To consistently keep every losing trade small (small relative to net trading capital) imho - of course RN
Yes, journal is a great idea. My take on it is as follows: Forget about the $500 goal for now. Let's assume you will trade 1 contract per 5k equity in your acct to play it safe. 5k is not too high an amount to blow if things don't work out but at the same time it's more than enough to give you some cushion initially. Now let's just say you can average 1 ES point per day... That's 5 pts or $250 per week. If you can maintain this performance for 5 months, your account will have increased to $10k. You can then safely add a second contract and bingo, you're now making $500 per week . Sounds like a plan?
goal should be discipline to keep you in biz, figure out what that is, the 1 pt stop in es is to small willl get eaten up by 1000 stops,you need to perfect a setup then learn to sit on hands til it shows up, then trade it and be disciplined to stop yourself out when wrong, down the road you will have many but only trade the ones you know for now, biz is not about money, it's about getting good at a game, the money is secondary you may only see 3 -4 trades a week but if the setup is a good one you should win 70% of the time or better
Your stop loss depends on your strategy. Why 1 point? Because it's heckuva lot easier to average 1 pt/day than say 4 or even 2 points . You want to set reasonable goals in the beginning and then gradually increase as you progress.
Couple big buyouts falling apart. Murdoch walked away from time warner deal and sprint to end t-mobile deal.
Looks like another huge down day today, we got a bear flag breakout yesterday and we are set to open near yesterday's lows. Funny how nobody here seems to be short when we get a meltdown like this, but I guess thats why markets go down i.e all the bears have given up.