And why do you still have a day job? If you are having great success on a small scale, you are doing yourself an injustice by not figuring out a way to do it on a larger scale.
I have to say that not so often a clear signal can be generated in the market, i.e. my system does not always give me signals to trade. Such as past July. But I am working on devloping a strategy on fx, so will play on that soon.
Ok, I was thinking maybe you were trading everyday or several times a week and having great success. I guess if you dont get many signals it would be premature to leave your steady income just yet.
I day traded for a while, averaged 3 rounds each day. Last year, over 100%. But this year volatility dipped, so far, 23-24%. The thing is that I do not like leverage.
Sometimes the plan is that there is no plan. But that itself must be planned, in every sense of the word.
Sunggong and Steve Tvardek. You guys talk about split second entry and exit. I`m trying to learn just that. Could you advice on how to get fast fills? Do you use market or limits? FOK or AON? above/below bid/ask? I have a problem with getting in and out when the stock starts moving. Just trying to improve my chances. Looking for advice and guidance from pros... (interested in many trades a day, single NYSE stock, 10mil vol, 1000 share lots) Any info or help will be greatly appreciated walter
This is a good thread for the Psychology Forum. This is an argument between those who operate best on the left side of the brain and those who operate best on the right side of the brain. The question is how much structure does a trader need to be successful. The answer of course is, it depends on the individual. That said, I would say from my own experience that I would like the least amount possible to be successful. Do not ever let the process supplant your purpose. If you tend to do this, you can have a succesful future in government bureaucracies but not trading the markets.<p> The poster who started this thread is and can remain successful if he understands the big picture. First, he is trading for a purpose, and that is to make 500 hundred dollars a day. There are those on this forum who are strong on a plan and short on purpose. Right brained people are purposeful and tend not to lose sight of the bigger picture which in trading is the bottom line. Left brained people tend to get lost in the details and minutiae of process, which is the plan. At the end of the day, forget the plan, did I make any money? I would rather break my plan and make money than to say I stuck with plan and lost.<p>In a sense the poster is not employing structure but avoiding employing it. The trader is consistently making entry points where he finds himself above water, not under it. He can afford to be intuitive. As long as he makes good entries, he can afford to be intuitive. The danger for intuitive trading lies when one is below the entry point and the trade is under water. This is where the structure and discipline that we tend to associate with the left side of the brain is required. But one of the ways the poster has found to avoid finding himself in a position where structure must be imposed is to concentrate his trading above the profit line. He understands that limiting the time on a single trade is a solid way of managing one's exposure to risk. He acknowleges that by controlling his risk in this manner he may be limiting his profit.<p>When I was in college I worked in a produce department in a grocery store. The produce manager had to make decisions on risk and profit because the inventory that he was managing was perishable. If you came into the store on Saturday night there may not have been much product on the shelves or in the cooler. On the other hand since there was little product there was not any risk of perishables sitting around and spoiling which would mean a hit to the bottom line. He was controlling sales to stabilize and maintain the his profit. The supervisors at the corporate level frowned on this practice, but the local store manager accepted it because the store manager was rewarded by both sales and profit, but in the local manager's view profits in a produce department were more important than sales.<p>By not holding on to trades too long, you may be giving up the opportunity for future gains, but you are also minimizing risk while stabilizing and maintaining your profit.<p>The poster has done the wise thing in his money management of his PDT account. First this gives him a sense of urgency. Secondly, he is imposing structure. By not keeping much more in his account than is necessary to maintain PDT status, he has in a sense imposed a stop. A stop which is some sense is more important than a stop on a single trade, he knows that can no longer day trade if that 25k stop is violated.<p>In response to the thread starter's initial question, I trade intuitively to some degree. I am a very right brained person. The advantage of being right brained is that you can usually operate on the left side if you choose to although it may not be as much fun. Those who are predominantly left brained usually cannot operate well on the left side of the brain. In other words those who thrive on the absence of structure can usually adapt to structure and those who require structure cannot easily adapt without it. <p>I trade a plan and look to get about half of my profits from that trading. I also trade intuitively for the other half of my profits. I would have to add that those intuitive trades are made within very distinct boundaries that I have put down over the years.
Let me clarify my defition of scalping. I don't trade 100 times a day. In fact, I trade about 5-7 times a day. (About 1 trade per hour). Because I strive for about $500 per day, I need to generate about $100 per hour. This way of thinking has allowed me to dramatically cut down on the stress level. I stopped overtrading as a result. Also, I don't always get in and out within a minute. Sometimes I hold the stock for several hours because I know that the stock will break the way I want it to and I just need to wait around for that to happen. But for some odd reason, if it doesn't, I exit promptly and wait for the next signal. Never hold anything overnight because I don't want to get hit with a surprise.