I agree and disagree. I think this absolutely true for new traders. From a system development perspective I'd also agree, at this time. For guys that have been around the block it seems to be a matter of preference. A lot of what I do has some very basic elements to it and I could explain that in 60 secs. I just donât think that I could do it justice considering that the context will determine the appropriateness. I try to be a âman for all seasonsâ. Keyword there is âtryâ. Anyway, when the rubber hits the road, my way works for me.
"Containing your losses is 90% of the battle." -Steve Cohen There is an infinite number of ways to make money but keeping it, is where the skill lies.
Commisso, what exactly is your point? tymjr, I know what you mean... for guys been around for a while, discretion won't hurt. Then there is one point: for the veterans, their survival and profitability might not be a result of using discretion and "gut feeling" in their trading, it might as well just be sound risk control/money management skills. I would imagine there is no statistical proof whether you would be better off just sticking to your 60-sec strategy, or put discretion into the mix. During my research of trading systems, I have many times been amazed at how "unreasonably" the systems make decisions, which I as a human would never make in real trading, yet at the end of the day, with back testing of walk-forward of enough data, the systems usually beat my personal trading results. So my point is, maybe you would be surprised what your P/L statement would be, should you actually stick to your 60-second strategy. Cheers.
MGB, Great traders focus their utmost attention on losses. You need to figure out what went wrong and how to stop it from happening again. Learn from your mistakes, they are your greatest teachers, if you only listen to them. [Please do not misinterpret this as an attempt to rub salt in your wounds. I, along with others on this board, are here to support and help each other.]
I understand where you are coming from. I traded options for awhile and it was hard to describe techniques to options trading newbies. Most of them don't last very long. I usually never held more that 2 or 3 days - sort of an options swing trader. I used no technical analysis while i was options trading - I purely followed the stock price/volume real time all day long. I only traded options for a handful of stocks and I watched them all daily for months. After awhile it became routine to recognize whether or not there was going to be a 3:00 rally or if the usual lunchtime drop was going to be big enough to be useful. Unfortunately without the volatility of the market during the internet boom options trading is much harder now. I also don't have the capital to do it right. What I was hoping to learn from all of you was perhaps a "top ten indicators" list that you like to use. I realize I will have to adapt their settings etc. to whatever style I decide to use. Also I am clueless until I get my books about ecn/order routings although I understand how important it is to get the best price when intraday trading. Did any hear about dateks new system? SI had a post on it today and you can check out Another area which is new to me is mastering level 2 and what to look at. It's interesting on this board that some people say it is a must have while others say they don't use it at all - too many mixed signals/head fakes fromt the evil mm's. How about another question - what do you recommend for charting software? - right now I am using quotetracker with datek. Thanks - Garet
MGB, I'm in the Seattle area too and work in the high tech industry. I only travel about 30 minutes to work and manage to trade most mornings. I try to trade from the opening bell (6:30 AM PT) to 7:45 AM... I once in a while trade at lunch 12:00 to 1:00PM. It is possible to trade and work full time w/o trading on the company clock. I find the dead zone has started before 7:45 AM anyway and it makes no sense to trade at that point. Good luck.
Turok, I will start a thread devoted to revealing my "brilliance". It will be titled..."BULLS OF STEEL"! Stay tuned for more. You just may learn something!
