Hey, I've decided to make my trading activities public. After a few days of balancing pros and cons I'd rather have a global audiance to report to & accept critisizm to become a better trader. I'm a decent trader albeit inconsistant at times. Essentially my swing trades have been feeding my day trading activity but I do get to bank some cash every time I hit a big trade. Here is some info about myself - I'll keep it short or else I'll be compelled to spew verbal diarrhea: I love strategy, period (chess, RTS games, number crunching & probability etc). I work part time at a large brokerage as an admn asst for a financial advisor. I'm 22 and have been trading for ~3 years. Prior to trading I played poker & baccarat. I have net a respectible amoung of money playing both and could have made a career out of gambling, more specifically poker. Poker was exetremely popular in my area and I know a few people who were earning nice income prior to turning age of majority (in Canada: 19). I know I could have gone this route but there was too luck involved which really stressed me out. Even when I won a pot due to luck I felt pathetic. I couldn't go this sleezy route of making money. Although to people who do not know the financial world trading, portfolio management, could be seen as such. For the first 2 years of trading I was mainly a swing trader starting out around the crash. I started intra day in 2009 and wow it was a different monster. For the most part of 09 my swing trading was feeding my day trading activities. it was only this year where I managed to scale better and take less tilt-like actions. I only trade equities. I tried trading forex & commods but I lost ~5k, small blow TBH, but it sucked out 3 months of my time and dedication. Thanks AVA trader, fx, or w/e that broker is called. I think I payed about 1.25k in trading fees, or spreads, in that three months. I'm an idiot to think I could have scalped oil gold and currencies. My equities strategies couldn't transfer over. I trade nice liquid large cap stocks including SPY & QQQQ. I try to focus on teck stocks and banks. I keep a close eye on FAS & MSFT, sometimes XOM & GLD. I have a list of about 30 stocks that I cycle thru. This is as much as I can say in terms of what I trade. I wont be sharing much about my strategy. I worked too ****ing hard for this to give out free strategies. I will be posting my daily P&L and giving you guys a quick synop of the day and how i messed up and could have been better. My biggest weakness is being greedy and impatient. I end up netting 300/400 in green only to give it back in the last hour because of greed. I don't scale as much as I should and end up putting bulk 1000 share orders, of SPY, at one price @ MKT because of fear that I don't want to miss a wave. Only to be stopped out & have the trade go in my way eventually. This is exactly what happened on Friday and I don't want these bad habbits to happen again. I'm in the red $800 this month, ****, and green ~1k will leave me at my monthly avg. I swear that I am going to push my self even harder from now on and 1 or 2 grand a month is not good enough anymore. Trading is the hardest thing I've ever done in my life and mastering disapline & avarice at the same time will leave me dead before 30 or on the cover of top trader under 30. I can't fail anymore.
"Prior to trading I played poker & baccarat. I have net a respectible amoung of money playing both " How do you make money playing baccarat (over the long term)?
Everyone can make money on bacca, however it takes an immense amount of patience to not play every single game. Baccarat is the only table game where the house doesn't have an edge over its customer; other than an infinite amount of chips and time.
Your usage of Stops could be something you need to investigate. Try to see your approach towards stops when you swing trade and when you day trade. Are they different ?? In case of your Greed for Intraday trades - use that to trail stps smartly. Greed is good when you are ina profitable trade. Do you enter a full position and then scale out or Scale in a trade ?
How does the house have an edge over you if, you have the OPTION to bet on either player or banker. And if it is a tie game you don't lose anything. If you are talking about the commissions in the game, those aren't winning edge's (an uneven payout) perhaps, but it doesn't make that table more prone to have bankers compared to players. Where as all the other games are rigged to the casino's favor. craps, roulette, blackjack, bingo, etc... Or maybe they have different rules at your local casino?
It's not so much my stops that are a problem, it's my entries. I enter too often too quickly and sometimes end up exiting at a perfect entry just because I couldn't bear any more red in that position. Trailing stops take too much effort and extra time to monitor - I normally get out at one or two price points which works. When i'm in the green my exists are very good. I try to enter a position in at least 2 instances. 3 is Ideal. I'll continue to add as long as price action and indicators will encourage me to do so. If i'm getting into MSFT it's an easy 1kshares bid -1, -2, but if its spy then it could be 200 shares X bid-1, -2,-3....-10 depending on the type of day. I want to post not only my P&L but my positions P&L which will not be avail until midnight. Regarding bacca: it has the lowest house edge, not zero house edge (lol). There are different versions, however, I am fortunate enough to live in a high concentration of chinese people and my 'local' casino has a stupid amount of private rooms and a giant floor just for bacca. I looked up the casinos version against other versions and it was the best or second best version i forget now how many decks they use. But yeah the game is all about probability and trends
Probability and negative expectation are how the house wins over the long term and you will expect to get ground out in Baca over the long time. What I would like to see is if you can cite a study(or show me one you've done) showing trends in baca and if it diverges from random walk. Havwe you actually done the science here and tested your hypothesis of "But yeah the game is all about probability and trends ."
I have not recorded my findings nor have I found anything useful on the net prior to playing. Two guys taught me the basics (their parents played IDK how good they were) years before I stepped into the casino. I actually spent a few days at the casino to 'figure' it out. Not betting first 10 rounds will give you an edge, many early face cards showing up normally resulted in more streaks, and less usually resulted in more skips. There can be resistance points example: max 3 streak in a row by banker/player X amount of times. Keep in mind you shoudl only bet when you believe you have a high probability of winning. The more you bet the more chance you have giving your $ to the casino. If you're a decent trader and you take a few weekends to study bacc I wouldn't be surprised if you figured it out yourself. I think that's as much depth as I can go into as much as I like bacc
At my local casino (foxwood's) they use 8 decks. Don't think there are trends, it is as foolish to think that price indicators predict price movements . The only trends I see is: People lose money, over and over and over. Sorry to turn your journal into a casino discussion, I just happen to make more money in the baccarat tables than in trading. Hence I keep yapping over and over.