Are you threatened by posted opinions of other traders? Opinions are just opinions. I agree with adapt or die but most beginning traders assume the problem lies with them. That may be true sometimes, but it is not always true today in my opinion. Your prescription is accurate, but missed the point for some newbies.
"Real Talk" Put simply, there are very few stocks that have moves worth trading each day. Take the typical trading stocks like AAPL GOOG off your screen. Be a bigger fish in a smaller pond. Use a scanner, and only trade stocks that are moving more than average. Have enough charts to watch every interesting stock that comes across the scanner. I use 30 charts, but usually don't need more than 20. Find your style. Trade minimum size necessary to practice your style. Look back to see which trades worked and why. Then focus all your energy on those. Look at the trades that went wrong and learn to avoid them. Get good at one thing, then you can expand your trading arsenal. It's ok to add to winners AND losers so long as you keep your mental stops, and adding is part of the plan. I've argued this ad nauseum in other threads so let's not do it again here. I've attached p/l from today, not so much for the numbers, but so you can see now the little trades really add up. I don't mind making $100-300 over and over. This is a very typical blotter for me. Finding bigger trades is tough in this market, but that's ok so long as the bills are paid. You can pay Bright $5-10k to give you the long winded version of the above, or really try to apply it for free.
Thanks for your response eric, i find it interesting your point about perhaps leaving the business in the next couple years. But a more interesting point you made is how you are completely automated but I suppose you use discretion on when to actual run you trading programs. So it seems that you are in fact on 'auto pilot' as trading strategy goes and use your judgement on when to hit the 'go' button if you will. Thats really impressive as I understood the markets to behave in a way that makes full automation really difficult.
Thanks dustin, you're the best. I'm mentally processing your post.. Thanks. BTW, your post is a lot less grim than ericp's. ps. funny story. back in the day, years ago i had a tiny ameritrade account with 3k in it. i decided i was going to just look for stocks that gapped up big 10-30% and stocks that gapped down big and i was just going to trade in that direction figuring if a stock is up 12%, then it can easily keep going to be up 15% for example. so thats what i did for 6 months and turned 3k to 9k. it felt pretty kick ass. i had to close that account for unrelated reasons and eventually slid into the dark, lifeless world of futures. and here i am.
When you say this do you mean that some very small percentage of human beings can be taught to hit a 99 mph pitch or that it is just another learnable skill? To hit even AA pitching is something very few people could ever learn. To hit major league pitching is damn near impossible even for great athletes.
people are attracted to futures because of the "leverage" built in.. and the low cost to entry... equities require, IMO of course, at least #1-5M to trade properly so you can spread your risk around and have greater chances of be profitable... the way I look at it, equities have a galaxy of stocks, vs. futures that have a limited number of sun's... if you do decide to go back to equities, the trade-ideas scanner is really good.. specially with the odds maker...
damn it! im so pissed I ever touched a futures contract. I really am. Trading futures is like competing with walmart on prices.
I am a profitable futures trader. When I started I lost a lot of money and I was consistent at that However, with sheer hard work and determination and testing a lot of hypothesis I have become profitable. So, yes trading only 1 instrument profitably is possible. I think one big reason why guys starting out in futures trading lose money is because most guys start with ES. ES is too damn hard to trade with. Now, I trade primarily ES and do ok. but it was super-hard initially. I have never done this. But trading multiple stocks - imo, should be much better from consistency point of view vis-a-vis trading couple of futures contract.