mr. rTharp, In your reply you asked a few questions so I will attempt to answer them. #1)what type of return am I looking for? Well, is a thousand dollars a day being foolish and greedy? because im neither of those. but let me explain something to you first. I will keep this short so as not to be to personal or to bore you. Im 32years old! Im a straight "A" student at our local colleges Nursing program. I graduate in August. My wife is a Nurse as well. You have to understand, as nurse you can work as little or as much as you want. So finding time to trade wont be a problem, but it has to pay for its self. my goal is to graduate, spend the next to years in college, and begin medical school in August of 2003. I was hoping that day trading would be able to help me pay for the 100,000 dollar tuition it takes to go to medical school. And its not just that. I dont want to live in a 40 hour week. Where you cant afford to miss a days pay because your bills and your income are the same. Do you know what I mean? Did you ever have to live that way? Its not a very secure feeling. Dont get me wrong I enjoy my work, I enjoy helping the patients, but financialy its not enough! If I could make a thousand a day a few days a week life would be grand! I spend the major part of my day at the hospital doing clinicals, and was hoping that I could spend the next seven months, up until I graduate, honing my trading skills on a simulator at night. Then about the time I graduated, I was hoping to be able to trade well enough to at least earn a modest income. I mean a thousand a day is like the top of the ladder. but even a feww hundred a day is better than your gonna make at about any regular job. Does this give you some idea of what kind of system I would need to trade? By the way what is a drawdown? Cant find that word in any glossary of the books I have? And yes I do know a little about consolidation-breakout strategy. I read it in the book "Day Trade Part Time" by cook/szwec. Anyway can you suggest the next step I should take? Thank You John!
drawdown is when you loose on either one trade, or a whole loosing streak. Be careful, even the best of us have these. I had one last week. It was my worst week ever. I blew 18.5k. You have to expect that these occur sometimes. Especially as you are starting out. I think that realistically, as long as the market is moving around, and there are opportunities, making a few k a day is very easy. Probably more likely than a few hundred, cause it isn't worth it to trade something with less than a few hundred shares, so 1 pt, is like what 400 minimum... times a dozen times a day 80% success or so.
mr. praetorian2, thank you for the explanation about drawdown. pay no attention to page 3, I made some kind of mistake I guess I clicked on quote instead of reply. Anyways, I got the aol instant message account like you said. My account name is trdrbanks. I sent you a message but I guess either you werent on or I did it wrong. whats next? Lets talk trading! Something! I want to learn to make money!please teach me! john
John, After reading your goals I have a comment. I <i>think</i> most of the profitable traders here will agree with me. You will probably struggle in the beginning like all of us, but if you can get enough experience daytrading then $1k per day is not very hard. I think there are two sets of daytraders out there. There are the 90% who are struggling to find a system and losing money. Then there are the 10% who found a system and make consistent money. I would bet that most of those 10% are over the $1-2k/day range, and %1-2 are in the 5-10k+/day range. Basically you sink or swim...there's not much of an in-between. If you find your system it should pay for medical school, no problem.
John, I would suggest that you read, read, read and study, study, study as much as you can. There are tons of good websites on trading. Try http://www.worldwidetraders.com (I believe their yearly fee is about $49). They have a lot of info on trading as well as access to a trading chat room (real time) and webcasts which allow you to play back and listen to the speakers....for example RTharp says he is going to speak to their Orange County group in April. You'll be able to play back and listen to his presentation over the web. Also another great site is http://www.daytradingstocks.com. Lots and lots of information and articles to read. Finally, my advice is after you've read and studied and begin trading and make money and lose money, it comes down to you and you and you alone. I believe the successful traders find their own method that works for them...sometimes it's trial and error, sometimes it's help from another trader or traders. You may take a little from here and a little from there till you find your own way of trading. One bit advice that has helped me to form part of the trading "mindset" is: "Don't go for the homeruns, go for consistant hits, day after day."
Couldn't agree with you more. This is imo one of the most important theories of trading. Afterall...$1k/day is about $250,000/year.
Right on Dustin...and even beginning with a $5000.00 account and daytrading on margin and going to cash at the EOD with a projected increase of 1% to 3% increase on that account each trading day trading 4 days a week for 4 weeks a month will lead to a nice sized account at the end of 12 months. (Compounding) Of course this takes practice and some experience!!
john. i got your message. im me tomorrow some time.. and stay on longer so i can respond. I probably won't be trading tomorrow. cause im crazy long overnight, and will just use the god rule, and take the rest of the day off. But I might try and scalp a bit so who knows.
Does anyone on this site has taken the "Peak performance home study course" from Van K. Tharp? What do you think of it? RTHARP, do you think that this course could help me in my daytrading or is it more for position trading? Could you elaborate on the topics of the course? Thank's