What index are you trading? Have you considered index futures as that will save on your commission costs?
If you are just trading break outs and simple support/resistance you should look into trading futures instead of ETF's. They are far more liquid and will help your profitability by cutting down on slippage. They aren't any harder they are just the new day trading arena. There aren't many retail day traders left in the stock markets. Also, since you are trading a Break Out strategy consider using price action on a higher time frame to get an idea of which direction the market should break. Then don't wait for it to break, get in support or resistance opposite the breaking point. Then you have a better entry than most and can ride out fake outs and such. Hope some of this was helpful.
[Wow, two readers suggesting futures, I guess I gotta look into it...] Actually, I don't even know how you trade futures so no, I haven't considered it. The index I'm trading is the Russell 2000. Have any suggested readings on trading futures?
I haven't read the entire article but this might be of interest to you if you want to trade Russell 2000. http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site...ul-Trade-the-Russell-2000-E-mini-Fu-79729.cfm Index trading is hard as it is so if you are going to do it you may as well trade the best instrument for the index you want to trade. Buying and selling 1000 shares of an index ETF will end up having much higher costs with commissions and slippage. There is also more leverage available with the futures if you want to buy more contracts. I got my ass kicked trying to trade index futures when I first started trading so I hope you have more success then me. Good luck!
Don't do futures. Quantify your edge. R:R $w/$l before you really hit it. Start out trading small as well
By quantify you mean develop a trading algorithm? As for R:R, I don't know how I would define that. I don't quite know how to say "I expect $X" because that seems a little bit impossible... In the (paper) trades I made, I had about a 60-70% confidence that the trade was going to go my way, which it did. Why do you suggest not to do futures? Is it because I am still green or you don't think there is profit?
Thanks, I found this article as well. I think I'll have to read it a couple of more times to understand what it is saying. I specifically don't understand why the R2K futures are not prone to manipulation like the other futures/stocks are.
Ok, I read the article again. I think I get why. It's not that it is not prone to manipulation, it's just that it appears that there is no manipulation. I would agree, based on the charts that the author showed. I see a lot of fakeouts intended to catch stop loss / buy orders before going the opposite way in manipulated stocks. Of course, this is just intuition and not based in fact.