From reading other threads on this forum, an alert with your name on it has been added to the list... And to be clear, Mr Padutrader, just because I find trading exciting, doesn't mean I'm a naive fool rushing all my money into a real money account off the back of a months successful trading, hence my being here now. I intend to be thorough in my research and shrewd in my trade picking, in the same way that I have been to date. One good month won't make me over confident and one bad month will not make me waiver. I know the risks.
If I were you I would not be tagging other users of this forum and saying you feel inadequate next to them. Perhaps you do but why allow anyone to know that? Perhaps they would feel inadequate next to you in other aspects of life. I have learned from reading your posts on this forum just as much as the next user! I don't intend on ever trading full time, I enjoy my current career too much and plan on making it to the top but if I can make trading a hobby that I'm good at, a couple of days a week will be good fun!
Fad, you might be a natural ?? problem is, it's easy on demo account, you don't second guess yourself, no fear or greed messing with your mind, put a small trial amount of $$$'s at risk say $500 open a Micro E-mini account and see if you can trade the same. Repeat the Demo Day a few times, really get it into your head, how your trading before going live mind, you need no doubts or fears, just trade 100% the same, not easy sadly!!
that I find is a major hurdle to knowing more.....the more you know the more you second guess yourself or as one expert put it : out smart yourself
Scalping in sim/demo is a trading style where the difference between sim or "paper" trading, and live trading, is probably greatest. With live trading, lots of things will eat you up when scalping. Order execution speed. Spread. Commissions. The human element. There are a lot of scalpers out there, yeah. Some make pretty good money. And on paper you are doing good, but that doesn't mean you would do good in live trading, at your present state of skill and training. Especially with a scalping strategy. Swing trading is where the difference between paper and live trading can be fairly small. The human element is still there, of course. You will make discretionary decisions differently when you are trading with money you had to earn by the sweat of your brow, than with money that doesn't even exist and that you can replenish at will. Trading can be fun. A bit of a thrill at a nice win, or a twinge of sadness or regret, maybe even anger, at a loss, are natural. The risk adds to the enjoyment. For me, anyway. The trick here is to not let these very natural emotions trigger bad play. Same as in Poker. When you go on a hard tilt, you are going to run out of money pretty quick. You need rules, and you need to follow them and not just wing it. You need to trade like a machine. When X and Y conditions are present, you order according to plan A or maybe B but never C and no freestyling just because you feel M or N will occur without any empirical basis for the prediction. You don't move your stops down to give a position some room. If you placed your stop correctly in the first place, then that is where you want to take your small loss rather than risk a larger one. You don't double down and try to win your money back. Every hand in Poker is a new hand. Every trade is a new trade. If you screwed up, the next play is a chance to get it right this time. Don't use the opportunity to make things worse. There are dozens of common mistakes made by weak players that are seen in both Poker and in trading. Most important is to develop good risk and money management practices and stick to them rigidly. Live to play another day. The best thing you can do at this point is buy a few books on the type of trading you want to do. You don't need a whole bookshelf of books on each type of trading you want to do. Most of them just parrot the same advice, and for a good reason. The tried and true methods and practices are proven to give you a fighting chance at making it. When you try to reinvent the wheel you either end up sticking with the wheel, or pushing a different geometrical shape that doesn't really work very well. Just grab the first 3 or 4 you see on an amazon search and you ought to be good to go. Practice what you learn. Immerse yourself in your paper trading, and really walk the walk, really imagine that the money you are betting is real money that you could use for things that you actually need or want, money that you had to bleed and sweat to earn. As you read, here are some topics in no particular order, to watch for and to pay special attention to: VWAP Moving Averages (EMA and SMA) and MA crossovers Support and Resistance Volume/Price analysis Bollinger Bands (my favorite indicator) Risk management Bull flag momentum strategy Mean regression strategy Trend analysis in multiple time frames Volume, volume, volume. Without volume, price action means very little. Candlestick analysis Breakout strategies Standard Deviation Reversal and confirmation and when not to wait for confirmation. Mob psychology and how to lead the mob instead of follow it. Specialists and Market Makers and other deep insiders, and how they rig the game. The good, the bad, and the ugly, of penny stocks Volatility, how to find it and how to use it. Gappers and why stocks gap, and how to play them. Chasing the stock, and why it will destroy you if you do it. Why price moves How to use a scanner and create a watchlist How to pick a broker and a platform that suits your needs Trading psychology. Shrinking your OWN head. <EDIT>High Frequency Trading and how it affects you Float, Market Cap, and Liquidity The Bid/Ask Spread, and how it will get you and where to make your entry Order Types</EDIT> TBH, a lot of the books you read will be written by guys who are better at authoring than trading. That's okay. The really good traders probably don't have much time for writing books, but like I said, the standard advice is going to get you off on the right foot. I suggest you don't spend your money on paid courses or webinars or forums or other for profit stuff. Just get a handful of books, and hang out on this, or any other free trading forums, and ask whatever questions your studies bring up and fail to answer.
LS1Z28 said: "I looked over your trade log. One of your trades is for $6.85 million worth of contracts. I'm not familiar with the margin requirements outside of the U.S., but assuming you have a 5% margin requirement, you would need around $350K in your account to trade that much size. Your profits would be significantly smaller in a $5K account." You traded 260 contracts of US30, if that is the YM emini in US, then regular margin is around $6000 for each contract, so for 260 a total amount of about $1.5 million is needed to trade such size in most real money account in US (some allow lower day trade margin). Good luck.
Thanks for your response. Still don't really understand your lingo. I was trading CFDs if that makes any difference to you at all? Can't see how a $5k account would allow me to trade $1.5m worth.