Additional tip Your EXITS are far more important than entries. In early years I thought entry patterns and signals were critical. They're not. Random entries with expert trade management and scaling would do better. Best is strong entry setups with careful exits, re-entries, scaling and tight stops. Think in terms of sequence and process, not one off decisions.
Hello KCalhoun Thank you for sharing your journey. Love the thread. Please Ignore the clowns. If you have value to help some, please share. stupid people will be stupid all the time. I have a few questions for your as I am day trader on a few challenges I have. 1. How do I decide a daily profit goal? Or number of trades to take. I have challenge when know when to stop trading for the day. 2. as far exiting strategies. What do you prefer. Profit target or stop trailing? 3. Would you recommend to always keep risk vs reward greater than 1 per trade? Like 2 to 3 RR. I have been testing 1RR and 2RR and trailing stop exits. Thanks
I'd expect anyone who's really been successful over 21 years of investing to be too rich to waste his time with sub-$1000 trades and selling training seminars.
Smart questions! Although I can't make recommendations, I can tell you how I trade.... 1) It completely depends on the day's volatility. For example Friday was flat choppy so I did no daytrades. Instead I bought premkt and eod for weekend swingtrade holds. I never set arbitrary number of trades, I set max daily stop red day limit $500 and a goal of 1k. In reality it's all directly related to hot strong day up or down vs choppy af day to skip, or trade light 2) always trailing stops using OTO paired trades 3) minimum 3:1 using specific entry setups. Often though if I'm long several positions and it's near a reversal time like 10AM and SPY rolls over or TRIN spikes over 1.5 I'll tighten stops up or exit at market
ScroogeMcDuck, How do you know the OP is not rich already? How do you know the OP does not like risking large amount of cash per trade? Perhaps that is his risk tolerance.
Thank you for the response. Questoins : 1. Because I work full time, and just part time trader for now. I can only trade from 7am to 9: 30am. I was thinking just let 9:30am be my cut off time and take all trades within that time period. But I have habit of letting good trades go by and stopping trading once PnL gets to about $500. But on losing days, I keep trading until 9:30. lol funny how that works. 2. what is OTO paired trades
I'm more of an investor now then a trader and I've learned that picking up value stocks based on good research on these large corrections is a great strategy. I also find the key to swing trading large positions is less about precision and more about sitting out portions of the corrections and getting back in at technical floors. Works for me anyways I got through this correction/crash better then most even being a week late bailing on US markets. And no, I'm not saying it's over yet, but I do think the TSX and some related stocks have made a clear bottom already.
I don’t believe that entries are less important than exits. Because your profit is Buy-Sell. You get discounts on none of them. A 5 points better entry is 10 points gained. As you potentially earn 5pts more or lose 5pts less. There is also less uncertainty about entry (Last price) than exit (Expected Last price). Also scaling in and out is linear, It’s a double edged sword. More risk, more reward. “Random entries with expert trade management and scaling would do better.” Bold statement. You might not entirely back it up. What if when clicking buy or sell, Your software picked a random time and price ? Not sure you would be very happy about it. “Expert” sounds definitely great. Trade management... Go fly broken planes only. No amount of tweaks will ever make it functional. But if it works for you then ... Might give it a try.
I certainly know entries; I've written dozens of articles on the topic. They are important..... but your exit determines your profit or loss. Say you randomly enter during consolidation and take a tiny stop, vs a trader who enters a great looking breakout, only to get into a false breakout and takes bigger stop. The exit not entry made the difference. It's a great topic, way more to it. Problem in educators is many are just bs chart-talkers, not real, so they can't teach exits, which are critical.. that is why traders fail, bc they've been misled into over-focusing on entries vs scaling and exits. I've made some of my best winning daytrades by scaling in, combined with a smart dual exit approach combining both trailing and hard stops.
If you’ve traded millions why are you basing your reputation on a screenshot that represents hundreds of dollars?