Guys, thanks for the advices. I know what you mean by getting cocky and ruining everything. I am actually a very pessimistic person so I am always trying to see if all this is real but still manage to mess things up. I was up at the peak of $4500 today at 3pm. All the trades I made was a winner until I busted a bad trade on CI. Lost $1100 on that one. I guess I still have hard time selling losers. It took a huge down turn after 3pm over a short period and just wiped me. I guess its human nature and controlling this is a must if I want to become a good trader. I notice I have a hard time getting out when the stock gets whipsawed over a minute. And sometimes holding through the whipaw does work out as it bounces right back up but when it doesn't, its like a rolling ball as everyone sells and sells but I have a hard time getting out. I think I should just stop trading in the last 2 hours or do completely reverse of what I do during the last hr. I usually never make a losing trade before 11:30am. And small winners until 1pm. But after that, I think overall, I am net negative. I hardly had big winners after 2pm but I had several big losers during that time. I also thought about taking a vacation soon. This stress is just too much sometimes. I can't eat any greasy food anymore. It just comes right back up. Threw up twice after eating fried chicken for lunch. The person who asked me about BB #s. I just use whatever is the default w/ Ameritrade. I use it with 1 minute chart. I tried changinging #s a bit but I don't much about it so I put it back to default mode. If anyone wants advice, I think one thing that has been helping me is following lots stock with big volatility and short interest. I have 50 stock on my streamer that I feel like I know intimately. So anytime any of these move, I can feel which is real and which is fake. Actually, all the stocks I got in and had big losers are the story stock of the day that I do not follow like CI. Yesterday was PLAY that srewed me. I was up $2700 but again after 2pm I went into it and blew $1000 on PLAY. I should just simply stop trading after 2pm. Its like going to box and get ass kicked everyday.
Cheetos, Read your own passage one more time. This is your wisdom speaking. Do you want to be a good trader? Learn to take a vacation NOW. Only compulsive gambler worries about missing actions. Regarding after 2:00pm trades, if you don't feel good trading then, don't trade them. I think you are doing well just don't get into the compulsive gambling side in every one of us. Take a vacation. Go out and smell the roses. Keep at it next round. KC
Either this is pure BS or he is simply that very lucky outlier on the distribution curve. Come on people, he is daytrading stocks like VLO, SNDK and AAPL with 1500 share lots, these are some of the toughest stocks with the most competition. These are stocks that some professional daytraders of 4-5 years still won't touch. These are stocks that rip new traders apart. Yet this guy claims to go in and make money from almost day one, and not just little money but 200-300k a year. And this all while using Ameritrade? He was going in for microscalps with Ameritrade and not experiencing slippage. Get real. This equation is way out of whack. Well maybe he is that one guy who has talent and really hits the lucky curve from day one. And he just happened to post on ET. It's not impossible, just absurdly improbable. Yeah he probably will lose it all and then some once the market conditions switch.
Hydroblunt, I don't how you're as a trader but stocks lke VLO, AAPL, and SNDK are the exact stock you should be trading. How else are you supposed to make money without the volatility inherent in these stocks? Let me assure you that I am not BSing anyone here. Another thing is its not the tool but how you trade that counts. I mean have you tried Ameritrade? I mean I am very satisfied with them. The fills I am getting is instant. I mean w/ volatile stocks, especially the NASDAQ ones, I am filled as soon as I hit the button. NYSE stocks sometimes the fill can take up to 10 to 15 seconds but that is rare. I think direct access broker is totally overrated. Another thing you have to remember is Ameritrade is so big that if you want to short shares, they have almost all of them available because there are so many clients. Another thing I have to tell you is the ENTRY is the KEY with all daytrading. Most of my trades, I am making money right away w/n seconds. If you get a good entry, 75% of the game is complete. I guess if you don't know what you're doing, you should stay away from the aforementioned stocks because there is tremendous amt of manipulations. For that reason, I only short/buy these stocks when everything meets. Top of BB band, MACD w/n secs of cross, same with stochastic. Sometimes that is not enough. But if you have all the indicators meeting, you get 5 minute of entry before the stock goes against you. That is a plenty of time to get out. Any other pts in the trading range, you're just a sitting duck ready to get scammed by the MMs. I just don't see how you can daytrade if you don't trade volatile stocks. Try daytrading WMT or GM. Its no joke. You can sit there for hours to make 10 cents per share that is if it goes your way.