Dozu: I guess the best way to put it is that discretionary trading is an art, and with all arts as well as everything else comes a tao....the tao may not be able to be put into the simple structure of words..... As an example if you were to ask Miles Davis to tell you everything he knows about the fundamentals of Jazz he could go for hours, but if you were to ask him how he exactly came to create kind of blue he would not be able to put into words.... If you were to ask Dali to explain how he came to "Metomorphose de Nacisse" he couldn't tell you exactly how he came to it.... I could write down all the variables of one of my edges for you, but there are certain things that I could not even begin to explain about how I trade it so effectively.... I hope that better explains my previous post.. PEACE and good trading, Commisso
MGB: First and foremost I give you all the respect in the world to your result on this journal. It takes a real man to admit their mistakes, whether big or small. One piece of advice, next week, cut your size down to 500 shares, no ir's, but's or maybe's. Be disciplined, do not make any excuses, you were blown out, and on Monday if you try to make this money back at all more often than not you will take another big hit. Think survival, think break even, you upped your size way too much before your skills are fully developed, personally, I would bring it down to 300 shares, because in a stock like NVDA, you will be surprised how much you can lose trading 300 shares. You are bleeding, you must stop the bleed, and you want to cut down your sizes until you regain your confidence. I repeat, your goal for Monday is to finish the day in the black, even if it is $31 after commissions, I know exactly how you feel, because I was blown out for 4K 2 days after my best day of 5K. Sleep, get a lot of rest, come back fresh on Monday, CUT DOWN YOUR SIZE! I am DEAD serious about this, what is lost is lost, when you are losing, you need to get a STOP, STOP losing, give yourself less pressure by putting less on the line. Last but not least, if you can not trade without worrying about living expenses. I would suggest stop, get a job, any job, cut down your living expenses, save up some money, then come back to this when you can afford to go 3-6 months without making a dime. Trading in August is hard enough, if you put pressure on yourself to pay bills from trading profit before you are even profitable, you are NOT going to make it. Sorry, but that is the way it is, cold hard truth. You got mortgage? family? kids? You have to find a way to take care of them from income other than trading profits, because in trading, there are no guarantees. Even the best of traders can go on a losing streak, you MUST have cushion. I also recommend a slower stock. There are many fast moving stocks that are just plain impossible to trade on a daily basis especially starting out. Day trading is about making money not "who has the fastest vehicle". Try something more manageable, like a tier 2, slower, thinner stock. You are only doing 1000 shares you certainly don't need anything trading between 1-2 million shares a day. NVDA is about as tough as it gets . . . I also noticed that your game takes a serious hit when the market is tanking, mine too and I have bullets, I think it takes at least a year to completely get rid of that long biase. In the morning if the market is mixed I tend to look for longs, instead of going for the best positions. Gotta be discriminating. GaretJax: Datek + Quote Tracker for intraday trading is like bringing your swiss army knife to a gun fight. Go with IB, their commission rate CAN NOT be beaten by anybody including the professional firms. As a newbie your commission is the thing that will kill you. Forget paper trading, do 100 shares, you can not learn day trading on paper because the fill is such a big part of the game. Someone else on this board can probably recommend a chart package. My company provides mine. DO NOT "upgrade" to a better broker, you gotta start with IB to have any chance of survival. I have to tell you one thing, the bigger the size of the trader at my firm, the simpler their chart. There are many many super size traders at my firm using nothing more than 5 minute charts and tape. Getting a dozen screen shots is useless because it is not the indicators that make the trader, it is how the trader use indicators. You play the game, you get smoked, you learn, hopefully before you lose everything / run out of living expenses, that's the rule of survival for a new trader. Don't even think about making money, think about breaking even. Most of the day trading books are total garbage with systems that plain don't work, the most important element of any style is that you have to be comfortable with it. What works for a million dollar trader at my firm definitely doesn't work for me. This is not about finding the magic combination of indicators, it is about getting smoked enough times to see the thing coming next time around. You DO NOT need a lot of indicators. Whatever default settings of your indicators work just fine. Whether you use a 5/15 SMA or 10/20 EMA doesn't matter, none of the indicators out there work more than 50 percent of the time and your job is to know when to use what indicators. Are you comfortable with your screen? If you are, it is fine, don't change it, stick to it. As someone else suggested, TRADE AN EASIER STOCK! The fastest stocks are the toughest ones, and if you trade NVDA every day and can pull cachingo off it consistently I am mighty impressed. There are easier ways to make money, like trading stocks that don't spread you a point or two for no reason . . . You do not need a very large trading range to make money, as your mentality as a new trader should definitely not be making multiple points or full points, try to pull off 25-50 cents before you even attempt point(s). For the last time, DO NOT DAY TRADE WITH DATEK + QT!
I agree every single successful trading strategy can be summarized in 60 seconds. But to explain the subtle details would take days, weeks, months, and years, everyone got their bread and butter plays, they just have that particular touch with a certain strategy. That gut feeling, that instinct. It can only be explained and developed after you trade the same set-up with success. Trading is NOT about waiting for every confirmation in the world then take the shot, rinse and repeat. A lot of subtle rules can be broken depend on the situation. I seriously doubt there is any edge indicator composed of whatever secret variables, a trader just happened to be good at trading a certain set-up and he makes the indicator seemingly more powerful than it really is. In a post Commisio said he has been trading for many years at age 21 (same age as me except many many more years of experience), that is the edge, and you can't have that edge without doing it yourself. Half science, half art, full game . . .