Depends on the system. Sometimes I go in with my full size to begin with and the stock makes a quick spike against me. If it looks like it's going to reverse right back I will sometimes add, but not much, maybe 10% more. This is totally discretionary. Other systems are designed to add increasing size as I scale into the position, so I start much smaller. In both cases though I size my positions based on how much I figure I will lose in a typical losing trade but also consider what can happen if things go all to hell and it turns into one of those one in every few hundred trade anomalies.
Mid-week update. Worst day since August of last year, -19,000. Almost all attributable to DV and ESI short. In them early in the day and they never gave a chance to get out with anything less than a bludgeoning. I didn't add to these, they looked like trouble pretty early and I was actually paring them back. System override uncle point reached. Finding a way to identify or better control these account bombs is on my to do list but will be tough because they so often do their maximum damage very quickly. Red on the month now and needing a miracle to save my weekly green streak.
ESI is a classic setup-big red bars going one way and then it gaps up almost near the top of previous 5-6 bars. Never make the same mistake if you see such a pattern again.
There is a lot of wisdom in the above, if not just common knowledge. Digging a little deeper, i would agree that many traders have after a few years, lets say 10 years, advanced to higher levels as the poster admits. Would it not be likely that depending on the strategy, many traders have advanced to where daily loss days are rather rare? Lets look at the following ways as a couple examples, and keep it simple for comparison. Ok, certain strats work well when hedged, certain work well such as RTM, stocks might work better in certain strats better than commodities. (i am from the days where commodities were traded on Futures exchanges, so today we include stock index futs, interest rates, currencies etc). Lets say a trader had a presumptive strategy based on earnings or a strategy based on fading based on their individual thinking or what they heard from CNBc or whatever. Would that person even if well heeled and a excellent winner at the end of the year still have losing individual days rather often because the strat is based on thought? Ok, let's move to another type of trader..........this type does not filter through many stocks or commodities and uses essentially the some technical based tools to trade in and out of a single instrument. This trader uses pure directional bias in anticipation of where price will move next. Now remember, this trader has been at their game as long as the other guys. Would it be possible to almost eliminate losing days in this situation? Sure some days will be rather nill depending on the days range more than anything else. NO TRADER, ZERO traders will ever be able to eliminate a lot of individual intraday trades.........this is not science, never will be with so many minds inputing individual thought processes. Yes, we can progress, we find what works for us and never get to work on what others have found to work for them because we found our comfort own zone. Like Joe Montana once said: "it became second nature to throw the ball to the receiver as we did what we did over and over.........the ball hit my hands and i made a couple steps backward and without thinking i threw the ball" Keep up the good work, keep progressing, there is a lot of money out there traded daily. PS: mullah.........yes i do talk a lot, the question you need to answer is does it help you to be a better trader? ___DONE___ Thks see ya in a few weeks
good luck recovering, don't let it get you down. you'll be back on your feet again, and when the larger stocks remember that they can go in three directions, instead of just up and sideways, the profits will come rolling back again. as a sidebar - i got beaten up on the first day of stocks gapping up to new year highs about a month+ ago, and decided to put that strategy on the backshelf until the market environment is more conducive to it. and last time i checked, there's still 2 weeks left in the month. more importantly, there's 7 months left in the year, and i'm sure you'll be back in the swing again soon.
I noticed some time ago that these gap-n-go stocks tend to have a nice pullback on day 2 or 3. I got 3.38 move on 200 shares ESI off the open today when it failed to run. Lescor, how on earth did you trade large size of that thing yesterday?? It was thinner than Kate Moss and a spread that scared me even with 2 lots on :eek: