Call that a tuition fee in the university of trading. The anecdotal dropout rate among short term traders is amazingly high (in some estimates reaching 100% as the time progresses, but mostly among short term ones, and mostly because of the easy availablity of credit (called leverage or trading on margin). So before you hit the 'buy' button (this is the safer one), make sure the position value (notional value, contract value) does not exceed your real-life cash. The learning curve cannot be shortened because until you burn yourself, you won't believe that Bunsen burner is really as useless for warming up cold feet as they said it is. Find a successful mentor if you can get it, if not - stick to ElyteTurder, but proceed with caution. Keep your distrust on the maximum setting and equally distributed to all, including especially your own intuitions and the grasping claws of others demanding something sure for unsure performance. No shortcuts, nothing of value to be had without actual work. For it is work, a psychologically unrewarding one, and also financially unrewarding for most participants, as in all competitive games. Start small and in the simulated trading account, and keep your expectations in the negative territory for at least 3 years, covering your expenses from other sources (legal). Avoid overtrading, by setting youself a limit on the maximum number of opening trades per unit of time (from hour to month). Widen your perspective in terms of time and markets. Stick to the liquid stuff though. Avoid 'funny mentals', price is the king (and most news is old news). Keep it either simple or sophisticated but avoid the middle ground of intellectual snobbery. Do something shamefully lazy to benchmark yourself - naive strategies are amazingly hard to beat, at least return-wise. Keep adding to the winning strats, including the lazy one. Remember that historical performance does not include emotions, which is why mutual funds outperform their own customers. But always test your ideas first on historical data (spanning multiple years), not on real money. Read and re-read Schwager's Market Wizards, an online course in Statistics, and a psychology text of your choice (Steenbarger recommended). Learn how to turn off emotions or learn how to code, ideally both. Do not watch the charts all the time. Get a life and a rewarding hobby, trading must not substitute for either. Learn the symptoms of addiction and monitor yourself for those. Reverse your intuitions - if you feel an intolerable urge to protect your money or to jump on the 'easy money' bandwagon, then go on and do it to satisfy the losers impulse, and then immediately undo it. Oh, and forget that perfectionist goal of yours (never lose ever) - while reducing risk is the required factor, it must not lead you astray towards 'lossless' strategies such as 'costless' collars or 'iron' condors... all these are zero sum, and the only free money to be had on the buy side is in arbitrage (not to be confused with the two volatilities myth called volatility arbitrage), and you and I are just too slow for it. Eventually if you stumble upon your market niche, stick to it and really master it. Even after you succeed, stick to realistic profit targets and 'never expect ever' to outdo Simons (i.e. make more than 3% per month). Markets do not care that you have no initial stake to make such returns worthwhile - firms cannot be set up without raising capital. Be sure that money never goes to your head, read and re-read Stanley's books (e.g. Stop Acting Rich). Stick to the Original Buffett Home, avoid conspicuous consumption like plague. Let that 'car' of yours become the synonym of 1 contract lot, and stop being the usual main-street depreciation trap.
This was my first thought exactly. No mistake about it - the art of losing (the right way) is perhaps the most important part of this game.
Thanks guys or gals. Also I'm considering purchasing a new macbook 13in laptop and iPhone. I want to use my summer life guarding money to buy these items and use the rest of my money as capital for my up and coming investment account.
Another idea is if you want to be come a full-time trader, first show some good results as a part-time trader. Keep your day job until then.
I hope you aren't considering trading with that 13" Mac. Those mini laptops are not meant for trading. You need as much screen space as you can get your hands on for charts, for a laptop its better to buy a 16"- 17" windows based laptop from Ebay , or Tigerdirect.com for under $750.00 with at least 1.8 Mhz cpu, at least 2 Gb of ram and hard drive size of 200GB or more.
Most people fail in trading. Attached is a Failure Preventer. No one wants to fail and no one wishes failure upon anyone. Trends are three part moves. But most people trade as if the market were up and down. So most people fail because they think in pairs instead of triads. If you see the blank column of boxes, you can fill in the market dominance and always "know that you know" what is going on. this attachment will handle two trends, usually. Keep a stack handy. Because trends overlap, they always begin with non dominance, break through the Right Trend Line (RTL) and begin dominance of the first of three moves of the new trend. Most of your posts show poor decisions so far. Poor decisions is a big reason why potential traders run out of money. You better decide on what platform provides you with good information. You better decide to trade using the P, V relationship. Volume leads price.
sure. You bought a good laptop (wide screen Microsoft) or a PC that has two screens. Mount the screens vertically if you go the PC route. Go get a good viewing platform and get a good trading account. Fill up the account so you can get used to seeing how it is working as you view it. For me, I have another computer and it has its own mouse and own keyboard too. No trading yet. Just getting in the groove. You print 5 to 10 copies of the illustration. Find the blank boxes in a column. you are going to fill in the boxes as each market move takes place. Say you want to get a V 12 like one of my cars (BMW700 series). They are fun because of the multiple transmissions and rednecks in pickups never get to see you more than once and only briefly(Pickups are only V 8's usually). You go to any trading glossary and find out what dominance is since that is what you are filling in on the chart. Lets get it straight from the start. Dominance is either present or not present. In any trend it is present twice and non dominance is only present once when dominance is absent. Dominance relates to the market sentiment. It is what people FEEL about the market direction ON YOUR TRADING FRACTAL. We lock in what is going on by using a faster fractal and a slower fractal on either side of our trading fractal. Here is the definition of dominance: It is: THE DIRECTION OF THE TREND. Most top notch platforms allow you to set the dominance of your display and ALL panes are automatically set to dominance. Punchline. The Right Trend Line is SLOPED IN THE DIRECTION OF DOMINANCE. FOR LONG TRENDS THE SLOPE IS POSITIVE. FOR SHORT TRENDS, THE SLOPE IS NEGATIVE. So to make it clear, I wrote down the answers for each move in both the long and the short trend. I also wrote them in in color as an additional helper for preventing failure. If you are in the middle move of a short trend, the moment is non dominant and the color of the translating bar movement is black. you also see the volume is declining as you go from the Left Trend Line (LTL) to the RTL. you definitely get there since that end of the non dominant movement is where you draw the parallelogram that makes up the trend you are trading upon. This is why you gave yourself your name. By knowing the dominance all the time you "never lose ever". You trade the trend by trading three times in each trend. You ALWAYS know that you know by filling in the sheets for each trend. You have Volume and Price displayed. You keep the right and left trendlines annotated all the time. You see volume leads price during each of the three moves within the trend.