Rashid, I thought yesterday was a keeper all day too, but all I did was go short and get stopped out time and time again. I could have shorted and gone for a walk and come back to a nice profit. The obvious thing I just realized is that my biggest profits have been when I've had to be away from the computer; No Doji's biggest profits have been when she had to be away from the computer; I've read other threads where people made their biggest profits when they had to be away from the computer. I guess I don't need to ask anybody if it's a good idea......Sometimes it obviously is. (not all the time). Of course it has to be a day when you have a strong conviction that your target will get hit. Why sit there and let the entry chart mess with your mind if you have a target and you've protected yourself with a stop.
I left early today, but before I left I saw a trade setting up and thought, "Maybe I should just put on the trade, set the stop and see what happens when I return." I didn't do it, though. (Chicken!) And of course when I returned later, it had moved over a 1.00/share from where I thought about entering.
You are not trading, you are wishing and hoping. Sure, there are ways to actually trade something with pre-defined parameters, but you first must figure out what setups you can handle. The next question you must answer besides what setup you will use is how much are you willing to lose on the stop loss. How many days in a row can you handle getting stopped out in a row? It is wishing and hoping that you can set a SMALL stop loss and the entry be perfect enough to bring in large profits. AGAIN, i am going to quit posting for awhile..............the best way to stop posting is to quit reading for awhile. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAdTsAKvVTU&feature=related
Oh and for limitupmike: Were you aware that Robert doubled his trading account in a few months last year before HAR, which was a fraudulent scam, took away nearly that entire gain in a few minutes, resulting in a $118K loss? I'd been shorting HAR the day before as well, so I saw it in premarket the next morning when it literally jumped over $12 a share in a couple minutes on a false rumor. no doji.. there are no f'ing excuses in trading.. that's what is so spectacular about it!!! excuse excuse excuse.. LMao.. Your bouy robert blew up 1 day after i warned him!!!!!!!!!!!!! and everyone said i was the dirt of ET.. lol.. i am the most correct et HAS EVER SEEN!.. U STILL TRADING PEANUTS YOU ARE SCARED SCARED SCARED...boo! bOO!
So Robert had an $800 down day after a couple $1000 up days. Keep the losers smaller than the winners, that's how the game is played successfully. I'll trade 100-200 shares until I've proven that I can follow my trading plan and allow my winners to run. Then I'll size up. I'm making enough money to pay the bills trading that size, so there's not a lot to be scared of at this point.
NoDoji, You seem to have the discipline and patience parts down pretty good. It's rare to see that. Maybe you could give me some insight. How many trades do you make on a typical day? How long do you wait between trades sometimes? Are you able to just sit there for multiple hours and wait if you don't see one of your setups? What goes thru your mind when you see a huge move take place that you are not part of? I can't stand it when something I've been watching for an hour or longer just takes off big time and I'm not in it. It seems like the move is just relentless and is never going to end. I have to admit I usually lose my patience and discipline when this happens and I end up losing money. How do you deal with that in your mind when it happens?
Thats well thought out ,, but you must not have a lot of bills. the latter would be a good thing as well ...
Nod, I will check back in a couple months or so. The neighbor and i are going to work on some automated setups. We are considering 3 so far. (I will clue you in later if after coded we show success with coding stuff). ORB modified to cut down on whipsaws when automated but still catch the runaways will be one strat. Breakout of 1st hour range will be another, she insists only 1 trade per side a day on that puppy, so max 2 trades a day and most will be a single trade. Her research says that works great for one-way days and combined with a seperate ORB strat.........produces killer winning days with low risk of less than 6 handles max loss total for the day and can nail the 20+ win handle days. She says if the 1st hours range is 10 handles or larger it is best to drop that one for the day and i agree because by that time we probably are in a low range day or else we have recognised a trend day as it is. I guess that will be the challenge with automated with me...............i am not a potted plant watching the screen, HA. Keep up the good work. PS: the 3rd strat will deal with reversals, FRIDAY i sat there and said: We just had a 2 bar reversal at about 1405 est. That 1400 est bar opened on its low tick and closed on its high tick at 1044.75..............never looked back.......then a bit later as still long.....i said to her, we bounced off of 1048.00 twice and dropped down to 1044.50 ( 1 tick away from bailing on the long) and NOW sniffing 1048.00 again..........IF, we get 1048.25 we go higher.......... damm that is fun to hit it like that. Later, any questions send an e-mail. this journal of yours has been good...........you will make it if you do not throw in the towel. ET is full of losers and it is just a drag to see their posts over and over about all their negative bs. Beautiful snowfall outside, winter can be a drag but i actually like it. Later.
