Here is the deal. After averaging about $200 per day daytrading for about 1.5 yrs, I started trading for others recently with small amount of capital. Earlier in the year, I had used all my capital to pay off the school loan thinking I give my law degree a go. But I fell back into trading because I just cannot let go of the possibility of making big bucks. Before I quit earlier this year, I felt like I was finally near the breaking point of learning how to trade but at the same time I did not want to waste anymore time getting my law career started. Then my friends convinced to go for daytrading one more time and gave me enough seed money to be over daytrading minimum equity rule. I took the money and thought maybe trading someone else's money will make me more accountable and take the whole thing much more seriously. I have been following the market for several years now so I am not completely new to this but hardly a professional trader with Bloomberg terminal. I mean I use Ameritrade with no pay service of any kind. I use the charts, last sale, and level 2. So the past Friday was my 17th day of trading with my friend's capital. I keep 50% and they keep 25% each and we each pay our proportion of the taxes. From first day, I have been on fire. First day, I made over $1000. Second day, only $250. After that, I had one day of blowout where I was up $1600 but got so greedy to get over $2000 and blew the profit and actually lost $900 holding on to a losing trade. 2 more blowouts during the 17 days. One a minor one where I was up $1400 but finished the day up only $500 and another one I was up $1600 but finished the day down $200 (shorted GOOG at absolute wrong time and got killed in the short squeeze up to 415). All other days have been at least $1000 per day with last 3 days I was up $2300, $2600, and $2100, respectively. I could have made more last 3 days but Ameritrade was having all kinds of problems. I mean I could not trade 9:30 to 10AM yesterday because their system was down. I actually make bulk of my profit in the first 1/2 to hr. With hitting small singles rest of the day and my track record for after 2pm is not good. 3 blowouts I mentioned above all happened in the afternoon. So this week I have been extra careful and tried to stay out of trouble after 1pm and ran into a couple of problems but got out unscathed. I did not let my losing position run against me too long. So far, I am up almost $20,000 in 17 trading days and this week alone I am up $9,300. I trade the active stocks and I follow about 50 of them (many of them with big short interests). I make about 20 to 30 roundtrip trades per day. I go both long and short. I think my profits are about equal from both sides. But I notice from day to day, one day is mostly long day and other short day. I don't do this on purpose but it happens that way. I don't know why. But I have no qualms about shorting and I actually feel more comfortable shorting stocks. It fits my personality better. And I know this is irrational but it seems its easier the stock will go down after a big rise than the reverse. Also, most of my trades I am in anywhere from 10 seconds to 5 minutes. Some trades I let go more than 1/2 hour but rarely. The blowouts I mentioned all happened when I let the trade go longer than 1/2 hr. Everyday, I get up thinking when is this gonna end but I keep making money everyday. And again, most of profits come early in the morning. I usually short the stock on top and buy the bottom. Another thing is I rarely lose money which is really odd since I hear good daytraders don't have high winning percentage but their homeruns are big enough to offset small errors. For me it has been a couple of double in the morning followed by many singles up the 1pm that has been doing the trick. Now, that I got the afternoon blowouts under control, I am able to keep my morning and afternoon profits. I came to a conclusion that I don't know about trading enough to do well in the last 2 hours as my trading style does not snyc with that time frame. And since I started again recently, I want to work on my afternoon trades w/o making drastic changes that will affect my morning profits. Can I expect this to continue? One thing I am very good at is picking the bottom. I don't know why I have this sick gift. Many stocks, I almost gotten in at absolute bottom (w/n 5 pennies) of the day. But I always get out too early because I am making money so fast and I get so giddy to take few hundred dollar profits. What i am doing different but my previous run at this as I no longer hesitate for sec. When I feel it, I just hit it. And I remember in the past thinking and saying "I knew it, I should have...." Now, I try to act on most of them as possible but still I hesitate and don't get in on many. But now I just get in enough to make decent money. These days, I feel like I am walking on air. When I trade, I no longer even feel the tension. I am little scared but it has become so mechanical, it seems. This is because somehow I always get in at very good entry point so that I can wait out 3 to 5 minutes even if the trades does not go my way and break even. I also only use bollinger bands, macd, and stochastic slow for entries and exits but I think I can really read the fake outs and pressure built-up in the level 2 pretty well which has been the real closer. I also spend about 1.5 hours per day reading wsj and nyt which I enjoy doing regardless of whether I trade or not. I also use 2 laptops for trading and don't have CNBC or anything. But I always scan the news for specific stock quickly before I enter a trade and I do my homework the night before for important economic events and dates for the stock so I don't get snookered with a surprise. Has anyone else experienced this kind of epiphany in trading? I am not here troll anyone as some will surely accuse me of. I am just very excited but I am confused at the same time. I feel like I am really going against the odds here making this much money with very little money. Thanks for any input!
