Yes, thanks for this advice; you make a good point. Like I said I will be expanding my profit target to AT LEAST 3.5 points if not more as I realized that especially with the NQ you get lots of long runs that if timed correctly will make you a whole lotta $$$
Wow that's a pretty volatile journey that you have had. And of course I know about the whole "hot teen ass doesn't care about how much you're worth" thing, I'm just pissed off for my own sake, because daddy needs an Iphone, some Armani Exchange clothes, a new guitar, and a whole bunch of other shit not worth mentioning.
Does your broker charge a monthly fee?. If they do, you can still do this if you dont mind the expense. Heres what you do: Stop trading real money Open MS excel (if you dont have it...buy it) give yourself the same amt of trading capital that you started with make these rows on the spread sheet: 1. date 2. long/short 3. lots 4. entry 5. spread (or commission) 6. stop 7. target 8. r/r (risk reward ratio on the trade) 9 % of account risked per trade (optional) 10. PnL 11. Daily PnL 12 Aggregate total 13. your thoughts before and after the trade keep this open while you trade so you dont forget to post your trades!...AFTER your trade is done, go back to the chart, and mark your entry, stop, and target....take a screen shot of it, and open your paint program and save it as something like this: NQ_scalps_7_13_08 Because your scalping, it might be hard and time consuming to mark every entry /exit...so do it for maybe the 2 biggest winners/ losers keep doing this till you feel confident in your method Take it from me. I had a journal on here too, but had to stop before I blew up my account. Sure, you dont have to do this, but it will really help cm69
Interesting cash money, I might just do that. Anyways, like I said, I will put the whole "trading with real money" on hold for a week or two, and test my strategy with bigger profit targets, and see how that goes. I guess I can post up my paper results too, but I just feel like it wouldn't feel as authentic when I do it with my real $ trades.
I'm sorry if someone has suggested this already, but I would say write down the exact steps of your strategy , and enter your stops (if appropriate) atthr time of entry , and keep a log of whether you follow your strategy and what the result is. This would be a good idea regardless of paper or real trading until you have the discipline. Just imo
Yes, like I said I will definitely do that, it sounds like a pretty good idea. However, since I will be doing this virtually for the next week or two, we all know the difference that real $ can make, so I guess the whole point in this is to give me full and utter confidence in myself so that when the time comes, I WILL be able to pull that stupid trigger and have the patience to hold for a gain because I will be statistically confident in the way I trade.
Perfect man. I had some trouble with over-trading that took some time to get over, and writing down the exact step by step rules of my strategy helped to curtail that. Good luck.
So, I don't know guys, should I start posting up my virtual trades with the record keeping as well for you to critique? (I would hope you could help, but seeing as it's sim...) And btw I didn't really feel like trading today real or sim, so you can relax about whether I made bank or not. Instead, I did what you guys told me as "enjoying my youth without care for money". I'll SIM it up for the rest of the week and let you guys know how that goes.