Could you take a screen shot of your charts/ platform? Id be interested to see your setup. Thanks. kon
Sure, I didn't crop anything out in this pic. Fairly simple layout, not 500 different buttons like I have seen from other people. The market buy/sell buttons are actually linked to the super smart orders, so I don't get a fill at .20 when I wanted it at no more than .05. The other monitor has the group webinar open with the chart that's being talked about and the chat. I only took one trade in the morning and that was AMLN. I stopped because my new monitors came in and couldn't wait to get them set up. When I did, I made one more trade at the end of the day and that was RIG. Both worked out, but wish I would have stayed as RIG had a lot of potential earlier. In saying that, patience is a recurring theme huh?
I have been extremely busy as of late, so I have not been keeping up as I should (broker probably doesn't like me since I haven't been trading much). The past week has been great as I've been picking up more plays, learning what to watch and when to watch it, as well as making a few plays of my own. As for pnl, Monday and Tuesday are top row, Thursday and Friday are bottom row. I don't know what happened to Wednesday's ss but I was up 5 and some change thanks to 2nd day run of Tesla IPO. As you can see my share count on Tuesday was pretty outrageous comparatively since I was doing some experimentation with SDS/SSO/VXX. I don't expect every week to be like this, but it's a big confidence booster and gives my account a little bit more of a cushion. Here's the link to the vid of what was done on Thursday: http://www.youtube.com/omgyak#p/a/u/0/BvC6PJKigpA Watching that makes me feel like I should have capitalized a bit more, but hey I'll take what I can get.
This popped into my head, so thought I would share it with you. Before you take a trade with real money, you need to accept both the profit target and the stop. The reason being, if you can not accept that you could lose money on a trade and be at peace with that, then you will probably lose more money when a trade goes badly. What I like about trading vs poker, is that when the odds are in your favor, you will more than likely win in trading rather than in poker, and you can wait for those odds to go in your favor. The only benefit of poker over trading, is that if you get other players to bet against you when you have a good hand, you can make more money on that hand than you would on a single trade.
Yes, OW, this is a key step in trading for a living. The stop loss is the cost of admission to the trade. If you can't accept the stop loss, if you move stops to break even too quickly, if you trade without a stop loss, you will find it very difficult to succeed as a trader. DD, great trading!
I just started reading Trading in the Zone again by Douglas. It's an outstanding re-read after trading for so many years, especially after having to do a complete 180 strategy wise. Right off the bat he talks about truly accepting the risk on every trade. But I think it's important to accept the overall risk as well. You just simply might not make it even if you do everything right. This is one hard son of a bitch to swallow, but once you get it it down, I think things will be a hell of a lot easier.
just trade spreads, and double down on losers- flatten up end of day and set a stop loss limit for each day of no more than 3x your average winner. that is a recipe for success. doesn't even need flour.
Agreed, it's a good read the first time, an outstanding read the second time, and I think I need to read it one last time to master my final hurdle in achieving max profitability. It was a huge step for me to be able to let a small winner stop me out for a loss, and to let a decent winner that was a few ticks from target stop me out for a small gain or break even. Once I did that several times, it took away a lot of stress. An important part of the successful formula is the R:R and if I don't allow trades to make it to target, I've destroyed that part of my edge. Geez tried to convince me of that for the longest time and being the stubborn-ass person that I am, it took a year for me to "get it", and I'm still struggling to implement it fully.
The week started off real nice. Easy direction picking on Tuesday, followed some advice and picked up some CTRP July 32 calls in my cash account. Wednesday I didn't trade too much, I was trying to figure out where and when I should let those calls go. I decided it would have been a little too risky holding overnight through release of jobless numbers. made out fairly nice, but if you look at them now, I left quite a bit on the table. Then we get to Thursday...biggest loss as of yet. I tried to play market direction before there was really a direction and then kept stumbling. The calls made in the webinar were good, making money on ANF a few times and BIDU, but sold way too early on all three occasions continuing my stumbles. HRB hit stop loss, but ended up going a little later. Yes, it was unfortunate, but at least it didn't turn around directly after my stop was hit. And then there's NANO. I had seen the tail end of the run up and decided I would try playing the 9 break. It worked out at first, but instead of me taking some off the table, I was getting greedy which turned into a loss. Hindsight.... :x edit: link to Thursday's video Today wasn't bad, cut back on shares and hit BIDU in pre-market for .50c then BIDU again with DNDN at the market open. I was about to call it a day when I was running through some tickers, saw that some of the ferts were moving so I longed POT and took another even .50c. 4 green trades in a row, didn't want to push it especially after yesterday. Screenshot goes as follows: Tuesday, Wednesday Thursday, Friday
Last week was a good week. Market gave a good amount for the taking. Wednesday I had a few hiccups with AMED, but it worked out in the end. Friday, best day yet. I probably should have focused on VVUS a bit more, but I'm definitely happy about the outcome of the day . The group video is from Friday and it's based on the Visa trade. link is: http://www.youtube.com/omgyak#p/a/u/0/e7C4gJRvo4Y SS goes: Monday, Tuesday Wednesday, Thursday Friday