Thank you, RedDuke, for sharing your experience with the KOSPI along with the tax treatment issue. For a contract that opens in the early evening (Eastern time zone), has decent volume and has a high tick value, I'm surprised I don't read of more people trading it. Thanks again for the information. -river
My thoughts exactly. This is a great contract to trade, plus it allows people on Eastern/Central time zone trade it, and keep their day jobs. If you have any questions about it, let me know.
How does one deal with breakeven? Making a nice profit one day, only to give it back the next day. Back and forth, rinse - Repeat. It's exhausting.
Don't focus on short-term result. That's a big mistake day traders often make. Focus on the long-term goal, doesn't matter if you trade 5 times a year or 5 times a day. This is career, not day by day competition.
This week has been $$ excellent because of all the movement in the markets. The struggle begins when we get choppy days with zero volatility, which is unfortunate that most days are like that. How do you manage to survive through days with hardly any movement? Change up your strategy for low volume days? And how do you know what kind of day it will be until it's too late executing trades for loss.
I don't change my strat in terms of what determines an entry, the only thing I will adjust is what % of my position I exit at 1st tgt, 2nd tgt etc. If the VIX is at, say 12, I'll exit a higher % at first tgt since the mkt isn't moving all that much. As vol increases, I'll reduce the % that I exit at 1st and 2nd tgt and allow my positions to, potentially, run to further tgts.
The key is to look at both days and try and pinpoint exactly WHY this happened and how you can improve your approach so that you move away from breakeven and towards profitability. Every day is a learning experience but you must be willing to learn and adjust until you have something that consistently works.
One thing that's crucial is to trade a trend aggressively, so even if the trend turns out to be only a trending move and then turns into narrow range chop, you've pocketed a paycheck. What I generally do on the days you describe above is first I watch several trades run a scalpable distance but miss my minimum target and I scratch all of them. Then I decide to take a scalper's profit and price runs 3 times or more my minimum target.