My wife and I went through building a system, testing it, simulation testing in realtime, and finally putting real money on the line. Happy to say our only losing month was our first one and we made our profit goal for the year with some extra. If I can be of help PM me.
I hope you don't think you have a good system based on looking at old charts with nice stochastic/ moving average crossover or any other technical indicator. They all lag real time and one can only trade real time. Especially stochastics can look great, looking backwards. Probably every trader here, including me, has at some point looked at some of these charts and thought "Gee, this should be easy". Support/resistance, new highs, new lows and volume do not lag and can be looked at with more confidence. I would never trade anyone's money but my own. Did it once, lost money for them, felt/still feel like shit about it. Final advice. Paper trade it first. Prove it. Then use small size. Be a robot. Get rich slowly. Best of luck. *************************************************** I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestioned ability of a man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor. Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
You can spend two years in a F-16 flight simulator and think you've got all the angles covered. Well, you don't. Once things start to go wrong and the bogies start shooting, you're dead meat without the value of EXPERIENCE. If you are using other people's money to gain that experience, you will soon have fewer friends and a lot less money. You've asked for responses, and that's what folks are telling you.
I deeply thank all of you for your responses and hope that they will continue to expand based upon my replies. I especially am grateful for the cynicism, because I have worked very hard to becoming part of the minority that succeeds. I have alot of respect for those of you in this category. Am I gun shy right now? Although I am very confident about my approach and awareness at this point, I know that all the preparation will not simulate true reality. Simply said, I am trying to be as cautious as one can be on their debut as an active trader. I have strong desires to make a career from trading and will take as much time I deem necessary to avoid pitfalls. I have been self employed all of my working life, so I feel I understand what it would take to treat trading as a business responsibly. My Intention is to automate my trading , but with as much underlying discretion as I can muster with my nonexistent "real time" experience. I've taught myself the great importance of underlying issues such as: Risk management (utmost importance)... Technicals commingled with fundamentals, and contrarian sentiment theory.... Macro enveloping micro... etc.... At this point , in respect to your cynicism, it's truly hard to gauge if I am as prepared as one can possibly be prior to initiating the first trigger. I think that I need to activate in order to really know. Let my reiterate that I've worked as hard as I could to be as close to "masterful" prior enacting. Lastly as far as OPM, I have set a limit for myself, that I will stop at, the moment I drawdown to this established limit. At that point I would continue to educate myself until the next go round... I do have strong self discipline. Please Continue To Respond ... your wisdom is greatly appreciated to me, as well as, other newbies that have taken an interest in this string. Thank You.
I've got a better idea. Instead of just having a dollar trough point, don't trade the total equity at all. That is, trade a small fraction of it and establish a dollar trogh point for that portion. Then if you succeed on a small scale after say, 6 months, increment up.
You sound like you have a good positive attitude, which is good (you will need it). As others have wrote, I think your idea of being profitable right out of the starting gate is not realistic. Trust me, when you start trading for the first time all the emotions you said you wouldn't have come to the forefront. In your post I didn't see any reference to papertrading?? Have you been papertrading during your two year studying time?? If not, then my answer would be an absolute NO - Do not start trading!(especially with opm) If however you have papertraded (profitably) then my suggestion would be to start trading with a very small account (like 1/10 of your original amount and trade small) then see what your results are after a 3 month period of real time trades, then raise accordingly. Patience is a virtue, resist the urge to do big trades from the getgo, you sound like a young guy and the markets will always be there. Believe me, I wish I knew about ET when I first started trading it would have saved me huge $$, Oh well, consider yourself fortunate.... Good trading.
Zman, I've paper traded intra-day to the extent I believe it takes me. Most simulation sites don't have that feature. Fills/Slippage can only be calculated on an assumed average basis. I am going to walk into my account's maximum with out even beginning to consider full BP. For those that read this... Please continue to add your comments and insights. it is very helpful. Thanks.