i don't mean to give you heat. i realize nobody here owes me anything. i take what i get. if you think i'm giving you heat, it's only because imo, it's easy to be a profitable trader and say it's simple once you know what to do. but when you're on the other side, it's frustrating. especially when people say how simple it is. well, not for me! anyway, i know you know this, because we all go through the phase i'm in. i don't mean to give you heat... please do..if you want to.
Gordon, Replace any of those "Trading is" statements, with "Life is". They're an artistic way of describing what is for some, the biggest hurdle in trading. Human psychology and perception. Whether a trader designs systems or manually trades, the trader must learn to follow rules, prepare for change, and adapt. Such is life wouldn't you say? As in life, if you want to accomplish anything you have to learn as much as you can, and then attempt to execute. Examples: Asking that girl out Holding on to her Wanting to become an astronaut Starting a hobby Sometimes we succeed, sometimes we fall flat on our face. There's nothing wrong with crashing and burning either! It's all part of life. The higher the goal set, usually the fewer people will be able to accomplish that lofty goal. I know most humans could do probably anything they set their mind to, but the work required gets in the way of their happiness. Trading is definitely one of those loftier goals. I'm succeeding now, but I realize that nothing in life is guaranteed. If I eventually fail, I will do something else. The key is happiness in the end. So, decide how much you want to put into the learning side, and go for it! I think you understand the mechanics of trading well enough, but the psychology side can only be learned by jumping into the game. My advice to you would be: 1) Get one or two sets of rules 2) Backtest them on 20-30 stocks and see how they did in different timeframes 3) Find the most productive stocks in the group and look at the losers/drawdowns, and see if you can find any indication as to why they happened. (understanding news, and the macro economic picture is very important in trading, usually) If you find something that looks like it could work, go for it! 4) Trade small until you feel comfortable!! This is key! Testing the foibles of your system and your mind with small sizes will help you develop your rules and train your mind with a safety net. Don't let greed make you up the share size, let the comfort of successful trades/rules do that for you. (I watched my system forward test for 2 months before I even let it trade! Even then I manually executed it at first with small size to get the feel for it) If in the end, if it doesn't go right, you have to weigh your own happiness vs. the time/energy/cost of trying again. All those derogatory "quitters never win" statements that float around are BS. The smart guy will realize that he's wasting too much time/money going for something HUGE, when something a little smaller could be much easier to attain. (Life is full of cool things to do!) Good luck Gordon, SubEtha
Listen Gordon, I would continue but quite honestly I think it will just perpetuate your already obvious confusion. What you need to do is find one simple concept in the market that will give you an edge, just one, not five! You have never found just one? I mean just one simple one? How about Raschke's "grail" set-up, how about Cooper's "Expansion Pivots", "3 dumplings", how about Edwards & Magee "flags and pannants"... Actually I know what you should do and this is not some kind of advertisement (because I have ABSOLUTELY no affiliation or alterier motives) go check out www.RealityTrader.com... Chris and Vad teach a very simple concept that works! Here is some proof;http://www.marketpuzzle.com/showthread.php?threadid=157 Not only will they teach you an external method but they will also guide you in the internal "method"... I actually paid for 2 months of service there a year and a half ago with absolutely no other intention than to hear Vad speak of the "nature" of the internal game and it was weeeelll worth the money, which says ALOT being that he speaks broken Russian/English! Nothing wrong with having a mentor in this game! It is well worth your time and you will get a lot more out of it than just sitting in here chattering on ET... Thats the best I can do for you and I wish you luck! PEACE and good trading, Commisso
i'm very aware this has been my weakness. the 3 years i traded, i never once scaled in/out of a position..not one trade. if i entered a trade with 500 shares, i would exit with all 500. now, i know some will say you can still trade profitably that way, but imo you have more options if you scale in and out. this is why i'm glad i stopped trading. i'm starting to think this may be my problem. the only thing is, this opens more doors for me..and making things complicated seems to be my specialty. i would love to poll profitable traders and see how many enter and exit all their shares at once...most probably don't. and i bet if you polled bad traders, most probably do what i did -- enter and exit with all their shares at once. now that i know i want to incorporate this into my trading, i immediately have so many ideas. it gets to the point where i don't know which to settle on. as someone said before, i think too much. commisso, i really do not want to look to charts for the answer. i believe i'm past that point. i think i have some decent entries, but it's the exits i need to work on. while i'm at it, i'm going to explain what set off my initial frustration..which led me to start this thread. about 10 minutes before i started this thread, i finished reading "trading in the zone" by mark douglas. i agree with what he said in the end, but i hate when i see so many profitable people seem to conflict. i'll explain what i mean: at the end of "trading in the zone" he says that he typically enters a position knowing he's going to attempt to scale out at least 3 times. his first scale out is at a predetermined small gain, the next is at a target, and the 3rd is basically another target. now, before i read this, i was a HUGE fan of phantom of the pits. he really opened my eyes to the importance of scaling in/out. what bugs me is that phantom seems to advocate adding to winners. mark douglas seems to advocate scaling out of the winners. i know you could combine the two...and maybe that's the answer..... but after i finished reading "in the zone"...i was like what the hell!!! phantom says increase the size of winners and douglas says to decrease the size. i was confused. again, i know there's no one answer in trading.
"keeping it simple" and "making consistent money" are 2 different things....... I for one do not think "making consistent money" (via trading) is simple.......
Cohiba, With all due respect -----> I think you are mixing up "simple" and "easy"... This game is anything but easy tobreak through to the other side but once you are there well......... PEACE and good trading, Commisso BTW; Chambers is THE MAN-- ahahahhahahahhaha
Gordon my friend, When you look at the market you are looking at yourself. If all you see is a complicated mess, well...you get the idea.
synonyms EASY, FACILE, SIMPLE, LIGHT, EFFORTLESS, SMOOTH... but I understand ya.... Surely, you dont trash me being in last place....
You have what I call information overload. I think you're inability to make money lies in the fact that no one was able to organize your thoughts. You can read all the books in the world, but they spell everything out in simple form. Just because someone says buy the bid, sell the offer, doesn't mean you do it all the time. Not every big bid or offer will move a stock. You have to learn or be tuaght to recognize which one's are good buys or sells. Same with certain chart patterns. You have to learn the characteristics of the stocks you tradde and how each method that you've learned applies to that stock. If you take IBD's CANSLIM, it only works for stocks that don't move around 15% a day, otherwise you'll constantly be shaken out. Now if you know, that a particular stock moves around with that volatility, either you have to take more risk, or just avoid trading that stock. You won't find a book anywhere thatwill spell out all the nuances. Most people make the mistake that what is in a book can be followed to a Tee. But what the author fails to tell you, is that their are other potential factors that go into play on whether or not they will take every setup. And there's no way they could or the book book would be endless. You need to take the simple form of many trading methods and combine them into larger method.