Do not fail to place risk management first, before anything else. A loss is a gain when taken early. Know in advance of every trade your max loss and NEVER NEVER NEVER violate it. I owe the fact that I'm still in the game to the ET community, especially the gentleman I latched onto as a mentor, and whose strategy I now trade. The most profitable traders here have answered question after question for me and never once said, "I can't tell you that." I consider these people my second family. Yes, screen time is the master key to success. If you have a good head for patterns, your hours of screen time will gradually translate to an almost mystical ability to predict price movement. And your strict risk management will leave you with a "winning loss" should the market choose to play a different game. What would I do different? 1. Read Market Maker's Edge (Josh Lukeman), and Tools and Tactics of the Master Day Trader (Oliver Velez), BEFORE starting to trade. 2. Paper trade for 6 months minimum before touching my capital. 3. Read The Master Swing Trader (Alan Farley) AFTER 6 months of solid screen time. 4. When going live, implement absolute risk management in advance of every trade, NO EXCEPTIONS. Wolfgang, consider this: If you were to begin trading tomorrow, buying a stock as it pivoted up from a pullback, or shorting a stock as it pivoted down from a surge, and you placed a stop just above the top or bottom of the pivot point, and the trade moved in your favor just 50% of the time and you took twice the profit you were willing to risk, you could not lose. That's how risk management keeps you in the game (barring a black swan event), and that's what I mean by a "winning loss". Best to you! Donna
i would start reading first. start with the new market wizards, market wizards and stock makret wizards(i have not read this one though). there are a few solid traders that will help you i beleive. the even have journals that show how and why they exited like Nodji jounal. seems like ur not learning from this one "avoid these chatrooms". there are some good advice though, you have to sift through the some of garbage.
Know your pot odds.....(make sure the reward to risk ratio is good) Start with 1/2 limit instead of 5/10 no limit...(trade small share size/paper trade at first) Accept the fact that you have to have losses. You have to lose in order to win. If you can't take a loss, it will grow.....if you take profit too early, you are messing up your reward to risk ratio.
If you don't know yet - learn how to program. Took me quite some time to realize the most obvious: Software producers don't sell (or lease) products for a few bucks that allow you to make big moose easily.
1.) price going up â go long 2.) price going down â go short 3.) exit when price stops doing either one things in motion tend to stay in motion..pretty sound advice..thanks
Find a mentor who would teach you using a compensation structure where he gets paid from profits. An example of such model is at link below. Otherwise, you might pay a higher tuition in markets (money + possibility of giving up forever). http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=156059
There are already too few mentors (maybe 1-2%) who know what they are doing. The ones who can trade don't need the money and it is an honor to get their help, so why should they agree to this?