Totally agree with what @ET180 and @tradingjournals said, failure is REALLY the mother of all success. I always think trading is like learning how to skate. It's only after falling numerous and numerous and numerous times, that you finally learn how to keep your balance and skate. Trading is the same thing. Just like you cushion your falls in skating by wearing elbow pads and knee pads and thick pants, you control your losses while learning by stop-losses and trading small.
Everybody sees and reacts to the world differently. Although there are general things one can learn from other traders through blog discussions, books, and research, the keys for a new trader’s success is risk management and screen time. From what I’ve heard, most successful short term traders take a few years to become profitable. The range is typically six months to twenty years. Most people do not become successful short term traders because they either do not work hard enough, have unrealistic expectations, are under capitalized, or do not consistently use prudent risk management. One of the hardest things for a new person to overcome is the best action to take is usually totally counter-intuitive. You may have a hundred reasons why a trade should go in one direction only to watch it go in the opposite direction. This can happen because traders may have anticipated the development of your reasons and are taking profits on the trade they entered earlier. I will recommend a trading book to you that highlights many different trading styles of successful traders. It is Millionaire Traders by Kathy Lien and Boris Schlossburg. There are many other books you need to read and research for you to perform to have a chance at success in short term trading. It is still up to you figure out if short term trading is right for you and what kind of trading matches your personality and view of the world. As the saying goes, “If you don’t know yourself, Wall Street is an expensive place to find out”.
Scott Hamilton, the gold medal figure skater said: “I calculated once how many times I fell in my skating career—41,600 times. But here is the funny thing: I got up 41,600 times.” This is trading...you just have to keep getting up!
This is about trading equity index futures only. I spent 15 years working "in the industry", but with no free time to trade actively. For the last 3 years, I've been on "sabbatical" training to trade futures. I have great equipment, no time conflicts, good data, etc. I have developed cool tools & methods. Bottom lines first: >>> One must be very clear about what to trade and become good at. >>> Spend enormous amounts of time in a simulator. Double what you planned. Double again. Again. People will say "get out of the simulator." Bill them for the money you lose. If someone wants money to teach you to trade, I can't say "don't." But understand, the greatest part the work imo is still screen time, in a simulator. They will say, "Now that you're trained, show me what you learned. Trade real." Your response: "No, thanks." I picked equity index futures because of leverage and liquidity, and 24/5 trading calendar. I'm currently making 4%/margin-at-risk and higher with surprising consistency, 5 days running with occasional lapses. What's a lapse? Failing to consider the shape of the previous several days' trading, and incorporate that into the current plan. You CAN guess how the current day will evolve, and where the market (NQ/ES) will head if up or down. If you don't invest time to do that, you invite an occaisonal blow-out bad day. So do the homework, don't just press "sell" because you did yesterday. You need, imo, to find something, a pattern, that you sincerely believe is worth trading. Without that, why trade? Maybe it's a well-formed, mature swing high, for example. Today, 3/29/2018, a well-timed long in NQ could have had enormous payoff, if held to near the close. If one looked for, and traded today's multi-day trend rotation, made several simulated $K -- as I did -- but didn't also put on a small NQ real-not-simulated runner trade for the rest of the day, then that person (self) needs a kick in the butt. B/t/w, that is how I plan to exit simulator mode: By seeking high-probability trend-rotation simulator trades, and piggybacking small not-simulated "runners" on, lasting for as much of the trend as possible, with safety stops near the point of rotation. Good luck. = The Slow One
You have to trade. A simulator will not and can not simulate how you feel when you’re in a real trade...this is the problem. How you manage your feelings while trading is essential to your success. This takes practice. Real practice with real money.
how did successful traders learn how to trade? Losing, I seldom every learned anything from losing and did it again and again, I became great at losing, so much that my brain would help me dream up great ways to lose even more. And when I got into a profitable trade, my brain said let's make this S.O.B. have intense pain, give him the shakes-Bamm, anxiety attack-Bamm, puke the PB sandwich-BAMM, seven years of it, lots of hypnosis took control of my brain. Now brain is use to not losing intra-day trading. Happy Holidays all.-BAMM