I find myself impulse trading during the day. The reason is because I dont want opportunities to slip by right in front of my face, so i'll instantly go long or short just from looking at the chart for a minute or two. 1. Whenever I place a trade, I always write down my stops on an index card marking risk/reward, and watch the play unfold 2. I trade in small size, 100 - 110 at most, my loses are not that much compared to my overall account size. 3. I feel like I dont have time to calculate fibs, read all the news, decipher an entire chart before making a trade 4. Day traders are impulse traders too. They trade mostly from gut feelings since most of the "Information" they get is mostly market noise. - nathan
cashmoney69: Not to worry. You are in the early stages of learning to trade. After you blow up an account or two, you'll look back and laugh. Frame your post. You also might wanna try trading at a daytrading firm to see what works and what doesn't. It'll be cheaper in the long-run to watch other people fail in a variety of ways rather than going through the entire trial and error process on your own.
You need to stop this IMMEDIATELY. If you are new to trading, I suggest you start by limiting your trades to perhaps one a day. A good mental exercise for beginners is to try to read the sentiment of the insturment for that particular day, say, within 1 hour of the start of the open. The next is to decide one entry, a target, and a stop. If neither the target nor stop are hit, then exit the position at the end of the day. If you do not place any restrictions on yourself, you will lose your shirt. That's fact, not opinion. RoughTrader
I'd say you've been trading approx. 3 months, probably less. You have no patience and little discipline. You do not anticipate possible entry points prior to market open, nor do you take time to understand real-time market behavior. You do not have a plan and you have not done your homework, hence your impulsive trades are a result of insecurity and a lack of knowledge/information. This is common and the reason why most fail. You are doing exactly what losers do. The sooner you start changing this behavior the sooner you'll start making some money. This is pure bullshit spoken by someone who is not succeeding due to both a lack of discipline and lack of effort. You are attempting to rationalize your behavior by comparing yourself to others. You are avoiding reality and thereby creating a very destructive association between your mistakes and your inability to ADMIT to them. This is a serious flaw and you will not be successful until you take full responsibility for what you are doing.
1. We dont have any props where I live, the closest would be in Atlanta 2+ hrs away. But I have been thinking about it. 2. What is fishing? 3. I didn't mean to be insulting when I said Day traders are impulse traders too. I guess what I ment to say is, day traders have to act fast on the little amount of information that they get, often times not being able to see the big picture. - nathan