Death Blow to DayTraders

Hey, our mood changes with how we perform, is that wrong?

 

Wet,

13 profitable days in a row is a great winning streak..

as far as newbie killing.. i can remember on several occasions taking trades after hours from MKXT ecn that were crossing the market with isld and pocketing the cash.. new traders hit the wrong buttons.. they tend to buy when they should be selling and vice versa until they learn the game.. i think thats all Hitman was saying..

-qwik

 

Quik,

I know what you mean but naw, that's not what he was saying. I know this guy from MSN's boards for the last year or so. He's an arrogant cocky kid. When he is winning, he's a newbie killer and knows all the answers. When he starts losing, he gets humble and says he's a newbie himself to garner sympathy.

I don't buy either act.

Hitman,

I've gone on big win streaks too. At the end of the day I'm just happy I'm still winning. I close up shop and look at my charts for the next day. I don't beat my chest and snicker about the "newbies" I'm stealing money from. Similarly, when I lose I don't whine like a baby and crawl around the boards looking for sympathy.

Wet

 

Wet:

I don't think I have ever said anything about knowing all the answers. If you read my journals you know even on my best days, I put down exactly what I missed, what I should have done better. In every monthly recap I listed a lot of things I must do to improve my game.

I also don't think people with a 10K IB account and Quote Tracker can stand up to me in DAY TRADING. Swing trading is a different game, but in day trading many many times there are situations where you either get the fill or you get hit for a half point loss, so yes it is indeed a very personal, very competitive game where someone has to be left holding the bag. When I was a newbie I held those bags on a daily basis, and now I am a little more experienced I like to have newbies giving me a BID when I need to get out so I don't lose 3/4 of the profit like I did on that VTS trade. That's all I am saying.

When you hit a good day, you feel great about yourself, when you hit a bad day, you feel like crap, this happens to most traders at my firm and I don't see why you don't understand this. As a day trader I am supposed to go home in the black every single day, if I don't do that I am not happy about my performance because I seek to become a better trader.

I would like to keep those confrontations on the MSN board.

 

Hitman,

I can understand that a day trader can benefit at the hands of a rookie trader. So can a swing trader. As well, I can understand that when you do well, you feel good. When you do bad, you feel like crap.

However, "easier rookie kills" is a typical macho-chest beating statement from you. As I said, when I win, I am happy I am winning. I don't get arrogant. I move to the next trade and hope the streak continues. It's a business, not an ego contest.

I know you are young, but try to get some class.

Wet

 

For every negative there is a positive. Yes, I agree, that a $25k requirement will keep many newbies out of the game. But the net overall effect will be good, because the rule will prevent these newbies from being wiped out, as a result of being undercapitalised. The positive is the 4:1 margin, which is an excellent idea and will help many of us to trade more profitably. I believe these regulations have been created to protect the newbies and to help the more established trader, so I fully support them. Combine these regulations with the added liquidity from SuperSOES, and the established trader will find he is on a much more level playing field than he has been for a while. Excellent news!

 

Tailspin,

Sounds like we are at a similar point in our learning curves, and have about the same amount of money.
I wouldn't bet my account on it, but I think you will be able to continue trading as you have been since the new ruling has nothing to do with cash accounts. I myself have only been trading on the long side in preparation for this. I don't really need margin anyway because I am not willling to put more than 60% of my equity into any one trade, and I can't remember the last time I had more than one position open.
As far as swing trading with a margin account, I think it would be pretty difficult with under 25K. For example, suppose you entered a long trade on Monday, got quickly stopped out, and then re-entered the same trade later that day when your setup was triggered again. Now let's say the market had a nice three day rally and you were able to trail your stop one point behind your position. Then on Thursday morning, the market gaps down slightly and your stop is hit and you take a nice five point gain. There you have it, a classic swing trade, and you are now classified as a "Pattern Day Trader" because you have just made your 4th trade for the week. I can't deal with those kinds of limitations. If for some reason I can't trade in a cash account, I am going to go pro or trade futures.

