Any loss should bother you if it's the result of violating your trading plan. And a loss that's the result of following your trading plan is just one trade of many that results in net profitability as long as your trading plan is well-designed and robust through varying market conditions - trending, range-bound, calm, and volatile. Do you have a written trading plan with well-defined setups, and rules for entry, stop loss and profit targets? If you do, then your trading should be routine and fairly boring (except for the occasional rush that comes when a monster move transpires, because you're trading every appearance of your setups and so you're always positioned for breakouts). If you don't have a written plan, then you're not ready to trade live yet. Mark Douglas' "Trading in the Zone" is a must-read. I've read it three times and I still read chapters from it to keep the information fresh. A mechanical trader has rules as mentioned above and follows them for every appearance of his/her setups. This ensures that probability is working in our favor, which is what trading's all about.
Ok Michael, Some of your responses are not typical of a person seeking genuine assistance. So for us to help you get 'straight', you are going to need to be a little forthright. Any statistics you can share re your sim trading for the last 6 months? Did you account for slippage BOTH sides of your transactions? In less than 50 words can you describe your strategy and less than 30 words describe your money management strategy? You have sought help...there are some very bright people on ET that will help the genuine trader seeking help... Bottom line ...you help us to help you... NiN
Mark, it surprises me that that you would type a response before reading through an entire post. Interesting. I stated clearly why he should do this, go back and review.
No, you cannot. You can tailor your leverage to be as comfortable as you like. U get to decide how much a loss will be while putting up the same amount of capital. Also, as I stated before, you must fear blowing up and being taken out of the arena, otherwise, you would pull the trigger without hesitation, if in fact you trust your strat. If you trade with Oanda, you can have one dollar in your account and still trade. You can trade live till you get it right, in other words.
How can any of the genii here give you advice without the rules for the miracle system? Let's have it, or pay some g00roo 10k to help you,
I think it is that you fear blow out. If you don't then you should. It would be easy to blow out a 25k with futures. Program could hang, orders could not fill properly, get caught in a flash crash, lose discipline, computer outage. Internet failure. Think it wont happen? It will. I had a position on and my internet went out and that had never happened where I was staying. Unless your futures broker has a hard money stop (risk management) outside your computer, you have power backup, backup internet, and monitor the position or run it on a monitored remote server then you could still have problems. I dunno what your help will be. Try trading with smaller using just the SPY shares or try at NADEX -- $10 per point -- no api, no stops (spread), and higher fixed cost. Honestly you might try trading vertical spreads or options instead. I think a lot of futures traders would do better trading options or vertical spreads -- whatever the source. futures are the most efficient but stops don't work that well to limit losses and the risk is high. If you trend trade or scalp then futures may work better (costs are too high otherwise). But if you dip buy or counter trend trade then using a spread might work better. Honestly i've start to have this problem myself.. It came from area outside of trading -- where I need to keep more in savings because of "life issues". I'm not afraid of losing the money but I'm afraid of not having money to cover required obligations. Perhaps you will find some reason in that..
Try these 38 steps. 38-STEPS TO BECOMING A SUCCESSFUL TRADER -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Steps to Successful Commodities Futures Trading as published in Commodity Futures Trading Club News and in Traders Organization's Real Success Daytrading Course We accumulate trading information - buying books, going to seminars and researching. We begin to trade with our 'new' knowledge. We consistently 'donate' and then realize we may need more knowledge or information. We accumulate more information. We switch the commodities we are currently following. We go back into the market and trade with our 'updated' knowledge. We get 'beat up' again and begin to lose some of our confidence. Fear starts setting in. We start to listen to 'outside news' & other traders. We go back into the market and continue to donate. We switch commodities again. We search for more trading information. We go back into the market and continue to donate. We get 'overconfident' & market humbles us. We start to understand that trading success fully is going to take more time and more knowledge then we anticipated. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Many Traders Will Give up at this Point as they Realize Work is Involved We get serious and start concentrating on learning a 'real' methodology. We trade our methodology with some success, but realize that something is missing. We begin to understand the need for having rules to apply our methodology. We take a sabbatical from trading to develop and research our trading rules. We start trading again, this time with rules and find some success, but overall we still hesitate when it comes time to execute. We start trading again, this time with rules and find some success, but overall we still hesitate when it comes time to execute. We add, subtract and modify rules as we see a need to be more proficient with our rules. We go back into the market and continue to donate. We go back into the market and continue to donate. We start to take responsibility for our trading results as we understand that our success is in us, not the trade methodology. We continue to trade and become more proficient with our methodology and our rules. As we trade we still have a tendency to violate our rules and our results are erratic. We know we are close. We go back and research our rules. We build the confidence in our rules and go back into the market and trade. Our trading results are getting better, but we are still hesitating in executing our rules. We now see the importance of following our rules as we see the results of our trades when we don't follow them. We begin to see that our lack of success is within us (a lack of discipline in following the rules because of some kind of fear) and we begin to work on knowing ourselves better. We continue to trade and the market teaches us more and more about ourselves. We master our methodology and trading rules. We begin to consistently make money. We begin to consistently make money. We get a little overconfident and the market humbles us. We continue to learn our lessons. We stop thinking and allow our rules to trade for us (trading becomes boring, but successful) and our trading account continues to grow as we increase our contract size. We are making more money then we ever dreamed to be possible. We go on with our lives and accomplish many of the goals we had always dreamed of. from -- http://www.commodities-futures.com/
michael21, Now is Now is going in the right direction here involving needing more information. One of worst things a trader can do on simulator is not keep a trading log, statistics or any other information prior to going into real money trading. Without that info, you're going to need to start all over again with the simulator trading and keep better records so that you can help yourself and for others to help you if/when you again have problems in the early stages of real money trading. Also, now that you're considering going back to the simulator...start a trade journal here at ET involving ALL your trades...post the info at the end of the trading (real-time not needed) along with chart examples of any problematic trades. Mark