We have a small amount of income each month from a note we're carrying, and as for debt we've no car payments and no credit card debt. The only thing standing in the way of making $1000+ every single trading day is me. By continuing to convince myself what a tremendous "edge" I have by comfortably trading small size, I will get to the point that I can size up comfortably. The important thing to me is to be so confident in my edge that if I choose to trade 1000 shares of AMZN and take a $410 loss on the first trade (that would be 10x the size and the loss I took the other day on my first AMZN trade), it doesn't affect my ability to put on the next trade and to let it run as far as possible without getting nervous. On the surface, it's simply a matter of size, but it can affect the mental game. There's a guy who sometimes posts here and on the P/L thread, TheAngryHermit. Several times he sized up after a solid string of positive days trading 100 shares, and incurred relatively large losses. I believe that this happens a lot to traders. If you size up after a string of positives and that larger trade runs against you and you take a loss that's now larger than several of your "small size" winning days combined, it will place you into a different mental state. Instead of sticking with your proven winning strategy, waiting patiently for the next setup, taking it as a brand new trade and following all your rules, you may feel the need to "get it back" and start overtrading, maybe sizing up more, maybe violating your trading rules. Before you know it you have a $1200 down day after two weeks of $50-$100 positive days with 100-share size. So...that's why I need to prove over a period of time that I can trade like a machine, take all GOOD setups, let the winners run, never let a previous trade or my current P/L affect my management of the next trade, etc. When I prove this with small size without any days of insanity tossed in, then I'm ready to size up.
On my most profitable days I take 1 to 8 trades. My biggest losing days over the past year (not counting my string of order errors and rogue positions while learning to use IB after switching frm Etrade), I believe I took anywhere from 40 to my all time record the other day of 110 trades. Sometimes I wait hours between trades, but I sometimes sim trade during those down times just to test additional strategies. I'm also a guitarist and keep my Strat right next to me; I can't tell you how good I've gotten since I started day trading. I've honed my strategy in sim to the point that I could effectively be in a trade at all times during the first 2 hours, but I haven't started doing that live yet. I've been picking and choosing trades and long/short bias, when in fact the first hour of the day generally includes at least 2 good strong moves long and short before a trend or a range is established. Yesterday I shorted AMZN right off the open on weak price action, and I missed an even bigger stronger move to the long side by not reversing my position after the drop. I admit I feel some frustration when I miss a strong move. I returned to my desk late yesterday and the market had made another new low and about the time I sat down, it made that final push to 1040 (ES) and as that happened the price action had that "panic" look to it, but it held up. That is very strong reversal signal. Support was established and since the market had fallen so far and it was late in the day and all the reaction to the news was on the table, the path of least resistance now was a strong bounce. The big boys would be coming in for bargains and I've seen how strong the reversals are in the last hour of a strong trend day when the institutions make their moves. But because I'd just sat down after being away, it didn't really register strongly in my mind to watch for the upside break through the previous support level (which I believe that was around the 1045 zone). Suddenly it happened and I was watching AAPL at that point and AAPL took off. All I had to do was jump in. When that buying volume hit and AAPL took off, there was nothing that was gonna stop it. But when it had moved almost .80 cents without me, I kept waiting for a pullback to enter. There IS NO PULLBACK in a strong move. You have to jump on the train! At one point in my trading life I would've been trying to fade that move, but I learned how powerful end of day reversals are because they have the power of the institutional investors behind them. So I've come a long way from the days of trying to jump in front of a freight train. But I haven't yet learned to quickly jump ON the freight train. I often do it in morning moves, but I miss huge opportunities in the afternoon moves. It's especially frustrating when I've stared at a stock that's been in consolidation during the doldrums and I've been watching it for nearly an hour, sometimes longer, and the breakout occurs without me. All it takes is a buy stop and sell stop just outside either side of the range, but I never do it. So these are mountains I've yet to climb. Tell you what, though, it's a very good feeling to have risk management as second nature to me now as looking both ways before crossing the street.