Hey, sorry if I posted this in the wrong thread. Was looking for an intro forum but didn't find one. I'm desperately looking for information to improve my game. I am really new, read a book on day trading "beginner's guide to day trading" - toni turner. Anyhow, i'll show you what I've done so far. ----- My personal 'trades'. It's April 08/09 I started February 11 with purchasing 210 shares of GE, in one month it was halved due to it's financial arm crisis. Anyways, won't go into that. I am not a full day trader because I believe the market will go up as we are in or very near the bottom. Thus I will not sell many of my unrealized losses and simply wait on them. I have limited capital to play with so I cannot 'trade' NYSE: SPY, which I deem safer, but at 82.00 per share. This is more of a long stock than anything for people with limited capital. The purpose of this note is to try to improve my trading/investing especially for when I have more capital. Anyhow, trades: 02/11/2009 09:33:01 Bought 200 GE @ $ 11.8674 02/11/2009 09:33:01 Bought 10 GE @ $ 11.8675 *Received the 31c ( 78$ dividend ) and will hold these 210 for quite a while here i fell for the falling knife mistake, tried to catch it and got stabbed. Had I come in 3 weeks later I would now have doubled my account. But, can't get greedy and pretend like the bottom can be called, so I'll go long 04/07/2009 14:05:46 Bought 235 GE @ $ 10.62 Aiming for trading, need at least a 15-20 cent spread to make profit (since buying and selling 10$) Currently 2 minutes to open, and GE @ 10.74. $18.2 'profit' if I sell 04/08/2009 09:45:37 Sold 235 GE@ 10.72 Playing with fire, this'll be far more intense (Financial ETFs) these fuckers are what supposedly caused the 'crisis' 04/15/200910:09:36 $-1,483.626 Bought 447 of UYG @ $3.308 04/15/200915:08:08 $1,532.73 Sold 447 of UYG @ $3.44 It hit .45 earlier on and I chose not to sell, then went down to 3.29 and back to 3.44 where i sold but continued to hit to 3.5. Could've made much much more, but i guess I'm still new 04/28/200915:46:18 Bought Margin 600 of UYG @ $3.31 $-1,992.00 04/29/200909:30:08 Sold 600 of UYG @ $3.39 $2,028.00 an overnight position netted me 36 bucks, not bad Continued day trading, simply couldn't find me any good entry points - the stock kept going up.... while I wasn't in it... hahaha what luck 04/29/200915:59:38 $2,136.60 Sold 600 of UYG @ $3.571 04/29/200915:41:52 $-2,128.80 Bought 600 of UYG @ $3.538 grabbed a tiny bit more. Overall 53 CAD today from the overnight + the 1 measly 3.something cent spread day trade. In order for me to be able to do this is a real full time job I suppose I have to either get more experience and 'feel' the market better, or learn a few more tricks. 40-50 dollars a day... can make more else where... but still not bad since i didn't actually do any work. *hwk for self... learn the SMA lines for the next two days. ----- little journal I've been writing (read that it's a good idea so that I can improve) Basically, I need someone to guide me. I'll read anything, but a lot is hard to understand. I don't even know how to short(though even if I did I think I'd stay away since it seems market bottomed), btw I use QuesTrade. To best describe me I'm not a pure day trader, I sit on my position if it goes down using the logic that the market will go up in the long, thus I just wait. Btw i have more trades but they are for literally like 5-10 bucks each so I don't want to spam you too much haha. Please help, thanks <3 Lorne
You are clearly very new and you have very limited capital. I would suggest that you stay away from UYG unless you are day-trading it. It's not created for long-term holds. If you're going to daytrade, you need at least 25k in your account to day-trade retail. Also, don't allow your long-term, fundamental view of the economy/stockmarket to drive day-trading decisions. If you're going to day-trade, trade things that move. GE is ultra-thick (this means it trades a lot of volume and it doesn't move very much -- when it does move a lot, being a thick stock can be a good thing; but forget about that for now) and I know of one person that trades only that stock and makes hundreds of thousands doing it. I know a lot of traders and he is the only one I know that trades one stock and makes a great living doing so. Look for stocks that are moving and learn how to trade them. Familiarize yourself with sectors and the stocks within those sectors that tend to move. Think in terms of risk-to-reward. You need a 1-to-3 risk-to-reward ratio in order to succeed in the long run. So if you risk 10 cents in a trade you need to be making AT LEAST 30 cents when you're right to build a career. Some people say 1-to-5 r/r, I was taught 1-to-3. Learn about technical analysis. Don't go overboard with it. Learn how to find great R/R opportunities by using support and resistance. Learn about trendlines. Learn about moving averages. Learn about volume. Learn about an indicator or two (its very easy to go overboard here -- don't do it! -- no indicator will bring you easy money). If you're really serious about learning how to trade professionally, find a reputable prop-shop where there are successful, talented traders that you are able to learn from. You may have to get a second job for 6+ months before you start making money (if you ever make money) but that's the sacrifice required. BTW, I'm not willing to talk about exactly what I do specifically with you. If you really desire to succeed in this game, you can -- IF you apply yourself. Good luck!
why are you messing with equities? Do you want to day trade for income or grow a portfolio? Look into forex or eminis if you want to trade for income... if you have limited capital, you're better off swing trading
Daytrading is a losing proposition. Right from the beginning, do some math/statistics, including bid-ask spread and broker commissions, and you'll know why all traders lose in the long run.
I had the same childish philosophy about things that I couldn't do as well...when I was 5 years old. I guess you can thank your parents for your complete lack of emotional IQ.
We read the same first book. The hindsight is that one or two books are enough. But you definitely think you need to read many more books, as if the more you read, the closer you will get to success. The toughest part of trading is not about learning how to trade, it's about yourself. I know exactly how to trade, but I cannot make myself trade the way I should trade. I believe the day you defeat yourself is the day you succeed. I can tell you this: defeating yourself is very very difficult. bptrader