At the moment I need to stop losing money to those land mines. If I can color it red and set ESC to close all of them, it would be perfect. Right now I see I need to click as many times as orders I have and it looks like first click is only to activate order for cancellation.
Hopefully you can configure your trading platform to allow you to trade without too much confusion. If not Sim trade or at least keep your size down until what you have becomes second nature. You want to learn to trade to make money so make sure you learn to trade first. Losing money isn't the same as learning to trade.
This is what I am doing. This idle orders is the only thing left with execution. Otherwise I am quick to respond to any changes. My trading has improved greatly. Most of the days are winners but I pay additional charges by losing to this land mines. i gotta eliminate this expense.
I need to add some. I am obviously looking for support and resistance but after reading through Title Trading Volume II Theory I started watching for other things. When S/R is approached I start watching Orders Window to find my entry point if possible. I never set orders or open trades agressively at S/R areas without trying to find some kind of confirmation and looking for price to establish some level behind which I can have stop loss. Another thing that we actually have no stop loss as an order. all our stops are mental. We have no option to set stop order. We close all losing trades manually ourselves. You can understand it is much harder and requires certain level of discipline. First thing on Monday I am asking boss's assistance to set 2 things, New Orders other color and if possible to set ESC to close all New Orders with one click.
Had a discussion with trading gal pal about using single instrument to learn the trading game as fast as possible. I contend the ES or the NQ are the best choices to pick from because they are the easiest to understand in the macro picture but require the least understanding to trade in the short term. In other words the shorter time frames are more gray but yet the big picture is more black and white. The reason the short time frames can be traded profitably is because we use "ROTE LEARNING REFLEX"" from what we see on the chart. We do what we do over and over, again and again without really learning new and different inputs of more incomplete and inaccurate gray garbage. We know what we know and are not interested in what we do not know because the results of what we do know is getting good results. Wow!!! That statement will set many back in their chairs of higher learning. But in reality we as traders know higher learning is not the answer at all. Trading is about knowing how to use what works, period. Finding what works is being able to think through why those lines etc on a chart CAUSE others to action. There is no understanding a chart until you are inside the minds and shoes of the heavy hitters. Punks do not move mkts, professionals do. The good news is the professionals do the same things over and over, again and again because they are rote traders also. The question was then asked if we are getting good results from what we use as inputs but still do not get all of the offerings from the mkts, should we just accept that as "good enough" ? We laughed and said in unison YES. PS: A little artical as food for thought. http://www.trojanmice.com/articles/paradox.htm
Hi bighog, I trade MS, FAZ and WFC now. They all used to be more volatile but this week volatility is so so. Some guys started trading FAS. I have checked it. It looks like a way too much of a good thing for guys with 20 ticks daily loss limit
Why not stick to trading just 1 equity. SPY and thats it. That is your first problem, you are chasing around different stocks and trying to trade three of them. Focus on SPY. And learn to trade by trading 1 round lot of spy. For 1 year minimum. If you want you can attach training wheels by going long one ATM put. The cost being part of the education and tax deductible and you can trade around and at least have a max loss floor under you. Year 2 you can trade 2 lots + study. Year 3 you can trade 3 lots + study. Why focus on sectors,specific companies etc.. when you still do not know your ass from hole in the ground. You are trying to fly a 747 when you have not even qualified for VFR single prop yet. This is why 99.99999999999999999999999998% of traders fail.
You have not read carefully the whole thread. 1. I trade firms' capital: SPY is too expensive for us. We trade cheaper stocks. 2. I do not chase stocks but trade 3 stocks: MS, FAZ and WFC. Mostly MS. 3. I am doing fine when I am disciplined. 4. If I trade SPY what I can use to see market direction to follow. I use SPY as indicator to trade FAZ and WFC but not MS anymore. 5. What do you think, did SZEVEN waited 1 year minimum to trade whatever he traded because someone like you told so?
FAS is the inverse of FAZ. Because FAZ is so much lower priced, it seems to move slower. Compare equal dollar amounts and it won't. The problem most people have is that FAz is unavailable for shorting. I happen to like the financial sector for daytrading and focus mainly on FAS/FAZ and GS, but it has not been all that volatile lately. I think if i were you I would run a screen of a half dozen different market sectors to see which were moving and concentrate my trading on them. Now there are ETFs for virtually any sector, so you don't have to dig too deeply. For example, the DRN/DRV are highly volatile and tend to track or slightly lag the financials. The materials and energy sectors have several different ETFs and tend to be driven by moves in the dollar and China news. Punch up a chart of WLT and see what you could have made. Tech has been active this year. Retail has had big moves. Bottom line is you have to be where the action is.
I have a comment along the above. Shorting FAZ is really the same as longing FAS. At least on an intraday basis, the percentage swings are about the same, pretty much tick for tick. I have seen new traders love "low price" stocks. Because they think with limited capital they can buy or short a lot of them. The number of shares is an psychological illusion. One should consider the actual price swing. FAS may look "expensive". But it is a lot easier for FAS to move $1 than for FAZ to move $0.10. You have more granularity to play with. Intraday: if bullish long FAS. If bearish long FAZ. No need to short the hard-to-borrow counterpart.