If all you have is about 180.000 euro you should not trade at all not to mention that you have a family to take care of. You sound like a gambler. I would not sleep well at night with my capital fully invested in stocks, a family to support, plus an obsession/addiction to daytrading. If you daytrade do it with 5000 euros and once you get consistent you increase your volume. You could easily make 10% in a year on all your capital with very little stress and time. In your free time you could look for a real job, while working on your daytrading strategies if you really really want to. That would be smart. You should also consider to make your trading systematic and not discretionary. To make mistakes is normal we all do it, but there is a huge differece between being wrong and STAYING wrong. After losing money with daytrading you keep doing it and expect different results, simply because you won't make the same mistakes you made before. Not good enough. You are still in time to stop before it's too late. Good Luck. By the way, Daytrading is a pipedream. http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=194342&highlight=pipedream
Effort is fine, but results are what matter. Again, after having read his posts and seen his charts relating to his methods, I don't see anything that differentiates his approach to the market and it's all just random lines, entries and exits. He's just throwing money in to the market without any specific and objective plan. That's a recipe for disaster, not a sound trading strategy. Plus he has a family, so his risk-taking is eventually going to hurt them. It sucks if your efforts in something don't pay off, but reality is reality, not some movie where the hero always wins in the end. I know that it is possible for traders to evolve from unsuccessful to successful, but it takes some kind of methodological breakthrough, not just effort. And the breakthrough can't just be "do the opposite of what I did when I was losing". I don't see any signs of that in this journal. Do you? What, specifically? The best thing I see in this journal is at least he's cut down size, but even that won't save him from eventually losing his entire account because each trade he takes has negative expectancy. It's a mathematical certainty that his account value will eventually reach zero.
logic_man, maybe it is random, but it is very strange that FESX and ES made the day low at the same time exactly on my lines ES at 0 ticks and FESX at 1 tick from the line, also note that there are lines also on the DAX and FDAX in that area, those lines are not random because they are long terms trendlines from monthly-weekly and daily charts... lines that many people have drawn exactly as I did, so they aren't random lines. I cant post the D-W-M the charts because I'm at home now, but you can follow the links to the horizontal lines that comes from TL on the D-W-M charts (I will post on monday). I'm not saying that this strategy is profitable, and that it was not just a coincidence that the markets made the lows there, I'm just saying that these lines are not random. CHECK OUT THE FESX CHART http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=3168666 CHECK HERE THE ES CHART http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=3168816 also, as I already wrote, I'm trading with a $3500 account that at $2500 will be on margin call and that I won't be able to found, at that point I will trade the strategy in sim for months to see if it could be profitable. As I said this method is based on trendlines-50/200 sma and fibs from the M-W-D charts, but the rules for entering, exit, etc.. are not clear and I understand at this stage it is not a sound trading strategy, rules will come as soon as I learn to trade it (live or sim). I'm not doing the exact opposite of what I've done in the past, but I'm trying to apply something of it. I'm not depressed I'm "only" stressed for now, and yes, trading is affecting my personal life but I'm not addicted anyway and not a gambler and I'm not trading to recover my losses, that money is gone, just hope that is not gone in vain. If I was addicted and a gambler I wouldn't have moved my money on an account I can't trade. I appreciate all the critics anyway
if you are trading with this size account then forget about oil future thing. i thought you are trading with 100k+ account.
The "law of large numbers" will predict that the indices you're watching will bounce off your trendlines any number of times, given enough opportunities to do so. The trading problem is whether or not those bounces are sufficient in number to become part of a profitable trading strategy. No one loses on every trade, even if they have a losing strategy overall. I also think it's imprudent to use real money if you don't have all, or most, of the rules worked out in advance. I know, because I made that mistake. A strategy, in my opinion, needs to be based on a central insight about market fluctuations. Some kind of organizing idea must sit at the center of it, so that a trader can identify specific market events which will trigger specific reactions, time after time after time, so that trading becomes more like a science and less like an art. A science subject to probabilities, but a science nonetheless. I just don't see any of that in what you are doing. I'm not even saying you are "addicted", which is a clinical diagnosis that only a psychiatrist should make, but I am pointing out that it is inevitable that you will lose the money in your account if you continue to trade. As for whether or not you will then retrieve money from your other account, I don't know, but it's always a possibility. I would suggest you find a good trading mentor (no, I am not a mentor, so I don't say this to be self-serving), who can teach you how to develop a strategy that is based on something which is intrinsic to the markets you trade. Moving averages, trendlines and Fibs are all human attempts to impose external constraints on the market and don't have any intrinsic relationship to what the market is actually doing at a given point in time. Anyway, if you are going to keep trading, find a mentor would be my best advice. Also, I would suggest reading the research papers at www.cxoadvisory.com, where all kinds of research into the lack of effectiveness of technical analysis and indicators are available. It's very eye-opening to see the sheer number of approaches which don't work, but it's necessary to understand so that you can learn from others' mistakes.
Hi logic, I apologize, when I said I'm not addicted I was not replying to you, you never said that, I was just explain to other people who are reading my journal that I'm really in control of my self now, I lost a lot of money and sure at a certain point I lost because I was acting like a gambler who want to recover, but now it's ok, don't worry I won't send money on my trading account when it will be on margin call, this is for sure, it would be too complicated believe me. Yes I know that having all invested is stocks is gambling, yes here I'm a gambler, but it is safer this way than in a trading account where I can buy or sell 50 contracts, this is for sure. And I know that it would be safer to find a job while I'm learning to trade, but now I want to focus on trading and let's see in six months if I manage to at least don't lose money, for real or in sim, and also how much I will have on my main account, then I will decide if it is better to look for a real job. so now, let's focus only on my strategy with critics and suggestion like logic did.
the only one entitled there could be found here: http://www.mypivots.com/board/topic/3010/1/coiled-markets http://www.mypivots.com/board/topic/3010/2/coiled-markets http://www.mypivots.com/board/topic/3010/3/coiled-markets
shorted now fesx at 2971 stop at 2975 (-59.19), reason a good res on DAX and short term res on YM-ES-NQ, also market opened on gap up and hope it will close the gap, fesx on short term support anyway that worked at the fesx open...