Best regards,

Alex

 

From Hitman:
"When you hit a good day, you feel great about yourself, when you hit a bad day, you feel like crap,"

Actually, no i don't -- i'm pretty much nuetral either way. I like to have fun with my trading friends, and we josh around a bit -- but it is never personal.

And i don't buy the warfare analogy -- if that was the case why share your "top secrets" on a public board? (Hey, some don't!) Yep, it's a zero sum game -- but, hostility? not required to win.

I have a set of trading plans that all have positive expectancy, and i just trade. Win, lose -- so what! the money just flows. If one trading plan's expectancy gets outside of 2 sigma on the performance chart -- pull out another plan -- the market has changed.

You know: i am one of those under 25k account folks that you label as a newbie -- just because of the size of my account. Strange, the Nazi's labeled people just by the size of their heads.

I dream of a day when traders will not be judged by the size of their accounts (and people, not by their size -- know what i mean), but by the content of their character -- appologies to MLK

regards/greg

 

GH2:

If you are trading for a living, then you will feel the pressure, plain and simple. The only traders at my firm who doesn't feel like crap after a big down day are those who have been at it for such a long time they already made millions, and even then, if the number is large enough, or a few of those string together into a bad streak, frustration goes up, stress goes up immediately.

Forget these "trading in the zone" books, it is one thing to talk about psychology and emotion on paper, it is the other thing when you have rent to pay and you just blew your pay period with a size down day. If you don't feel like crap after a blown out, you are probably not a serious trader.

What is with this "positive expectancy" thing? Hello? Even I consider myself to be a newbie and until I do this for a few years profitably, I have no track record and can blow up at any given time. Market evolves, your strategy stops working, you blow up, just like that. When you are new to this business, the most important thing on the back of your head should be survival, and you should have a strong sense of urgency. By the time you figured out that your plan is not working, you already blew half of your account. I know for a fact that I am capable of winning every single game I play, and because I am human and I make mistakes, that is not possible, but that doesn't mean it is ok if I drop a game, it is not ok, every loss must be taken seriously so you pump yourself up to get the next one, that's how you avoid losing streaks, that's how you force yourself to play at a high level. If I lose a game, it is my fault, it is not market's fault, I missed shots I should have made and I took shots I shouldn't have took, take it personally and make it a mission to get the next one. Every day is an opportunity to make a lot of money, and if you are not pushing yourself to get better, you never will.

Why do I share my "secret" (first of all a lot of people at my firm uses more or less a variation of sector trading)? Because I have sat next to many successful traders at my firm and watched how they trade, and I know for a fact that I will not be able to trade their style even if I tried. There are only so many different trading styles out there, and ultimately you will take some ideas from each and mesh it into something you are comfortable with. You will NEVER EVER be able to copy another person's strategy because your personality is different, and you will execute very differently even if you both are trading what is essentially the same strategy.

By putting up the journal, I want people with doubts about day trading to see that it can be done, as I am by no means a super size trader yet, so other members on this board can watch me grow and provide helpful comments and suggestions along the way. In the case I blow up, people will be able to see step-by-step how I blew up and know what not to do, although in reality, even if you read all the day trading books in the world, every now and then, you will still make every single mistake in the book, because you are human, and emotion is always a factor. I find it funny that people wrote "I would have saved a lot of money had I read insert_book_title_here, bull crap, we all know what not to do, yet we still do it until we get hurt then learn from painful mistakes. I want to provide this board on a different perspective of trading, the perks of a prop. firm, and a different style of trading, I already made quite a few friends on this board, and I plan to continue to do so.

Since when does trading success is measured by character? Even if it does, I think I have been brutally honest on every single question people ever asked me on this board or e-mail, why shoot the messenger for bringing the truth? The reality is the trader IS judged by the size of his account, if you are good at it, you have to have something to show for it, and nothing can replace the cold hard P&L.