Get you a Dr. Pepper and a bag of cheetos. Sit at your computer and type this into your address bar: messages.yahoo.com Thanks and have fun!
No offense cheetos, if your that good right from the start then your a natural and a great trader, more power to you. But what sets my BS meter off is that if you're smart enough to grow your account that fast and that consistantly, why aren't you smart enough to realize that you could make extra tens of thousands of $ a year in commision savings by switching to IB (or any other broker more suited to active/pro traders). Edit: never come on to a trading forum and start bragging about how much money from the very 1st post, because people will always assume that you're a vendor because that's exactly what many vendors have done in the past including a recent guy claiming to average over 100k a day. There's a Trader PL thread in the journals section if you want to show and compare your results with other guys, post there regularly and you'll get a lot more respect.
"why aren't you smart enough to realize that you could make extra tens of thousands of $ a year in commision savings by switching to IB which is more suited to active/pro traders." I am getting $7 trades with Ameritrade now. I gotten $8 trades for a long time but now I was able to haggle $1 more from them. I also tried Interactive Brokers as my friend has it but I just can'get get use to their interface. Also, I am very afraid to change things when things are going this well. Maybe someday I will get esignal but I don't want to commit to anything until I am sure this run I am having is not a fluke. If I can go at this pace for one more month, I am willing to sign up for data services. Also, if want me to email you a copy of my trading summary from Ameritrade, I don't mind. I am not BSing here. I am actually really confused because this is too good to be true. My biggest fear is the law of avg. will get me and make me give up all of the profits. One thing I am doing lot better than before is getting out of trades fast when it does not go my way. That is why I end up making so many trades per day.
Okay so you're doing well and you don't want to rock the boat by switching brokers, thats fine. Thanks for the offer, but I don't want your trading summary - you have nothing to prove to me and have nothing to gain from that. I'm just saying that we've seen to many jokers come here making wild claims that why the disbelief.
If you are making good money trading and you have no idea why or think it is a fluke then you will lose most of the money back...guaranteed. Anyone who is trading successfully is confident in their system, approach and risk management and does not lose sleep that this may all be random luck and be scared of losing it all. Read Market Wizards and then re-read your post again...
Here is a list of trades I made one day and sent to a friend of mine who was in disbelief 2 weeks ago. I think I was up like $1500 or $1600 that day. I also made so many trades that I had to take a huge nap after 4pm. So tired. Anyone care to comment. I feel like I am definitely overtrading but just don't know how to trade more efficiently yet. Buy 1500 AAPL Market 61.77 -- -- 09:31:39 04/04/06 1 Sell 500 AAPL Market 61.89 -- -- 09:32:43 04/04/06 2 Sell 1000 AAPL Market 61.8901 -- -- 09:32:43 04/04/06 Buy 450 AAPL Market 61.43 -- -- 09:46:19 04/04/06 3 Buy 100 AAPL Market 61.43 -- -- 09:46:19 04/04/06 Buy 100 AAPL Market 61.43 -- -- 09:46:19 04/04/06 Buy 100 AAPL Market 61.43 -- -- 09:46:19 04/04/06 Buy 100 AAPL Market 61.43 -- -- 09:46:19 04/04/06 Buy 100 AAPL Market 61.43 -- -- 09:46:20 04/04/06 Buy 50 AAPL Market 61.43 -- -- 09:46:20 04/04/06 Buy 500 AAPL Market 61.42 -- -- 09:46:20 04/04/06 Sell 1500 AAPL Market 61.51 -- -- 09:48:09 04/04/06 4 Sell Short 1500 