"The ticker has a habit of becoming incoherent at the most critical points. Curse it as we may, it will resume printing intelligibly when the trouble is overcome not before. As the loss of even a few inches of quotations may be important, a stop should be placed at once and left in until the flow of prices is resumed." -Richard Wyckoff circa 1910
4pm. Time for Traderx to tell us how easy it was to pick up 8 points on CIEN. I hear he has a new website. tradinginretrospect.com
Macal, that's very funny. You're not jealous are you? :-D. Honestly, I didn't play CIEN in the premarket where most of the dropped occurred. Wish I had! Did play it later though for pocket change. NVDA is another story though. Great trading range for NVDA today! The key was to buy early and hang on for the big ride up. Once again pretty easy CACHINGO. $$$$$$$$$$$$$! Chalk up another homerun! Let's just say if this was major league baseball, it's "out of the park" with bases loaded!!! "Who's your daddy" tradeRX
macal, I hear he has a new website. tradinginretrospect.com I like that place too and I do soooooooo much better when I visit, capturing all the runs (both up 'n down of course), sitting thru all the wiggles and temporary reversals, makin' serious $$$$$$$ any day I want to. Funny, tho, when I don't go there I'm scraping for dimes 'n quarters just like the rest of my trading buddies. Hmmm.
Micheal, rtharp is right. Here the "argument" Premise 1. A negative expectancy system WITH good money management will put you in the poorhouse. Premise 2. A positive expectancy system WITHOUT good money management will put you in the poorhouse. ================= Conclusion: Only a positive expectancy system WITH good money management will be profitable over time. You're gunslinging right now with regard to risk. Put the six shooters away before you shoot yourself cleaning your guns. Know your stop, obey the stop. Wet
MGB: Major props for posting that shower and pray game on this board, it takes serious guts to do it and I told you what kind of cachingo you would get if you post it. I am curious why don't you post your down days. In my opinion today you played a much better game and despite of the fact that you lost money at least you sticked to your stops. I guess no one wants to step it up and admit that they got destroyed today, I guess that is the unique feature of Hit List Journal, I posted the day I made 5K and I posted the day I was smoked for 4K. (Now I read your update, you just got a lot more respect from me) Heads up, it could have been a LOT worse, hang in there! TraderRX: How many down days have you had this month? Care to share the numbers you put up this month so far? Are you up, flat, down? Let's hear it! Why stick to only 500 shares if you are so good? MGB is doing 1000 share positions left and right and he is not even in your league!
Thursday, 16 2001 Normally, my entries are good. Most trades go in the direction that I forecast them. But today, every trade went in the opposite direction. A long trade reversed. A short trade reversed. This time, I obeyed thy stops Only two trades were good but not enough to get me out of -1010 for the day. I stopped after 90 minutes of trading. I had to leave for the day anyway. Upon returning at the end of the day, what do I see? A nice climb for NVDA after 2pm. I trade 1,000 shares because I want/need to make a living. Soon, I need to live off the trading and I need to grow the account. I don't want to under $100,000 forever. But then again, 500 shares for now might be wiser? Ah, 500 shares is not going to feed the family. With NVDA, I can trade 1,500 at the most before my buying power is max'd. I guess the upcoming 4:1 margin leverage will allow me to enter more open trades but with a negative expectancy system it's a moot point. It seems that each trading day is different. Every Open is different. The reversal from the first high doesn't always react the same way. And the reversal from the first low doesn't always reach the same way, too. For example, at 9:39am, NVDA had a good size green bar followed by a red bar. At this time, all market indexes are going down. $NDX, $COMPX, /NDU1 are all going down so I'm thinking a good short opportunity here. In the past, I've always felt like I've jumped into the reversal too late so I wanted to get a good jump. This looks like a really good typical reversal so I enter a short on the red bar. But it became a very weak reversal and continued going up at 9:45am. So I got out of that short. So, this is one example of trade that didn't go as expected despite all the "confirmation signals". Not just once, but repeatly. MGB ----------------------------------------- In search of a positive expectancy system
MGB, You want a positive expectancy system? Check out Ken Calhoun... http://www.daytradinguniversity.com His style is very methodical and produces consistent wins. The risk/reward ratio is favorable. His stops are super tight. He's a very good trader, and his emphasis is teaching you how to trade effectively in addition to making calls. I recommend his room. It is $495 for a month, and often he extends you free time. (He gave me an additional month at no charge) It was worth every penny I paid. He likes to trade breakouts, short and long, but he'll carve out points within the intraday trading range also. He'll show you how to tie in the various market indices to help assess the risk in each trade. Low risk setups and methodical trading is what I liked best about Ken Calhoun. Check it out. All you have to lose is a few hundred, but I'll wager you'll come away an improved trader. I'm going to take a refresher to pick up what I missed the first time. tradeRX