lol if i carry on progressing the way i am at the moment, then i may get to be a fool this time next month. my goal is just to be plain stupid by this time next year. ...and to think i used to be dumb as shit two years ago!! i DREAMED of being a moron.
Phew, tough break. Well, you can't always rely on that strategical fortitude... A first and last hurrah, eh?
a moron? not even close....let's see: 1) a trading plan with stop losses that you honored 2) if i assume 5 trades for the day, an avg loss of $50/trade.....crap, if you're not willing to lose $50 on a trade, it doesnt even pay to come to the office a moron: having a profitable automated trading system, and taking profits too early to offset earlier losses, leaving $$ on the table ignoring that each trade is uncorrelated, and that 2 losers could readily be offset by 1 winner (see my friday trade sheet for a sample)
I wonder if you did any paper trading and backtesting. Probably most of what you read in those books was total crap. Other than the journal of our long gone friend Seanote, I doubt you could find much of value here either. Find one setup that works and stick with it. And trade with the trend. It makes life a lot easier.
The market is not linear. It is strictly a GAME. It takes a while to see how it's played. Example: morning gap ups, that first pull back to an intra-day moving average, *before* it reverses and goes higher. So the sucker who bought the open is left holding the bag for the 1st 1/2 hour as the stock pulls back. Saw almost every day 2 weeks ago with SHLD, SNDK, RIMM, SDS EBAY etc. Or, in a bearish tone market, it simply heads lower the whole day. But the "rule" is, for any opening gap up, there is a great chance for a 15min-1/2 hour short position 'most' of the time. Buy the next support level, which is usually around the 20 period intraday (e.g. 5min) SMA if you think it's going to hold. Many other repeatable situations like this, just have to watch out for them. So one is not trading indicators, just price and irrationality. my 2¢