Thank you folks for your support and encouragement. All of your support is appreciated but I would like to address some specific issues that were brought along the lines, which I feel are quite important. >for starters, change name to winner from sucker. and good luck! Only a sucker will start a thread like this. If I profess myself a professional I would not have too much freedom to express my thoughts and ask for advice. >If you can see yourself doing this for living then good on you. It took 3 years for me to get a good grasp of this game. I do not see myself doing only trading for a living. The idea of position trading seems more attractive to me because I like to follow bigger trends. >I dont know what instrument you are trading but forget the indicies and look to currencies/ interest rates in my opion. In these markets it is far easier to spot and ride long term trends. I trade soybeans as I have had strong ties with grains since I was a child and they help me with my job. Anyway I see your point, I noticed a while ago that currency markets seem to offer smoother and long term trends. Thanks for your suggestion. I will consider it carefully. >Seems to me that trading is so hard and unpredictable that only the very best and (trading-wise) talented and dedicated traders should stay involved. I have been had a hard time not with the markets. I like them and I see their spontaneous organic movement. Instead I have had a hard time with myself. >If, as you say, the emotional component is a problem for you, the drawdowns involved in many mechanical systems will likely be intolerable. However, your choices are not limited to "feeling" the "mood" and entering and exiting without any will whatsoever. You can instead tailor a strategy that is exactly right for you with as little or as much discretion as you like. The challenge for you will be finding and exercising the discipline to follow it. Being disciplined doesn't mean being mechanical. Rather it means following whatever plan you've drawn for yourself without the second-guessing and self-doubt. >If you're still exploring strategies and tactics, then two years is not unheard of. If none of what you've explored has shown the results you're looking for, then perhaps you've just had bad luck. However, you ought to know by now what you've liked and disliked from all those experiments and be able to zero in on something more appropriate. However, if you're just as lost as you were two years ago, then perhaps this just isn't for you. Thanks DB for your generous advice. I am not as lost as I was two years ago. I am making progress. There is an irony about my experience which gets me really mad about it: I work in a bank and some months ago I helped a client to trade options as we were promoting them among clients. To my surprise I found myself giving sound advice and providing the best management I could never benefit from with my own money. We achieved good results, with quite precise entry and exit points. Then I got really mad about it: how could I make money for others, for free, and not be able to help myself. I just couldn't believe it. That's why I say I still lack the kind of intelligence that resides in the hands. Dealing with the client's money put the emotions out of the game and everything was fine. So I acknowledged the problem and started working on it. Yet it seems that more patience and trading is required before achieving that kind of discipline to choose a given strategy and follow it without the second-guessing and self-doubt. By reading your signatures I also acknowledge the kind of mindset I need to become profitable: trade risk, not reward, exactly as I did for the client. An amateur thinks about how much he can make. A professional thinks about how much he can lose. It is the risk, not the reward that needs to be traded. Thanks. Best regards.
Sucker, Find an edge and trade it. If you don't have an edge yet, stop trading until you find one -- then trade it.
Perhaps the issue is not about winning and losing and success and failure but about money itself. For myself, I know that when I reached a place where I was concerned only about price points (i.e., points on a chart) and not about money, my concentation took on an entirely different character. Perhaps when you are trading for others, the money is only a means of keeping score, but when you're trading for yourself, it carries with it all the emotional baggage that it carries for each of us, triggering fear, greed, and hope responses at every opportunity. Therefore, rather than focus on your perceived lack of discipline, perhaps you should - at least for now - think about your attitudes toward money, and losing, and losing money, and how all of that relates to your sense of and/or need for financial security and the consequences of losing that security. Are you, for example, responsible only for yourself or do you have a family to support? --Db
Right to the point. Actually I cannot say my money is a risk money. And my family partially depends on me. There is a lot of expectation of my achievements, which ends up being quite a burden.
Sorry dude, but you are a pretentious buffoon who tries to imply what I never said. A bit of fairness is required if you want to judge others. You can find more than one post where I admit to losing 12 pts a day. The difference between me and you is that I am a man and a successful trader and so I can take it and you are a loser who pretends to know something (but in fact you even cannot comprehend what simplicity is about) and so no wonder that you cannot stand those more successful. Change your attitude (simplify it) and you will not have to be concerned with how others are doing. And if you really have to be concerned, try to be fair. I guess, inandlong once exposed your BS here and now I am doing it again. And if I have to do it again, you can count on that! You do not have to make money every day (a typical obsession of all losers) as long as you are making more than you are losing. It is as simple as that, although I am sure you will try to make it 'simpler'. Period. P.S. For tomorrow two of my three systems are anticipating a breakout to the upside. Today or tomorrow could be a bottom from which the market could move past the last highs. You will see if I make money or not. The first entry is at @889.0, the other @901.5, the third system is flat at this point and will remain so until tomorrow morning. This is not meant as advice to trade the S&P futures market. I was wrong in the past and anticipate to be wrong in the future.
In that case, perhaps you should consider going back to paper-trading for a while, at least until you can find something or create something (or a little of both) that you can trust, and by "trust" I mean trust enough so that your first loss won't make you light-headed. Then set aside a certain amount of money that you can consider lost money, and trade it for real without worrying about the consequences. If these issues are serious and deep, it's just not possible to work through them on a message board. And it's possible that you may never be able to "let go" and trade without regard for the financial consequences. Remember, though, that paper-trading is not a palliative. It's purpose is to try out new ideas and to at least partially determine the efficacy of a hypothetical strategy. There are people here, after all, who have been paper-trading for years and still can't make any money on real trades. Paper-trading can become part game and part social activity, which is fine if you have no other goal. But if trading is not a recreational activity and if you spend too much time on paper-trading, the market will have changed by the time you finally get off the pot and make a real trade, perhaps making your paper-trading results moot. You may also want to consider keeping quiet about your efforts, encouraging whoever's interested to think of it as your hobby, with which you're using play money. When there is no longer any interest in what you're doing, you may be able to approach the trading with a different attitude. --Db
Trading is a Game. Not too many people make money these days. On the same hand alot of fortune 500 companies are losing money. After tripleing my money in 1999 and 2000. I have given it all back and spent it. So now I am lower than where I started. But I love this game too much so I borrowed another 10,000 grand and my equity is past where I began... Its just like Lucent borrowing more money to stay is biz.... Its the macho thing you just cant give up if you love the game... Just finds ways to stay in.
The three goals of trading, in order of importance: 1. capital preservation 2. consistent returns 3. large returns If trading to you is entertainment or you do it for some kind of rush or something, then just finding ways to stay in the game is probably more akin to feeding a gambling habit.