It might be instructive to tell the members how much trading capital you were using. Using low capital leaves very little room for mistakes. A few bad decisions can cripple you and essentially put you out of business.
Appreciate your honesty bobcathy. Have read many of your posts and was taken aback to learn things weren't going well . Kind of a wake up call to us aspiring traders of the difficulty involved in this undertaking . Good luck in your future endeavors.
Why trade futures? With futures you only have one chance. With stocks you have multiple chances when you open three, four, five positions. Some stocks will go up and others will flop over. Those that flop over you cut immediately. When the market is goung up establish multiple positions as quickly as you can without picking weak stocks. It's as simple as that. No scientific indicators are going to help you. It's all common sence. Cast a big net (multiple positions) when the fish are running and haul in. The fish are not running today, except for a few short top plays. Check the news and you'll see why. Tomorrow is another trading day.
Because when the indices will come up short there are stocks that will be outperforming the indices. Take a look at the price gainers today. It grieved me how I did'nt see BLDP until it had gone up.
And how many of them did you catch? While you're looking to try to find something that's moving, the people who are trading futures are already in. "The fish are not running today, except for a few short top plays." The futures, on the other hand, did just fine.
I prefer to trade futures over stocks anyday. Decimilization has really made stock trading significantly more difficult. My advice to Cathy is to NEVER give up. If you find yourself losing money consistently you should stop trading for a while and attempt to get at the root of the problem. When you trade, you need to focus not on the money at stake but rather on market conditions; i would imagine that many people worry too much about the money that is at stake and therefore make bad decisions. Every trader has to pay a tuition fee; how big that fee is depends upon how quickly he/she learns from his/her mistakes. You may lose many fortunes in your lifetime; just try to learn from each mistake and never make the same mistake twice. there's my 2 cents. hope it helps in some way.
livermore, you have risen too late, she had gone to the other side (regular, non-trading side), you need to live more to keep up with what happenings.
sounds like you might want to automate the process then. But that opens up a whole other can of worms i suppose