at my blotter and praying to the God's, I couldnt pull the trigger....So locked and loaded I bail at 25.97...If it drops below $26.00 I remeber thinking that it could find its way down another 20 cents....Now it rallys some and it is finding resistance all the way up...I look over the chart for the 100th time and tell myself your fighting the trend...Now I decide to go short, 7000 short at 06...Now it starts ripping up and I have no choice but to get out of the way at 16....It goes to 25 and then tanks to 01...WTF?.....Long or short the market took my dumb money and I am left wondering what went wrong....Had I held longer I would have been up over 2k, had I not paniced looking at my blotter I would have bailed along time ago and maby would feel better about myself right now......So many questions as to WHY did this happen or why did I do this ???? I love this business and am wondering how I can recover from 2 days of hell I suppose I expected to blow up sooner or later, but a part of me wanted to think that I could be exempt from the 95%. How do you pick up the pieces and regroup? How do you carry on?
cut your share size next week til you get back on track remember this was a quarterly expiration, not a time to let the spurs jingle and jangle unless your adding to a winner
Wow... sad to hear that you are suffering. There is a lesson in there some place so try not to let it overwhelm you. But at the same time don't shrug it off. You don't have an understanding of risk. You are trading the size you are for the wrong reasons so cut back drastically. Go to 100 lots until you know what you are doing. Next, try to define your risk BEFORE you enter and execute it when it doesn't work. This assumes that you have some methodology or a sound approach. There is more to it, but this is a start. Take care.
You were trading one of the largest stocks out there, on the same day as a major S&P rebalancing and options expiration. There were bound to be a few random moves.
If you're getting slaughtered by 20cent-30cent moves, you should reduce your size by a ton. Other people get hit by $5-10 moves. but 20-30cents???? If 20-30 cents can take you out, you're bound to blow out every week. You need a lot of disciipline to learn. Your risk is pretty ridiculous.
Thanx Futures I started trading MSFT with 500 lots awhile back and was doing good...Guess I fell in the trap of if I can make $100 trading 500 shares, I can make 1k if I increase my size 10 fold.....Whatare the right times to trade larger size?
Imagine if you were trading size you can't handle on BIDU. That might knock you out like a hurricane. It won't be 30cent hit, which is really nothing. but a $30 hit. You shouldn't get blown out if what you're trading moves only 30cents away!?!?!? That's just wreckless trading and total neglect of risk.
What do you mean by my risk?......Keep in mind guys, I have only been trading les than a year and am still trying to figure out were I should have mental stops in place....Can you elaborate please
Dude, 20-30cent move, even on turtle MSFT can happen in half an hour or less. Your account should not experience that big chunk of a swing from such a small move.
giannos, As a fellow player, I feel the need to give you some important notices on technique instead of stupid "feel better don't give up comments" : a) Anything under 26.22 MSFT today should be shorted. b) Your stop losts have no support anywhere, its like placing imaginary stop losts where nobody knows where they are other then you. It looks like you are trading on some MACD indicator because 26.10 area was all on the low end of these indicators, indicators don't work for shit unless used in conjuction with valid support levels. PRices will trade straight through no matter if macd is flagging 500 or -26325