I've been trading for over one year and the only thing I've learned is that I know absolutely nothing. Every time I think I've found some edge the market proves otherwise. I guess I'm posting this here and asking for ideas because I've run out of fresh things to try. I started off with a jejune trend following "method", if I can even call it that, switched to reversals, went back to trend following but with more complicated "rules." I'm still convinced that the essential question is whether people are buying or selling or both or neither, or if there are conditions in which you can be reasonably believe people will buy or sell. and here, no matter how many hours of sleep I lose, I remain stuck.
The reality is, 99%+ of trader wannabes will never figure out how to trade. It is not you, it is the path pretty much everyone follows, and keeps repeating on thread after thread. And most of the "hang in there" responders are fellow paper traders. You can possibly figure out money management, portfolio management, definitions, pick your broker, learn how the mechanics work and everything else (these are important...) But finding 1+ edges that outperform the market for a reasonable long period of time, when factoring in commissions, slippage, chasing after scammers/spammers/gurus/other "services", fees, risk, errors, disruptive events and other things is the most important thing. It is similar to a gambler who actually can regularly beat the house at least 51+% of the time. If Goldman-Sachs & Friends spend bilions on this, it is not something Mr. Newbie Trader and his $5,000 account are likely to uncover.
Look for market inefficiencies? When is the supposed efficient market inefficient? When it gets emotional. Look for events that are out of the ordinary. Hint:Unusual price and volume moves.
To add a few things to TraderZones post which I agree with 99%, there was a study done about professional traders/money manager returns. They were looking at a period of 50 years in the market, in that time only 3% of the professional money managers have beat the S&P 500 index and half of the 3% have done it by luck and the other half by actual knowledge of the market. Good luck to all of you.
PaperTraderZones doesn't trade, or if he does, he spends 99% of his time on ET. I'll admit as well that, even though I've been trading longer than you, it still baffles me when I see the market do something that I thought it had no chance in hell of doing. The best thing is to keep an open mind, and throw away that garbage all the Technical Analysis books "teach" you. I think it was probably the WORST goddamn mistake I ever made, was reading this poison, because now I have it fixed in my mind that the market SHOULD do something, and when it doesn't I question my ability if I really know how to trade, and if the market moves as expected, sometimes I just feel lucky. In the years I've been doing this, of the mistakes, and lessons learned, trading boils down to two things: 1) Luck, and 2) Confusion. There was an author who once said, it might have been trading in the zone, where he said "Don't think you're smart, because you're not, you were lucky. Be gratefull for what the market gives you, and move on" try this on for size http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj12WvIHxHM&feature=related The markets going to do whatever the hell it wants to do. Trend lines Channels macd Stochastics... non of that means sh-t. It's all just educated guesses my friend...try and be right more than your wrong. good luck KON
you have a dragging the average IQ of a thread down. I knew you wouldn't understand. You demo that each time you talk.
Frankly, one year is not a long time at all. People who think they can master the trading skills to a point that they can be consistently profitable in a few months are either gifted in trading or overly optimistic. It took me a long time to become consistently profitable. Get back to your basics. Take it a smaller step at a time. Master the easier approaches first. Beginners should do the "trade with the trend" kind of thing. Find a stock that has a meaning trend. Go with the trend (short or long) at about 20MA. Before the trend is overly extended. As you get better at it, then you can start fading the extended trend. And then you can tackle the ranging/whipsaw markets.
stocks, all day but lately it's been get in early on and ride it or not at all.. in general I try to trade with market, keeping an eye on "internals", sectors, etc.. but that's the essential problem.. if you have a meaningful trend then you don't have to trade at all.. you just go long, or short, or whatever.