I understand you, but I have not lost much. about $450 for all this period. it is 2 months and a week. Not this much actually and less than other. much less.
my advice is - forget about intraday. when emotions are low, like we have right now, intraday is really working too hard for peanuts.... charts are quite readable on the daily basis and 10-20% over a couple of weeks is quite achieveable. intraday is only good when emotions are high, like when VIX is above 30... that's when you can leverage up and make a killing intraday.
I would agree. Forget about intraday. $20 stops? thats crazy, almost laughable. If you insist on trading intraday, then trade cheap, high volume stocks like C.
Ok, to set things clear. I trade with prop firm's money. No position overnight allowed. It is only intraday trading. I have no money of my own to risk. Hence, I have no choice but trade intraday. Risk is increased with experience and achievements. 100 shares $20. 300 shares $30. 500=$60. 1000 = $100-150 . then it is different story and we have no idea how much allowed to risk, but I know that much more once I prove myself. Which is a long way to go.
You have an interesting choose of career; day-trading at the beginning. I began as a position trader 2002 moving to shorter and shorter trading and now I am doing day trading now and then with liquid US-stocks. However, I have a very diffrent approach compared to you. I look from among 100+ stokcs 5 -6 possible set-up for the next day. If a stock seems to be behaving as I expect (I look first 15 minutes for making my decision), only then I will trade that stock otherwise I will stay out. I do not see any advantage trying to quess stock's moving from total darkness, but this is only my opinion and can be totally wrong.
Take a look at DRWI, I have a position trade in at $ 9.40 and its at $ 10.50 now with large short interest. I think with the battles between the longs and shorts, it could be fun to trade during the day if you are scalping. I day trade futures, but if I were day trading stocks, I would do some volume and price scans each morning. I would like to find some stocks that prior day are either moving up or down on strong volume. Then you could try to latch on to one of them to ride. You could also try scaling out. For example, lets assume you have a $ 20 stop limit, you could hit $ 20 with your 1st position bring your stop up to break even, and let the 2nd 1/2 ride to a higher target.
I actually changed my approach. Since I moved away from those too volatile stocks to those that have 1.5 beta volatility or below I have a whole list of about 30 stocks which get into parameters we got from more experienced trader. I have been working on reducing my losses since I realized that until I have bigger losses daily or per trade than winner I am not going to do it well. My losses were going down considerably and I can actually state that I have not had a single losing trade this week that was bigger than 4 ticks. Even my biggest losing day was only $9 and other losing days were $2-4. So, I have finished this week $5-6 down after win and lose days. This was the firs time that my losing days were smaller than my biggest winning day. With new experienced trader givingus strategy to chew upon I immediately threw out of the window everything I gad done before except for risk control and started trading 100% according to the rules I was given. Max risk per trade is 5 ticks. I have traded this way only today but it looks like a very reasonable scalping strategy.
I found the perfect stock for you to trade... COMS It's like watching paint dry but you will never get stopped out trading it.....bid it then offer it a c higher....do it 20 times a day and you're gold I would also suggest CSCO - nice little stock that likes to find chop areas - but can also get a decent move here and there...
Here's a way for you to reduce your losses even more and increase your profits with no risk .... WAIT FOR IT ...... ..... .............. .... .... Go to a McDonald's that is hiring part time and offers you free food on your break, then fill out an application so that you can work after you are done trading. Even at min wage, you will be doing much better. Feel free to thank me later.
By the way, even if you sleep most of the trading day, a trader should be able to wake up with just 1 to 2 hours to go and make at least $ 100 or you are playing a video game not trading. Also, its only the firm's money if you put down no deposit and they provided training otherwise its your money.