P%D I wish you the best. IF you ever do decide to return to trading "PROTECT YOUR FUCKING CAPITAL, LIKE A MOTHER GRIZZLY BEAR PROTECTS HER CUBS" I have been saying this to myself everyday for 20+ years. I started trading at 20 with a small tiny amount. $25K. Built that up to $400+K and didn't quite bust but lost half. It really rattled me. But I regrouped. i was doing alot of the things many of you on here do. it leads to losses. I picked up a BA in Accounting, a BA in Economics, A masters in Tax. All I have ever done for a living(aside from some business consulting) is trading. It's how I made my bones. If you want to be successful you must self educate. Get yourself a PHD in trading, read everything. So many of you are very lazy and don't want to self educate. You want to trade and turn $25K into $500K in a year. With no capital protection, loss management. You have to learn to be systematic when it comes to losses. No emotion involved. When a trade goes down 2% CUT the trade. You can always reenter. Learn before you lose money. That is why so many bust out. Too lazy to take the time to learn and too much greed and ridiculous expectations. To operate on a brain it takes a long time to learn to do that. To learn to fly a 747 it takes a long time to learn to do that. It takes Alot of learning to be a successful trader. If I was in your shoes(And i was once) I would close out all positions right now. Immediately. Go enjoy life. Think things through. take time off. Decide if you want to return to trading. If you do Study trader psychology, review everything that went wrong, make corrections and don't repeat your mistakes. and say this every day if you return to trading.....'Protect your fucking capital like a mother GRIZZLY BEAR PROTECTS HER CUBS"
This market short term is nothing more than a Casino.. This is very unpredictable. Think longer term in stead of short hits. We will more likely go back to 12700 or so then u know what happens one day we wake up and WOW the economy is doing great then we make a run to 14300 - the fun part we get to do it over and over. I'm in very stable company's. Like CISCO.. So I thought with my 3k shares.. Now I've been hit also. What can we say I had stops in place but you know this doent always work.. First thing is if your leveraged get out of half.. Hold the other half if you believe they r good company's...
This market is a good traders market. I have been trading the volatility. Shorting this am and yesterday and letting my profits run for the day. Monday the markets strengthen and I will be buying long. The Financials and the builders have been such a gimme it is ridiculous. If you haven't been able to make fat profits with that trend then ...well i don't know what to tell you. You do have to have a knack of sorts for trading. There is alot to learn and one can learn it,... but you have to have a knack for it, a feel for it. If it doesn't click, it may not be your thing despite all the self education. I have been Swinging the financials and builders housing. It was a great trend and easy money. What more can you ask for? I'll ride it till it reverses. One thing I see A LOT of you guys doing is trying to apply logic and reasoning to potential trades. For instance CO XYZ is a piece of crap co with no earnings (90's Internet Co as an example) it should not be worth what it is. So you go short based on logic. thing is there is no logic to how far a stock can fall or rise. It continues on it's bull run trend and you get crushed and end up scratching your head "What went wrong" I see this here on ET all the time. It is amazing how often people post trades like this. There are a lot of useful sayings and advice as far as the markets go. And they actually work. But many do not listen and apply them to their trading. My above example was..."Don't fight the tape"
I had a career, it turned into a job that sucked... The learning curve for trading can be very long, a decade or more, for some people.... If you love trading you can trade the weekly bars like some have suggested. My experience is that if you can trade the weekly bars you can trade the 15 minute bars so while you are working and trading longer term you will be gaining the skill you need if you get out of work....
Thanks for more comments. I agree that if you are not successful at it, it's not for you. Most stock plays are crap shoots. I check my account and I am up 1.3k today...LOL. Well, I am weighted short the market still. I will be so happy if we finish the year where it started where I tried picking the top. Man, I was reallt tempted to scalp these indexes today. It is a traders dream market right now. Wanted to buy the close and sell the rally next week. There are great bargains out there in certain sectors. But with everyone thinking we will bounce, it may not happen this time(but usually does work). Traders will get wiped out picking bottoms and tops perhaps again like a few years ago. Most kids trading right now haven't experienced a bear market. Lots of people taking big gamble right picking the dips. They got bailed out for example this August. I made the mistake like I said calling a top early this year. I took killings on some earnings plays. I didn't hedge with puts and calls. I hope lots of you have put protection. Next week will be interesting into option expiration. What tricks is left to prop the market up? FED is a joke and this economy...I am rooting for a global crash....No reason to get cute right now.
Yes a job will suck. The commute will suck. The office politics will suck. Rat race man, it sucks. I'm giving into the "man" again. I didn't get shit done today, have to get motivated!