Increasing your trade size.

sunggong · Feb 3, 2008

Quote from dvshucks:

This is exactly the situation I was in. I got to the point where I was making decent money. I was making more than I could in other jobs and not worrying about monthly bills. I was in that comfort level for 2 years but I started to get frustrated. I feel like I should make much more than I could otherwise to outweigh the risks, opportunity costs, etc of trading. I tried sizing up slowly. I'd raise my tier size 100 shares but I end up adjusting down it everytime because I rarely use the set tier anyways. I couldn't break out of the 600-1000 share trades and I was only catching 400 or so on the really good trades because I rarely buy the whole amount at once.

In my frustration with myself I decided to go the other way. In stocks that were thick enough, I forced myself to buy 2000 shares and then sell 500 as soon as I was up 10 cents or more (I usually try to make .50 or more in my trades---it sometimes works out). So then I had closed out some profit and I felt better because I didn't have the lot I was really uncomforatble with but the 1500 was still well more than before. It worked for me because now I feel like if I have less than 1k in anything I'm a piker and can handle 4k positions. Luckily my strategy was easily scalable to these levels. This probably isn't for everyone.

FYI--At first this worked great. I was still thinking in my old numbers so my winners went up fast while my losers stayed the same because I was still scared of losing the same amount. I took a few more losses but overall was better off. However, after a month, I lost that fear and my losers became massive for me. Not career ending but a couple days might wipe out a week or 2 of winners. I lost some sleep and eventually taylored my trading a little more, cut out a couple kinds of trades. I also learned that the new size doesn't work for me in the afternoon so if I trade in the afternoon, I have to leave for at least an hour because I can't dial it down immediately as the day progresses.

This is just my story and another way to approach sizing up. Its probably a little unorthodox but I had to shock my head instead of slowly growing. Good luck to all of you working on this.
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Thanks for sharing that.

I am sure things will get a little crazy with higher stakes, but it's all part of growing pain. One can never continue to improve just staying in the comfort zone.

I am very disciplined when it comes to cutting losses quickly, but I'll need to get used to "losing more" on bad trades in order to "earn more" on good trades.

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Increasing your trade size.

sunggong