ammo, Thx for the advice, i've been reading a few journals on here. One i thought was pretty helpful was called AHG. Also, you mentioned the diff news coming out at all sorts of times during the day, making the market verrrry choppy. Are these abnormal market conditions? I just started a week ago, you mean things could actually get easier?! youngtrader, Reading this religiously? Lol, unfortunately, i'm not gonna have much trading insight for quite a while, this journal will just document my fustrations and triumphs in the market for now I think. i do appreciate it though. And talk about overtrading, i have about $800 racked up in commissions, and i just finished my 2nd week of trading and im basically at breakeven in my acct. I traded wheat aftermarkets first day, big mistake, lost like 900. For now, I'm completely done with after-market and night-trading, and hopefully impulse trading. I'm not sure how to view the tick by tick actually. I dont think IB even has that chart option. And the order book? You mean the time/sales thing, or tape reading? I tried to set it up but don't quite know how, IBs software is pretty awful but the charts work well enough for now. I want to subscribe to other software in the future if I can actually survive a couple of months here. Happy trading
one more thing, if you buy at 459 and it goes to 479 put in a 475 sell stop, if it goes to 489 move your stop up, keep moving it til it reverses and your filled, you'll get the bigger profits that way and you will still be able to relax, the spus move roughly 1 point for 7 in the dow and they often back up 1.5 in the chug on the way up, so once youve got a profit you might want to keep your stop 10 points back depending if its a creeper or a freight train like fri afternoon
i completely understand moving the stop up to protect profits and trying to let your profit ride at the same time, but balancing the two seems hard. it'll come with time for me, i guess. if the mkt popped 20pts in my favor all of a sudden, i find it tends to retreat maybe 5-10pts before advancing more, and im afraid if i move the stop up too tightly it'll stop me out before the next wave comes, and it's happened to me before. then again sometimes it retreats to my BE and then i regret not moving the stop up.
Assume you noticed how crazy things were moving the last hour, I 10 pont stop kept getting blown away, every time. Such unprecented move, I wish it's possible to record it...
sigh, mkt fustrated me today and i started getting very sloppy. now i gotta go back to basics tomorrow, 1 car at a time, no funny business. last week i woulda revenged my way back, but i gotta crawl before i walk, fuck. 19 RTs. -1260 today. fuck.
Thought it through thoroughly on the ride back from work, today wasn't too bad. Decided that I would quit my job as a futures broker, and concentrate strictly on trading. Today was just a rude awakening why stops are so important. Took a couple of winners and losers into lunch, and was kind of fustrated with a -100 loss and no market conviction. Started trading the super choppy after-lunch hours and fucking got stopped out left and right. Finally decided to not use stops because the spikes that took me out seemed to always reverse and come back anyways. Bad idea obviously, tried to chase my losses trading 2 contracts no stops. Bad idea again. Got pounded on that spike around 3:15. Never saw the Dow move like it did today. Really shoulda stepped to the sides when the market was spiking 20 pts up and down every 5 minutes. Now I wouldn't dare trade without a stop. So today was a huge loss by comparison to what I'm used to, but it's just a drop in the bucket compared to what I could be making down the road. As long as I don't fuck myself before it happens. Last week I would have been revenge trading like hell, but this week is gonna be different. I considered just trading 2-3 contracts tomorrow to try to get lucky and win all of it back. Would've been another total void of discipline. Instead of winning it back the fast way, I'm gonna win it back the slow way. Even if it takes me a month to get it back, because my whole bankroll is at risk if I do anything stupid tomorrow. I realize I'm doing this all like a god damn newbie, just worried about the money. Money is a by-product of good trading. Money will follow good trading, just like it did when I played disciplined poker. Game plan for tomorrow: trade 1 contract at a time, limit pre-lunch trading to 3 trades or less, trade only in the direction of the general trend, use 10-14 pt stops everytime, and try not to cut profits short. I'll be happy if I only break 1 of my rules tomorrow. Thanks for reading. Happy trading.
Been there done that so many times I can't remember them all. But I can remember yesterday and it was pretty much the same. Something that has helped me, is to learn to take the loss and get over it... I do not go forward thinking "I loss X, so I need XX to get it back" That loss has come and gone. Now your account is XXX, not 'XXX-todays loss'. Learn from the mistakes and correct them and the p&l will take care of itself. I have tried to learn not to try to trade to make so much money, but to concentrate on taking the proper trades and managing them properly. Make 'em pretty, Chris
Day-Trading 2.0 for small traders Blu, do a search on ET for the above link, I think it will help very much in your quest to master the YM. And the link is only about 39 pages so you dont have to spend 7 months reading through endless pages... Let us know what you think if you try any of the ideas, later...
thx for the advice guys, will be looking into that read pt199. Today, took a trade premarket, stopped out at 50. While waiting for the market to settle down, i took on a gold trade, got out with -280. Tried to trade the news, but decided to pay attention to the signals. Now im up 236 for the day. 1 ym trade, 8 gold trades.
Another choppy dow day. Couldn't get in at the right time at all. 3 for 3 stop outs in the YM. 8 gold trades +148