That there is money to be made by the brokers does not mean there is money to be made by the traders. In the US I've heard that brokers make significant profits from new traders who proceed to lose most or all of their captical. Repeated over and over with new traders this can generate a lot of profit for the brokers. The old sayings "There's a sucker born every minute" and "Where are the Customers Yachts?" come to mind. Higher transactions costs, whether through fee's or commissions lower the edge on day trading and those looking to survive will look to trade longer term time frames out of necessity. Since you seem intent on going forward I wish you luck, but be advised that maintaining or growing your capital in trading has very little to do with luck and very much to do with an effective and disciplined strategy (with expected returns high enough to overcome costs).
Mononoke You're getting some good advice here. See what I mean about the costs - the fella who day trades US stocks sums it up pefectly. Remember, the smaller the time frame the more dominant the role of costs and the smaller they have to be. Day traders would litteraly cum in their pants if they could cut their overall costs from 1cent a share to 0.9 cents. Conversly, if you hold a stock for many months then 1% is still expensive but you can earn a profit. Nothing you can do about these costs though as your market looks like commissions are controled by a cartel - their aim by the way if you haven't already noticed will be to subtley transfer client wealth to them With $4,000 your best bet is to trade FX but my advice is to pick and choose your trades, perhaps 2-5 a week and no more. That means you will have to be patient and if the markets don't setup well today you do nothing. And if they don't setup well tomorrow - you do nothing. But many can't do that, they always have to be trading which means slowly and surely they'll piss all their money away in costs. Good luck, and you're doing well here by asking questions before you risk any of your cash
Thanks. It'll be an interesting exercise, i'll try and update this thread with my performance. Cheers!
I am very thankful for the advice. i didn't mean to sound condescending at any point, I'm sorry if i came off like that. I was never planning trade a massive number of positions anyway. I was thinking of holding one or two positions a day provided the entry conditions are met, and then set up multiple stops based on momentum and look for quick exits. The only place forex trading takes place are in black markets. the government doesn't allow for it, yet. Actually, the brokerage charges are going to come down in June. I'm not sure by how much though.
I have a question? in a classic break out you get the initial price movement up and then it comes down a little and turns around again. I know that the volume of the second upward movement is important. But how important is it's velocity or the percentage price growth of that stock over a period of time.
I've attached a graph of my Net P/L since I actually started becoming a consistently profitable day trader in 2008. I'm not claiming that this is the most impressive performance on the planet, but I'm very happy with it. Also notice (that in dollar terms), I have a nice looking exponential tilt to my p/l (which I'm also becoming increasingly happy with. Once again, profitable is absolutely 100% possible. However, I must admit. I didn't think it was either 5 to 10 years ago. This graph represents 8030 trades since 3/08. Jason
Nicely done, dude... not to be a wet blanket but your YTD profits are exponential looking because you probably have about the same rate of return, but your capital you have to trade with keeps increasing. g