CKFR Market 53.774 -- -- 10:05:27 04/04/06 5 Buy to Cover 1500 CKFR Market 53.447 -- -- 10:12:29 04/04/06 6 Sell Short 100 GOOG Market 398.90 -- -- 10:16:22 04/04/06 7 Sell Short 150 GOOG Market 398.85 -- -- 10:16:22 04/04/06 Buy to Cover 250 GOOG Market 398.41 -- -- 10:17:31 04/04/06 8 Sell Short 100 SNDK Market 57.07 -- -- 10:25:05 04/04/06 9 Sell Short 200 SNDK Market 57.07 -- -- 10:25:05 04/04/06 Sell Short 300 SNDK Market 57.07 -- -- 10:25:05 04/04/06 Sell Short 100 SNDK Market 57.05 -- -- 10:25:06 04/04/06 Sell Short 200 SNDK Market 57.05 -- -- 10:25:06 04/04/06 Sell Short 100 SNDK Market 57.05 -- -- 10:25:07 04/04/06 Sell Short 100 SNDK Market 57.05 -- -- 10:25:07 04/04/06 Sell Short 400 SNDK Market 57.05 -- -- 10:25:08 04/04/06 Buy to Cover 1500 SNDK Market 56.989 -- -- 10:32:57 04/04/06 10 Buy 400 AAPL Market 61.525 -- -- 10:44:38 04/04/06 11 Buy 1100 AAPL Market 61.53 -- -- 10:44:38 04/04/06 Sell 400 AAPL Market 61.605 -- -- 10:47:30 04/04/06 12 Sell 1100 AAPL Market 61.61 -- -- 10:47:30 04/04/06 13 Sell Short 1000 CKFR Market 54.201 -- -- 11:04:47 04/04/06 14 Buy to Cover 1000 CKFR Market 54.096 -- -- 11:08:11 04/04/06 15 Sell Short 1000 CKFR Market 54.354 -- -- 11:21:50 04/04/06 16 Sell Short 1000 CKFR Market 54.542 -- -- 11:27:10 04/04/06 17 Buy to Cover 100 CKFR Market 54.43 -- -- 12:30:34 04/04/06 18 Buy to Cover 100 CKFR Market 54.44 -- -- 12:30:35 04/04/06 Buy to Cover 236 CKFR Market 54.44 -- -- 12:30:35 04/04/06 Buy to Cover 100 CKFR Market 54.47 -- -- 12:30:36 04/04/06 Buy to Cover 100 CKFR Market 54.46 -- -- 12:30:36 04/04/06 Buy to Cover 100 CKFR Market 54.46 -- -- 12:30:36 04/04/06 Buy to Cover 200 CKFR Market 54.47 -- -- 12:30:36 04/04/06 Buy to Cover 100 CKFR Market 54.47 -- -- 12:30:36 04/04/06 Buy to Cover 90 CKFR Market 54.48 -- -- 12:30:36 04/04/06 Buy to Cover 100 CKFR Market 54.49 -- -- 12:30:36 04/04/06 Buy to Cover 200 CKFR Market 54.49 -- -- 12:30:36 04/04/06 Buy to Cover 374 CKFR Market 54.50 -- -- 12:30:36 04/04/06 Buy to Cover 200 CKFR Market 54.50 -- -- 12:30:36 04/04/06 Sell Short 100 GOOG Market 403.80 -- -- 14:18:32 04/04/06 19 Sell Short 150 GOOG Market 403.66 -- -- 14:18:32 04/04/06 Buy to Cover 250 GOOG Market 402.9299 -- -- 14:44:38 04/04/06 20 Buy 1500 AAPL Market 61.12 -- -- 15:08:10 04/04/06 21 Sell 1500 AAPL Market 61.1701 -- -- 15:09:13 04/04/06 22 Buy 1500 BRCM Market 44.5299 -- -- 15:13:38 04/04/06 23 Sell 1500 BRCM Market 44.64 -- -- 15:14:43 04/04/06 24 Sell Short 1000 XOM Market 61.83 -- -- 15:25:27 04/04/06 25 Buy to Cover 1000 XOM Market 61.74 -- -- 15:34:41 04/04/06 26 Buy 100 BRCM Market 44.42 -- -- 15:36:46 04/04/06 27 Buy 200 BRCM Market 44.42 -- -- 15:36:46 04/04/06 Buy 100 BRCM Market 44.42 -- -- 15:36:46 04/04/06 Buy 100 BRCM Market 44.42 -- -- 15:36:46 04/04/06 Buy 200 BRCM Market 44.42 -- -- 15:36:47 04/04/06 Buy 100 BRCM Market 44.42 -- -- 15:36:47 04/04/06 Buy 700 BRCM Market 44.42 -- -- 15:36:47 04/04/06 Sell 1500 BRCM Market 44.48 -- -- 15:37:54 04/04/06 28 Buy 1500 BRCM Market 44.4099 -- -- 15:40:24 04/04/06 29 Sell 1500 BRCM Market 44.48 -- -- 15:41:13 04/04/06 30 Buy 100 BRCM Market 44.31 -- -- 15:46:40 04/04/06 31 Buy 1400 BRCM Market 44.31 -- -- 15:46:40 04/04/06 Sell 1500 BRCM Market 44.35 -- -- 15:50:03 04/04/06 32 Buy 2000 GM Market 19.608 -- -- 15:52:33 04/04/06 33 Buy 200 GM Market 19.54 -- -- 15:57:31 04/04/06 34 Buy 2800 GM Market 19.54 -- -- 15:57:35 04/04/06 Sell 5000 GM Market 19.531 -- -- 15:59:55 04/04/06 35
why dont you show your incredible run of luck or skills to a good prop firm ... and ask them to hire you ... the worst thing is they will pick your brain and tell you to come back in a yr with your track record good luck
hello kid do you ever look at how the futures markets are trading or other indicators of intraday market or sector health when daytrading ?