correct!!! Alright guys, I had another losing day, but I think I'm starting figure out what my problem is..........courage. I get shaken out way too easily. For example, today I ACCIDENTALLY got short 3000 shares of ORCL (keep in mind that I have never had this large of a position in ORCL) and I only made one penny on the trade. The stock happened to move about 10 cents after that. I made a good call on the short and planned to make 5 or 6 cents on it but I totally freaked out and just wanted to get out of it as soon as possible. I also made a bad call in SUNW and decided to take a two cent loss in a stock that had a one cent trading range all day! I fell victim to a small price spike of one cent. ONE CENT!!! Now, here's the moment of truth. I will be trading my own money from now on. On Thursday I opened my own account. Charlie, the prez of HLV, was kind enough to wipe out the recent losses I've taken and let me restart with a clean slate. Thanks Charlie! My plan is simple, if I manage to lose a certain amount of cash, then I'm going to stop trading. I'll accept my losses and move on with my life. I'm going to remain scalping but I'm curious about other strategies. I'm not saying that I will try them out but if I do decide to try them I want the freedom to be able to. Today was a loser.... I lost $93 and made $3 losing it. SUNW.......I lost 2 cents at 1:45pm. Right when the price spiked to $3.49. I'm such a sucker..... I had 13 buy fills, 6 sell fills, and 28,200 shares traded. It was a very light day on volume for me today.....
I think you are giving yourself a slim chance. Most traders take several years to understand the markets enough to trade consistently.
if you keep trading the way you are, nothing's gonna change, and you're gonna leave the business unfulfilled. i saw it coming ever since i started posting in your thread in january. the only difference is now you'll be losing your own money, PLUS churning out those commissions for your broker. now that you can trade whatever you want, start swing-trading BSC and GS. they're among the choppiest stocks on the market, and the safest overnight holds. chart their average daily ranges over 10 to 15 trading days, and plot your entries when they pullback near the bottom of the range.. preferably if it's near support. start small 'cuz they can move up and down a point in 20 minutes. swinging as little as 100 shares, and/or scaling in and out of a 200 share position a couple times a day will make you more money than those 15,000 share NT & LU crapshoots you were gambling on before. good luck.
hey punk - you have been going through a streak of consecutive losses - just my opinion: trading your own money is not going to make it better, if anything, it will put more pressure on you and make things worse - can you go on a simulator, at least until you can see that you are starting to make money again.. - i know you have been trading real money and you are in a place where perhaps this idea would not be encouraged.. - but otherwise, continuing like this, do or die approach, i think you may be shooting yourself in the foot and not giving yourself a proper chance to succeed in this career - whatever you decide, i wish you the best.
it just mean as time go on, your ball got smaller and the star in your eyes get dimmer, re-read your first page and try to combine your current knowledge with your past bravery, that should keep you in.
Hey goodpunk, are you trading with the $5000 that hlv has on their website. If so, how much bp are you getting, and is it the same commissions? Also, please don't misunderstand me I'm just trying to find out what happened, was this move suggested by hlv because you were on such a down streak, or did you suggest it yourself? I agree with some of the other posts though, before your start trading your own money, shouldn't you take a break and do a simulator. Realtick has a decent one. Because the thing is, a few mistakes and not only will you lose your deposit, you will owe them money. I think you should take some technical analysis classes and do simulations first and develop some strategies. Then when you feel like you are ready, start trading with your own money and implement those strategies that you developed. Good luck in whatever you do though!
Yo this guy still hasn't been trading a year. It's not a losing streak. He's learning. I've heard people talking about taking 1 to 2 years to get profitable. I suppose there are geniuses who get it in less time, and losers who never ever get it. Goodpunk I would suggest you trade 1 tenth the size you plan on, ie even just 10 shares or something. Then when you get consistent making money net you add size. This way you can stay in the game longer. The other thing you might want to do is look at sammysoesa journal here http://www.freewebs.com/mytradingjournal/ Then plot on a screen shot of what he traded all his entries and exits, since he is kind enough to share them with us here. He does fantastic trading like 100 200 shares. In fact I'm going to do this excercise myself next week why not. I don't have much advice other than that! I still look forward to your eventual sucess.
Lots of good advice here. He's doing a lot better than I did my first year. I lost ~20k. I took me 1 1/2 years to get to the point where I demanded an edge that I could show on paper, otherwise I would not trade. Then it took me another 5 months to start to find some edges. Then I started turning monthly profits. It has nothing to do with courage. If you need so much courage, that's your brain telling you to stop. It's all about gathering as many edges as possible. Entry, exit, stop movement, adds/scale outs, should all have a quantitative edge attached to them. The key is to first think about what a good entry (exit, stop movement, etc..) is, quantitatively. Then test against some reference (random entry, MOC, exit after 1/2 hour, etc.). When you can do better than the references then it's time to trade!
Reading this has been fascinating to me. It appears without reading every single post, that he is losing money just about every single day, but making it up on volume? I trade from home in the country with a dial up connection. I just can't fathom somebody doing what this guy is doing. How does he pay the rent? Unreal is all I can say. TomJohn