Well I've done about 450 round turn trades. I'm profitable but just by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin. My trading isn't even minimum wage. If it weren't for the low brokerage commissions, I wouldn't even be profitable. So to all of you who want to fight this battle and who have made a success of it, you have my complete admiration. I'll lurk for a while, in hopes of catching some ideas that I might try.
we'll for what it's worth. my experience is that it takes usually about 6 month's for "good" traders to turn a profit and usually about a year for avg traders to become profitable. granted i'm referring to "professional" traders versus "at home" online traders. but in my humble opinion, you sound like you are doing quite well and probably aren't that far off from becoming a VERY GOOD TRADER......it's weird but i've noticed many traders make their breakthrough at the very time they contemplate giving up.
I agree with Bryon Roberts. They say, if you can only break even then you're way ahead of the pack. That says a lot about you. Who is your broker? Try swithcing to Interactive Brokers or another cheapy if you're not already there. With 1 cent per share commissions it could make the difference between profit and loss. A good trading chat room could help too. Trading is 90% psychological in my opinion. If you're surrounded by others who are successful it rubs off. There are a lot of garbage rooms out there, but I've found two that I really like. MTrader.com and millenium-traders.com. Mtrader focuses mainly on teaching you how to trade--it's a little slower pace. Very good support though. Milleinum is a wild ride!! They trade fast stocks all day long. Their end of day results are a bit exaggerated but they really do know how to pick them. I would say 8 out of 10 of their picks are winners. Usually between 1/2 to 3 point gains. I only wish my first year in trading was break even. I lost my A$$ at first. But like a bad habit I keep coming back. Those two suggestions really helped me out. Good Luck.
"it's weird but i've noticed many traders make their breakthrough at the very time they contemplate giving up." I could not agree with that more. I haven't been at the point of giving up (I will never give up), but a few times in the past I have been discouraged. However, it was at those points when I made my biggest improvements. You have to suffer losses to understand what you're doing wrong. There's some quote similar to, "at the point of chaos, the greatest changes take place."
Good point. It takes large losses for you to finally confront your weaknesses in trading. I always start a good winning streak following a bad week or 2 and the last day of that loosing streak is always a 5k or more loosing day (usually around 10k). After that I usually fix whatever, calm down and go on a 2 month spree of raking in loot. No idea, why, but it seems to always work that way at least for me.
I've been in it for 6 months, and could not agree more. I lost big the first 5 months, learned from my mistakes, and 1 month after that have a 15 percent profit over my start up balance, and looking to add on more. Nows not the time to give up, you've almost turned the corner. Good luck.
This is one of the reasons capital preservation is so important. If the odds are in your favor by having "the edge" or in my case quite a few edges as long as you can continue to play the game you will come out ahead. This can't be overstressed. First do you have a positive expectancy system? This means overall is there an edge that says I'll make money. Do you have a big enough amount of capital to withstand the drawdowns? If you have a losing streak of a few days, months, will you still have enough to recover? I'm finally have a few winning trades today, taking the rest of the day off while hanging out here. Rtharp