Hi I started daytrading full time almost two years ago with a small account of $6,000. In this time I've placed in the region of 1,600 trades usually risking 1%-1.2% per trade. Currently I'm down 55%. Whilst my performance hasn't been good, I haven't blown the account and I consider the money "well spent" for the knowledge I've gained. My main problem is emotional control and I've been aware and trying to control it for about six months with little success. My question is three fold: 1) How would you rate my performance thus far? 2) If I switched from 5min charts to a longer time frame, is it likely to help me? 3) Can you give me any other advise that may help me turn my trading around? Thanks
if u managed not to blow it is already a good thing; me thinks that anything below 25k will cause u to lose no matter what due to the pathetic limitations of the pdt rule. u were tradin' futs by the way, innit?
Actually I'm trading Eur/Usd via an ECN. Started out with a MM but figured out fairly quickly that that is not the way to go.
well, your acct is waaay too small to allow u to trade futs, wathever currencies or indices...as i said, fund your acct properly and then u could begin tradin' stocks with 100shares at a time...they are much more forgivin' and its easier to handle your positions. once u become stable and discover an edge then maybe u can jump into futs [if its what u like anyways] and see if u can translate the dynamics into that mkt as well.
edit; the smaller the size of your trades, the easier for u to get a grip on your emotions...startin' as small as possible has enormous advantages, like takin' more chances and retain' lucidity, while discoverin' what's workin' for ya. big losses will cloud your mind even if money does not mean much to u, for the simple reason u'll view 'em as failures...if they dont have a substantial effect on your overall balance you'll retain your emotional stability, and that's paramount to mantain your confidence.
================= 1] Above average SGsaxton; since you did not blow up. Some funds are advertised as 60% max drawdown 2] Dont know; it helped me for sure.5 minute candles can be fine for entry, larger work charts help 3] Its not so much its impossible to trade with less than 25k; its just that medical school usually takes much more than 2 years & big bucks to be educated as a DR. Borrowed IBD comparison of trading to med school/DR Sure are exceptions , but they dont disprove the general rule , wisdom is profitable to direct. Rich Dennis started with about $500 capital +1500 seat approximately. 4 more]Trading smaller $ helps, dont look at P& L realtime helps especially until profitable. In some respects this is too small, but small it sure is; but I still do it any way including with other realtime trading-papertrading ============== 4.4] Its not just that a top trader in Jack Schwager with about $300 million profits mentioned paper traded[paper /ink ''well spent''; it's that good work habits can be helped with papertrading. Buy brand name pens by the dozen; & will take free ad pens Hope this helped ;helped me
Thanks guys. I've reduced my position size to the minimum and like you said, my emotions stabilized. I actually enjoyed trading yesterdays afternoon session for the first time in a while. I'm going to try and take a more balanced view of things by accepting that making small consistent gains is better than the large swings that I have been seeing. In all honesty, greed has played a major part too since, on a good day, I've seen 5%+ gains but unfortunately I land up having a "melt down" and give it all back and more over the following days.
Good comments so far and good to see that you have been able to survive. A 5000 account is ok for daytrading euro. On 5m bars I would risk 5-7 ticks (about 85 bucks per contract) so you can take a lot of trades before you blow out. I think 5m bars are something of a sweet spot for day trading euro so I wouldn't go up unless you wanted to drop down to multi-hour position trading. Saxon you must be doing something right and you must also on those bad days be doing something wrong. IMHO, you should start each day by focusing on what you've been doing right and repeatedly try to get into that frame. But, you also need to understand the bad days so that you can stop the pattern. Can you explain to us what happens on the bad days? Then maybe people could suggest how you might avoid them. I think the idea of scaling back a bit is a good one if the pressure has been causing your failures. Is that all though? Do you do something different on those days?
There are a lot of storytellers around here, but you sound like you may be on the level. IMO, if this is your actual performace, it could be a lot worse. You may have come through the toughest part intact. Something that I resisted doing for a long time is keeping a detailed trade log. If you don't already do this, you will be amazed at what you see when you do it for a while then look back on your trades. You will never get a better education about yourself. Most guys won't do this because of ego or because they can't be bothered. When I say trade log I mean full printouts of charts/screens at entry, written reasons for entering the trade, write down your stops as you enter the trade, write down your exit details. I realize that if you're scalping, this is hard to do, but if you're scalping you can do all of this after the close. It doesn't sound like you're doing tens-hundreds of trades a day though, so this should be doable. Seeing my own behaviour mapped out made me go 'Whoa... now why in the hell did I do that?'
I think alot of my problem is ...well simply put doing stupid things. Take last week for instance, thurs and fri were really tight range days so instead of just sitting out and watching, I decided to skip over and trade Gbp/Usd with the same size. As a result I landed up losing three straight trades and because things happen in double time in the cable, it was compounded by late entries and my exits were "shoddy" at best so my loses were larger than normal. Also, from time to time, I take trades that are not in my game plan. Example being that, I see the market doing something and I say, "I've seen this before" so I place the trade and more often than not, I lose. Quite a bit of impulsiveness going on I think.