Please, as your bestfriend, get out now before I pop a vein looking at your daily losses again. Egad.
Those numbers don't mean sh*t, beyond the fact that you are losing money. I'm sure this isn't the case, but what if the reason you are losing money is the fact that your stops are way too tight, and the only reason you make money on profitable days is that you allowed yourself a wider stop and more time for trades to work out? Yet with the above, you would be coming to the exact opposite conclusion by limiting yourself to $20(!) max loss a day. Forget the statistics or averages, they won't help you diagnose anything.
I use tight stops and don't average down 90% of the time. But the 10% of the time I don't use tight stops and start averaging down usually accounts for most of my losses. Also paying about $50 a day in commision. But the biggest killer is not riding winners. As far as limiting losses to -20, that number changes everyday and goes up/down as win frequency and size goes up/down.
6-Jul Gross 43.85 Volume 6500 Win Rate 48% Ave Win 8 Ave Loss -5 Net 7 Made money trading/fading breakouts but cut profits too short esp in X and XOM. Not riding winners is my biggest problem, isn't there a saying traders go broke by taking profits. Tommorow I'll continue to trade breakouts and won't take profits unless I'm willing to reverse the position. Off to the gym.
7-Jul Lucky Gross 17 Volume 1800 Win% 44% Ave Win 12 Ave Loss -7 Net 10.08 With the attacks and the volitility this morning I really didn't want to much trading. I saw prints that were nowhere near where the bid/ask was. Things settled down and I decided to trade NEM. NEM: -13. I saw NEM as the only green stock on my screen so I went long. It droped 25 cents. I waited for it to bottem and go up again. Bought two hundred more near my entry price. It kept going up, I was up almost 100 dollars. I figured I shouldn't cutt winners short so I just held and sold for a -13 loss. Glad I sold cause it droped much further. XOM: -20 I saw it bottem and begin to go up. I got in, it went down, I averaged down, I got shaken out and went went up right afterwards. EBAY: +50 I saw it breakout I faded the breakout too early. Averaged down, average down some more, average down some more. Held 400 shares short for like two hours before getting out for a 50 profit. For tommorow: continue trading/fading breakouts, don't average down, cut losers. Off to the gym.
8-Jul Boring Gross 223.41 Volume 3600 Win% 61% Ave Win 22 Ave Loss -3 Net 203.25 AAPL: -7 yuck EBAY: +217 could've made 1000 in Ebay today, saw every move coming MWD: +13 ok XOM: 0 too earlier with the short trades, got shaken out Stoped trading at around 12:00. Off to the gym, start the weekend early.
11-Jul Exciting Gross -117 Volume 7600 Win% 39% Ave Win 10 Ave Loss -11 Net -171.72 AAPL: 0 EBAY: -222 MWD: 6 NEM: 26 QQQQ: 7 XOM: 66 The morning was pretty good. Was up almost a hundred dollars pretty quickly. But then I cut profits short in NEM and added to my losers in EBAY. I was down about 30 dollars and I came in knowing I can afford to lose only 40 dollars so I wanted to call it a day but then played EBAY again and it was over, I lost over 4 times more than I could afford to. Hate to start a week with losses, cause trying to dig out of a hole usually leads to a bigger hole. I look forward to boring and conservative trading tommorow, because exciting trading like adding to losers while fading a parabolic move is very costly. So far for July, my daytrading account is down -124 gross and -404 net. My swing trading account is up 116, so I'm down about 300 net.
You are equating research with mechanical systems. Silly. If you are entering a breakout, buying support, selling resistance, whatever, you need to know how it is supposed to behave after you enter. You have to collect statistics in order to estimate the risk. If you don't, you don't know what the risk is and you don't know how much you are supposed to make. If you don't know these things, you can't bet properly. If you don't bet properly, you are doomed.
I've lost intelectual interest in the market. I'm never reading another book on trading ever and I don't believe in backtesting. Anyway I'm relying on risk management to provide me with an edge. I know I lot of guys say 'try using money manage at the roulette tableâ¦" - whatever I don't buy that. Roulette is 100% random - the market is not.
12-Jul Disaster Avoided Gross 4 Volume 10400 Win% 45% Ave Win 10 Ave Loss -8 Net -68.8 AAPL: 49 EBAY: 7 NEM: -42 QQQQ: -1 XOM: -9 The pressure was on in this morning more than ever before. I knew that I can't afford to lose more than 30 dollars and that I'm only about 30 dollars away from making new lows in my DT account. Started trading AAPL and EBAY in the morning - had a long bias so kept on trading them from the long side all morning long as they droped to their lows. Stoped trading after being down 30, traded again and it was all downhill. -90â¦then -120â¦-150â¦-200â¦.-250. A huge long position + the late day rally saved me but I'm still down about 70 dollars cuz of commissions. I estmate my commisions every day, because I haven't been adding much liquidity I'm prob. Paying rate close to .007 lately. For tommorow: trade less, use tighter stops (esp with bigger positions), never add to losers, stop trying to fade every breakout.