This is a very important point many traders miss. Time spent in a bad trade, which can be either a losing trade or even a trade that is not developing on schedule or in a timely manner, kills both profits and attitude. I often find it beneficial to close trades even if they are not losing or not losing much, if they are taking too much more than the expected time to develop. Sitting in these trades while missing or having to pass on other trades can often lead to a loss of discipline IE: Overtrading etc.
Personally I prefer the term "forcing" to "overtrading", I can never 'overtrade', but I do get into ruts where I am forcing... These ruts are almost always perpetuated by my selfish desires to get something from her, as if she were a keg a beer or a nice juicy philly cheesesteak. When I learned to approach her in a selfless manner and stop seeing her as some dragon to be slain, the "forcing" pretty much came to an end on its own accord. When I am sitting there during the day I DO NOT look or strive to do anything. I see her with soft eyes, much in the same way I would look at a Dali' painting or listen to a Coltrane song, the act is an end in itself... Selfish creature constantly trying to get something from a selfless, indifferent, but indomitable one. How can there be anything but discord? PEACE and good trading, Publias
Go to a high commission broker. That should take care of your problem. On a more serious note, I think a lot more people are vicitims of overtrading than you think. I sometimes find myself watching the level II too closely and exit on any downtick. At that point I sometimes step back and re-evaluate my strategy. I think it may help to have a set guidline or strategy before entering every trade. Just my opinion but I feel that overtrading is a outcome of trading on emotion. Just my opinion.
to the racetrack and need to bet on every race the casino and need to play every hand or spin of the wheel or roll of the dice if you need action , action , action ... then you better close your account before it closes you out of capital. or become a member of one of the exchanges and get the lowest lowest fees and try to scalp like crazy and teeny out a living good luck. its not easy ... ps I do not go to racetrack or casino much these days but still find I sometimes overtrade on my worst days
I didn't expect so many replyes on my question. Thank you all, gentlemen, I really apreciate your help. So, the day after I opened this thread I think I found the reason why I overtrade. It's not just the luck of discipline, even though it's still the main reason. But, I found out that I trade wrong instrument. Here's what I mean: scalping usually concideres trading slow moving stocks like ORCL, CSCO, etc. or QQQ in my example. And in order to profit nicely one have to trade big lots (I trade somewhat around 2000 shares at a time - there's my 120K shares a day on 60RT). The thing is - it doesn't suit my personality - I love action and when I was a profitable and consistent trader(2 years ago) I traded such stocks as SDLI, QCOM, VRTS, JNPR, SCMR - you name the most volatile stocks - I was in, going for 3-5-10 points and cutting losses at 0.25 - 0.5. But times changed, so did the Market - I become a prop. trader and I traded those boring slow moving stocks averaging 1Mill. shares a day. I still was making a killing when those stocks moved nicely - 5-10K a day - very decent profits which usually saved my months but trading those stocks almost destroyed my ability to think clearly because I always begin to second guess myself when stocks don't go immediately in the desired direction. Sure enough - I was flipping my position from long to short and back and by the time stock really went somewhere - I was in but with tons of wasted shares and load of comissions. To make a long story short - last friday I begun to trade QQQ as usually and tryed to pick really certain entry points, I tried to hold longer my profits and gave more room for stop-losses. I traded 3 times less then usually by 2.45pm but still was down about 500 after comissions. I was almost going to stop for the day since it didn't work for me again but then I turned my attention to QLGC (which is still sort of violent stock in my opinion). This stock scares me a little so I decided to trade small - 300 shares and I doubled or trippled my position when a trade went well and I saw where it was going to go. I shorted it few times - initially at 37 - covered at 36.59, shorted again at 36.60 - covered at 36.41, shorted at 36.41 - covered at 36.19. Also I got a couple of bouncec, few scratches, a couple of small losses (no more than 10cents). I made 990 within an hour and on 8K shares. Finished the day with 300 profit after comissions on 45K shares. I tnink I'll stick to this - I'll try to do what I was doing when I was trading volatile stocks and was making decent money. What I changed - I don't watch Level 2, I watch 5 min intraday chart and 15 min daily chart. No MA's, no MACD or stochastics - nothing except trend tool. I'm going to trade relatively expencive and fast moving stocks. I'll let you know how it will work for me if you still interested. P.S. I trade at home with IB P.S.S. I don't gamble at all - not even a lottery tickets. I've been to casino once - lost 20 bucks and ran away.
I blew up my account overtrading. There, I said it. I'm an overtrader. Not no more though, pardon the dble neg. Why did I OT, stupidity, and many of the reasons previously listed on this thread. Glued to L2 and 1min chart were biggies, not looking at the whole picture, trading w/.2 stops getting stopped out and then getting back in thinking now it will go my way instead of my going w/the stock. I didn't chase, just dumb and wild trading. Looking back I'm disgusted and ashamed because I said it wonn't happen to me I can handle emotion. Expensive lesson to learn. I've taken time off and after much thought, I'm limiting myself to 5 trades/day to begin again. I'll use the 1min to fade gaps up/dwn in A.M. when the opportunity is there otherwise concentrate on three stocks I feel I know their movmnt pretty well and that have good daily trading ranges. For these I'll use 1min to enter/exit while looking at 5min and 30 day charts using simple S&R and 5&20 MA. I also have a 1min naz up and watch reversal times during the day. I'm sure this helps nobody, y'all seem to be beyond this but just writing it down has helped me (outline of trading plan). Swifttrader I'd be interested on how your trading goes from here, thanks for the thread. I'm papertrading for the next week or so to get a little confidence, any comments pls feel free.
You can start restricting yourself to the time you start/end your trading session. So for example, stop trading by 12pm etc. That way it will limit the time you are actively trading and hopefully limit the amount of trades you make throughout the day.
In your mind at least, you should be thinking that "you're risking X for the reasonable probability of making 3X or more". You should be playing for points rather than tics.