today is my 63rd day of trading. yesterday was the first time i have made profits 2 days in a row. today is looking to be profitable. i feel sooooo great right now, like a huge obstacle has been lifted off my shoulders. i've been waiting for this day. sorry if i sound silly, its just been a long and frustrating road. what a learning experience it has been. the major things i have changed to get me to this point: 1. found a system that was simple and unique, and that i believed in. 2. patience to wait for the perfect setups. i still have to work on my discipline, taking profits too early, etc... but overall everything just seems to be getting easier. i see so many things that i didn't used to....headfakes, runups without volume and divergence, the overall market as it is trading. i know i have a LONG way to go, but i just wanted to write this down somewhere so i could look back at it and laugh.
Congratulations. 63 days? That is pretty fast, dude. Keep up the good work. Discipline, discipline, discipline.
Congrats! Any insight on how you made so much progress so quickly? Specific resources you learned from? Thanks.
lots of hard work. seriously, i have been studying way before i started....maybe 3 or 4 months. i started by joining a chat room that did breakout volitility trades. didn't fit my style. i met some people in the chat room who were successful and asked them what they did. simple as that. i quit the chat room and went my own way, and stayed in touch with this new group of traders who were doing that other style. i traded that for a while and just kept tweaking it until i was satisfied that it was right for me. found a timeframe(s) that worked for me. have been seeing my trading improve slowly and then bam, it was like i got it...be patient, picky....now i'm only trading 3-4 times a day but i'm profitable. i learned to recognize my weakness (anxiousness and overtrading) and i consciously think about it while i'm trading. read every single book i could find (and there are still more out there, there must be! damn barnes&nobles and borders need to get more books on their shelfs so i can read them too -- sorry i'll buy them when i get profitable!) even if it didn't really apply. my life has been trading 24/7 almost for the past 5 months. just grinding it out. some elbow grease if you will..... this is just the beginning, i have a long journey ahead of me. i have to start scaling up in size and i expect that will be another hurdle for me to overcome. slowly but surely.
Forget Barnes & Noble and Borders, check out: www.traderslibrary.com the books are alot cheaper OR www.tradersbrain.com it's an internet library for traders, you just pay shipping.
3-4 month learning period makes much more sense (a bit more believeable). Thanks for the info on meeting a group in chat forum. University business school libraries are a good place to browse the literature. I happen to live near the UC Berkeley School of Business (Haas). While an ok b-school (certainly not among the best in the US), it has a surprisingly good slection. No student ID required to enter, but you do need one for check-out. Ed
Sounds familiar funky. I have been at it daily the past 3.5 months (2 years position trading before that) and I have been breakeven the past 2 weeks (usually a couple of up days then a down day or vice/versa). The thing that is helping me is I only trade one method and am trying to become an expert at that type of market behavior.
Today's my 46th day of trading. I'm net down but if I don't break even in the next 45 days, I'm going back to work. It seems silly to wait for the blowout till you stop, then you end up like GG.