First year trading review -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Quote from futurecurrents: I intend to sit in a comfy chair, push some buttons, and make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year! Cool huh?! After three years of developing,refining and partially trading my system/method I've finally decided to quit my job and start trading full time. Gasp! I'm scared, excited and according to my friends and family, perhaps insane. This is my first post here at Elite Trader so I want to say Hi, and I'm happy to be in the company of such a diverse group of brotherly, intelligent and successful traders. I hope to do you all proud tradingwise and contribute what I can. My initial impressions of trading this last week: I feel like I've been kissed and then slapped by a beautiful tempestuous woman. I did okay but I also screwed up. My foreplay was rather clumsy and careless. My smile is crooked. But she's wetted my appetite and I've always loved the hard-to-get ones. Anyhow words of encouragement, guidance, wisdom or the phone number of a good psychiatrist are all welcome. ************************************************** "Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear." -Ambrose Redmoon -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It's been one year since I wrote the above. I'm glad I never really quit working I scaled back my business but I kept at it. My trading has made me no income nor have I lost anything. I traded about five million in stocks, about 15 grand at a time about three round trips per day. I never held overnight. About 85% of my trades were long. I'm disappointed but sort of feel hopeful since it could have been worse. This market has been bad for my method .....momentum. I stopped trading in November and just started up again this last month. I don't need the market to go up or down for my method to work but there needs to be participation. until lately there was no follow through to any moves intraday. It seems that the VIX is a good filter for my method. Above thirty - don't trade. Some may say one should be able to trade all the time and make money in any market. Well I tried other things while my bread and butter method was floundering and got nowhere. I daresay that there are few traders that have seen the kind of market we've had for the last year. The malaise and exhaustion that resulted from the crushing of the bubble had just knocked all the wind out of the market sails. the selling had abated but there also had been no inclination to buy either. I'm now starting to see stocks make new highs and new lows intraday. I am hopeful that resolution of the war and terrorist threats receding, corporate scandals behind us and some excess taken out of the market, that John Q Public will start dipping a toe in again. I do believe it was a historic bubble and a historic crash and I don't think we'll see conditions like that again for long time. My method works. I have confidence in it. There are some times it won't work and that's ok, I'll just stop awhile. To everything there is a season. For all that are struggling.....better days ahead! __________________ The future chaos is determined by the current chaos, in a chaotic manner.
A few things: to breakeven while trading just part time isn't all bad. I think if you really want to do this successfully you need to be 100% committed, and focus totally on it. To have a separate business can be a distraction (although a good one if it's producing your income). I think one can trade "all the time". The QQQ and SPY, for example, give us plenty of opportunities intra-day, whther it be on the long side or short. And I think these will always be good trading vehicles in ANY kind of market.
Dave, I'd love to find an all weather system. Frankly I don't think there is one for the indexes. Have you made money over the last year trading indexes intraday? If so my hat's off to you. I'm not the only one here who think they are impossibly random and particularly difficult the last year or so. If you have been successfull I'd love to know how. I think it is quite possible that the best way to trade may be a more selective and intermittent one then the idea that one must always be nose to the grindstone day in and day out regardless of market conditions. If my system can make a comfortable income but requires me to suspend operations now and then I won't mind. It is true however that having the crutch of my regular job is probably taking the pressure off to find alternative trading methods. But my real distractions are silly things like boat building, biking, sailing, golf, fishing etc. My obsessive nature rotates between them and trading is just one of them. Good trading and thanks for the response.
I've made money since I started trading SPY over the past year. I go for small profits; most of the time .10 to .30 on a trade of 300 to 500. I agree it can seem random at times. I usually wait for the market to run up (or down) intra-day when I often enter looking for a reversal. Short or long ... it doesn't matter to me. And I am selective (as you stated above). Good luck on finding a system that can accomplish what you want as far as income.
Thanks dnaj65000, I like your words of wisdom in you sig. They ring so true and most likely apply to Saynt. Saynt Chaosity, Your one to talk, oh and BTW your girl left her thong at my apartment again last night.