Dude Im not too sure what to say to you cause you think VLO, SNDK and AAPL is the only volatile game out there. I mean, you sound completely clueless and the more you post, the more I sense BULLSHIT or just a very very lucky one in a million individual. LOL, you're talking about entry with Ameritrade, as if the top tier I-Bank and hedge fund auto progs have no chance against your speed & execution with a broker for the Joe Blow masses. I do not daytrade anymore as of Feb 1st, 2006, but last year my big cash cows were FCL, WLT and TIE. WLT and TIE could move 5-10% a day for months, and the real money was made in stocks that were not known to the street and the numerous herds of daytraders. FCL was easy to read and move, I used to do 10-20% of that stock's volume. But all those got too known and the edge got chopped up and even if the stocks had the illusion of more volatility, they actually got worse and did take some money back. At the end of the year I was trading sectors, homebuilders were my best, steels second best. Coals I did so-so and oils I tried not to touch, especially your beloved VLO who would rape daytraders left and right. Very ironic to me how VLO was your choice when you started when the advice given in the prop daytrading industry for new guys is to stay the f**k away from that stock and the likes. I know of new guys who thought VLO was the stock to trade and ended up losing tens of thousands of dollars to that specialist. Steels & homies had some very nice movements and volatility, you obviously need to look into them and see how those stocks move, especially the lesser known ones. But regardless, your story just does not make sense and is the most outrageous I have ever heard in regards to quick trading success, let alone trading success. It is entertaining and Im not saying it's impossible but you're like that lucky newbie poker player among sharks who is having a great run, completely oblivious to the fact that the sharks are just waiting to rob him blind. I wish you luck and I think you are very correct in realizing that smth just does not add about your great run because it completely defies the odds. I've been around and met some sick traders and you just stomp them to the ground. You have not even went through the necessary initial learning curve of losing money as you learn the ropes and everyone goes through that.
I think that fading is the best way to make consistant profits with a nicely shaped equity curve. It is also good for your mental health because you have a lot of winners and few losers. The thing that you have to keep in mind is that no matter what you trade it will break out at some point. As a fader you will give back a protion of your returns when this happens. Also if I can suggest using long options instead of stops to limit risk. This can really help if you are getting a lot of false breakouts.
"You have not even went through the necessary initial learning curve of losing money as you learn the ropes and everyone goes through that." You have not read my original post. I have been at this 3 prior years before the I started back again. I was make about only about 200 per day on avg but I was not making that many trades plus holding on to losers too long was the real killer. I wasn't do it full time either though. It was only recently I started again after realizing my prospect w/ my law degree is not that great. That is another story. But 3 yrs that I dabbled on this while preparing for the bar (I took the exam more than twice, lets leave it at that), I really came to know how the MMs work on the level 2. Its actually like a second nature to me at least with stocks with lots of volume like sndk and aapl. But I do understand what you're saying. These stocks are not easy to trade but I told my friend that its just a trap door for avg joe to lose money. But if you only go in AFTER the masses are trapped, its fairly simple. I always try to think how are these MMs trying to scam this time. Most of the scam w/ thsese stocks involve short squeeze because for some reason, masses love shorting these stocks because they hate Macintosh or don't like the high gas price. So what you do is wait for the MMs to squeeze the shorts in the morning when the stock has been rising for few days, they you short when stupid shorts are covering. That is when the MMs short shares anyway. Also, I do trade homebuilder stocks but they are very tricky to daytrade because the specialist will usually run the stock to the extreme before leting it turn so I will wait and wait before I go in and stay in longer once I get on the trend. I really think these stocks are not that hard to trade if you remember the whole game is about the big boys screwing the little guys and novice hedge fund traders. So if you think the opportunity is real good, think trice before entering because that is how they get you. I am NYC metro area. If anyone want to meet up to talk trading strategies, I can always use a new daytrading friend. It get kinda lonley working by myself.
"I think that fading is the best way to make consistant profits with a nicely shaped equity curve. It is also good for your mental health because you have a lot of winners and few losers. The thing that you have to keep in mind is that no matter what you trade it will break out at some point. As a fader you will give back a protion of your returns when this happens." I completely agree. That is how I got screwed on the CI today. Thought I got the bottom but it felt apart and lost $1100 on that trade. One thing I am convinced of it I always contertrading in the morning and for some reason, I almost always short the top or but the bottom before the stocks turn. But in the afternoon, that strategy does not work because stocks that has been going down will continue to go down, or vice virsa, in the last 2 hrs. This happened to me w/ GM, GOOG, and AAPLE before. Got scwered out of days profit by being stubborn and holding on while the stock just ran away from me. I mean CI got killed espeically in the last 1/2 hr while I sat on that w/ huge losses. But countertrading is I think instilled in my personality so I don't i can change it that easily so I think I will have to just observe the market and paper trade maybe at the end of the day for awhile. Because this is like 7th or 8th big loss trade (more than $1000 loss) in the last 5 1/2 weeks.
I find the best time to fade on ES is 10am to about 1:30 pm. Depending on the day you can often fade 3:30pm if you get a move that is over done on "nothing". During the 2pm to 3:30pm timeframe ES often follows a nice trendline. One thing that I will warn you against is increasing size because you have a string of winners. The more winners you have the more it means you are due for a big loss. If you watch other equity indexes in there home time zone you will see the same thing, fade the morning, trend the afternoon, fade the close.