Hey giannos I think u r trading decent stock and all ( dell intc csco msft ) I mean if a person can make $200 to $300 a day but consistent is very good for a yer or so and then he can increase the size of share depend on his confi level ) I would suggest that u don't call your self in one of the %95 but think positive that you are in one of the %5 who figured out what going wrong and be succesfull tomorrow u r more smarter trader then your were yesterday THE -1900 and - 1540 u payed for a lesson not to be greedy so don't worry tomorrow is a another day and don't let pll discourage you.
Giannos, you need mandatory stop loss exits. If your typical profits are $60, $100, or $200, you CAN'T be stubborn and watch your losses jump to like 2 grand!?!! You really need a better money management system and a strict set of rules to prevent you from digging yourself into such a large hole. Like someone said earlier, if your typical average day gain is $300, and you take a $2000 hit, that automatically erases like 7 days of hard work. You can't allow that to happen. And the solution is not increasing size for the next trade so you can make it all back in one quick swing. That's the attitude that wipes traders out. When you're down, you can't be aggressive and "triple" or "quadruple" up your size. You might get lucky and recuperate the giant losses once in awhile, but if you do that all the time, that's a dreadful recipe for guaranteed disaster. You should really re-evaluate what you're able to eat up and immediately get out once that loss level is reached. There is no justification for you to ever increase your size just because you took a big loss. You obviously have very limited capital. You don't have the luxury to "double up" or whatever after each trade. But even if you had $1 million, it would still be imprudent to double up after a massive size loss to your account. It all comes down to discipline. That's something that ALL traders need to obey if they want to survive in this game for a long time. In your next trade, you better NOT size up to 15,000 shares or whatever and try to make up your losses for today/yesterday!!! Having discilpine means you have to painfully eat up your losses sometimes and start fresh but not exploding your risk levels to create even bigger problems. If you don't do that, you won't have any more money to trade with because you will eventually lose it all with that kind of stubborn mentality.
Thanx man......I just felt like I had left over 5k in profits on the table this month by closing my trades to early and hence this time when I should have closed, I held.......Apreciate the support....Tomorrow I will be smarter with more DISCAPLINE
One way to quantify the average risk you would incurr on "day trading" AMAT or MSFT yesterday would be to use the ATR or Average Trading Range of that stock and multiply that by your position size. In your case, the ATR for MSFT has been hanging around 0.32 and for AMAT 0.34, lets use a 0.33 for a rule of thumb. So, with your 7000 shares, you were risking a average worst case trade of $2333 - on each trade each day. If you make multiple trades each day, it gets more complicated, but your risk increases significantly. I have seen rules of thumb used where daily risk should not exceed 2% of total - on each position. To trade 7000 AMAT or MSFT using this thumb rule ... you would need somewhere aroung $116k to do 1 trade per day (entry then, exit or stop). This is very simplistic, but I saw no other reply explaining how to measure your risk or size your positions. Also you may find this level of risk management very boring, but maybe this will help you put your own framework in place. best of luck
Didn't Vince Lombardi say "Winning is a habit"... something like that? You can't win thinking mediocrity... Still working on it myself.
I'm not sure what you meant by that statement. In sports, yes, it's idealogical to want to win every game, but you can't carry that attitude for trading because sometimes you just have to accept your losses and move on and not go "all out" and risk further and more massive defeat.
Giannos, look to your own experience on how to make money and how to not lose it. You know exactly what to do: trade easier trending markets, reduce risk and leverage until you get more consistant, never add to a loser, cut losses...etc. As someone on here said trading is simple but to keep it simple requires a lot of hard work. Also as someone else said you have to avoid the "I don't care mode" that usually happens when you're in a drawdown or losing streak. You lose 1000 today 1500 tommorow so then you size up and take bigger risks to get it back and you're down 500 and you're thinking ohh I'm down only 500 compared to 1000 and 1500 the past two days even though you should'nt be risking more than 100. Good luck.
Agree completely. I took the statement out of context... It's about being too shy to make a play because they see themselves as mediocre players and don't want to risk their ego. As you said, one has to accept the risks (losses) and move on.
That's not a "blow up" dude. (Unless the size of your whole account is only $5000.) But anyway, my honest appraisal is you don't know what the hell you're doing. Maybe you think you do, but you don't. Neither do most traders (even those "making money" - don't worry, that won't last), so you're certainly not alone. You really do have a lot more to learn. So much to learn that it's not even worth trading until you've learnt it. But it's your money. As Cheese said, Outlook: more losses. Sorry bro, but that's probably what you can expect.