Some background: I just started learning about financials starting about 1 year ago. Started with going long on GLD on Sharebuilder, but got dissatisfied with its very limited options. Moved on to MB Trading in March and opened a daytrading account. Software: MB Navigator and Quotetracker. Subscriptions: Jeff Cooper's Daily Report to Minyanville (not that I'm using it very much). Performance: +30% over 700 trades net of fees in 3 months. Note, I am doing this while trading 7-30% of liquid capital on SKF <b>only</b>. Occasionally held over night but most days not. Most of the time long but recently started shorting (feels odd to short an ultrashort ETF). This is while using ~<1 hr/day of time at the computer and 2 full days a month. Please note that I have a full time job working with people and so I cannot spend all day at the screen. I could use some critique as I'm slowly gaining confidence for larger positions and possibly try my hand at options. I have not done forex, commodities, etc. I need to do some studying but there are way too many books out there. Any suggestions?
well it sounds like you have done a good job with your fundamental base. you have also certainly been good with following trends rather than fighting them so just based on that i would have to give you an A+++. i'm being serious too. for a first year guy i think that is great. imo i think you should just stick to what is working for you now unless you feel that it is drying up. it's certainly good to learn about the other areas you can trade like options and forex in case a certain opportunity pops up but i think you will be stretching yourself too thin if you try to actively trade them along with stocks. like you said you don't have all day to sit in front of the market which may make it much more difficult to learn other markets. or it may not...you may be a trading sponge and learn it very quickly. like for me i almost exclusively trade stocks but that doesn't preclude me from taking the occasional options trade when the risk/reward is better than it would be for a stock trade. like if i see a longer term or event based trade i will glance at the options to see if i feel the trade is lower risk (your risk is known when you buy a call or put but you are limiting yourself to a timeframe) and greater reward (much less capital risked so percent return is much greater IF it works) thru that path. other than that i won't really look to trade the options and that has worked fine for me. ok i would type more but i am tired...keep up the good trading!