Solid mum this site is bascially a joke there are a few decent posters as can be seen from earlier but you have so many twats on here I would be careful spending too much time here there are beter ways to spend your time. From what I read and that was only quick you have NO REAL discipline example "I was nervous because it was the end of the day, and my trading plan calls for me to trade earlier ion the day so I have more time to profit before having to hold over night." You also refer to your gut WTF is that all about? You have no money mangement plan from what I can see and you dont know technicals so WHY are you trading money at all? Get off this site and devote some time to your plan/education then practice in a sim unless you your hubby has a load of dough and is funding this jolly as this is not a business at this point in time.
I second this. Trading ES and NQ futures is the way to go. 60/40 tax treatment and simple year end tax forms (single gain/loss number on Form 1099B to Form 6781 to Schedule D). Trading ES and NQ on Globex gives you a single central marketplace with no specialist/market maker/ECN tricks/problems.
Mom can open a futures trading account with $3-4K and with tight stop discipline learn to trade with modest cost. It is quite practical with NQ for example to get out of a bad entry with $15-$25 loss with a 3 tick stop, while learning to make scalps with profit 2-5X that risk. Or she could learn SCT, hahaha!
Thank you, everyone, for your feedback. It's very helpful to evaluate what I am doing from the point of view of others. Susannah, thanks for saying hello. Nice to know other moms are out there. Trading Plan - I have a very basic plan that will look totally different in one year, because as I learn more, I'll change it. It's so narrow now, and more about a plan for education than anything else. Maybe what I actually have is a few ideas in writing. I read Don Bright's article on developing a Trading Plan --- very helpful, but I'm having trouble locating the link to post. And this one by John "Jay" Norris http://www.traders.com/Reprints/PDF_reprints/BF_PLAN.PDF I'll rotate trading Sims with trading live, that way I can still experience the psychological part of the learning experience, but also test some riskier moves. WMb asked about the reasoning behind trading SPY. I picked a large volume fund so I wouldn't have a problem getting around with a lot of shares. I also thought that perhaps an ETF would be a bit safer than a stock, less likely to make a huge drop while I'm holding it. I'm not married to the idea, though. And I agree that this board is a wonderful resource. Thank you for the "good luck." Others mentioned futures. Since the fall I have been on options autotrade with Red Option, hoping that watching their trades would help me learn. I can't say that I have learned much. I would very much like to learn about both options and futures. As of now I'm intimidated by them, worried that I would make a hugely expensive move without having a clue how to get out or what to even what to enter to get in. FOREX also interests me a great deal, and I have tried that once in sims. Trading Forex seems much more intuitive. I'll have to look at an options or futures sims and see how much I mess up my paper money account. Joe Doaks, jeb9999, and others⦠???What broker do you all like for futures trading??? But the talk of different ways of trading gave me the idea to try rotations, like a doctor, until I see what works for me. The difficult part of this is the interruptions that are part of the life of a stay at home mom, which is my first job. It will be two years until my kids are all in school full time. They play well independently, but I have to stop to do things such as look at/ praise a drawing, turn on the bathroom light so it's not so scary in there, make a snack, give a little attention, referee a heated argument over which Playdough is the best, etc⦠The excursions affect my ability to concentrate. I think of what I am doing now as training and working toward doing this full time in two years when I have the day to myself. bhristov1, I appreciate the point by point notes. What you said about Bollinger Bands explains why the rally seemed so quick, followed by a drop. Maybe I'll try shorting. And I totally agree that my aim should be to make more than 2 cents. I appreciate your insight into my psychology. I will work on letting winners ride. Takestock - I appreciate the tip on IB. I used TradeKing for these trades. But I just looked at IB's site and see that if I trade with just 100 shares as some here suggested, I would save $9 per trade. Bogan7 - Now, come on, the gut feeling. It tells me when I need to slow down and rethink something. ???I really like Think orSwim's Prophet for following a stock or ETF's movement. What do you all use??? ???Forex folks, IB or Oanda??? The fewer brokers I use, the better. Jtnet - Thanks for the suggestion about trading just 100 shares. I'm so glad I started this journal. Having feedback will really shorten the learning curve. --Mom
IB for trading. E-Signal for charting. Trading futures is no different from trading anything else. You just put up less money and have less tax paperwork hassle.
I use Interactive Brokers as my primary broker for futures and they work fine for stocks and options. IB also pays interest on the account balance over $10,000 while almost all other futures brokers pay zero. If you can handle 1000 shares of SPY you can handle the equivalent 2 ES contracts. If you are going to be a short term equity/ETF trader you need to use a direct access broker such as IB. For sad reading, just look at TradeKing's SEC Rule 606 Report (order routing disclosure). TradeKing sends all its order flow to the third market.
Solid Mom, have you ever considered adding a few basic support and resistance levels to your chart for orientation, and trade the markets objectively according to what you perceive? They can be identified simply by going through historical price activity. You bought the SPY on June 24 exactly as it was beginning to rise from the 130.30 support area (see attachment of a 30 minute chart). Minimum target would have been 132. There was no objective reason to give up your trade so quickly. You also asked about stops. Here is what I recommend to you based on your long trade: once you are in a position, initially the stop is set to the recent low at approx. 130.20 (give or take a few cents) and gradually adjusted up as new lows are being formed within the uptrend. Palatine
The emini futures on the index are not much different than the ETFs on the indexes. Just think of a certain # of shares corresponding to 1 contract of the future. I mostly trade the emini future on the Dow, YM, but if I wanted to trade an ETF instead, 500 shares of DIA corresponds to one contract of YM (for each point move on the Dow, I'd get $5 of movement of my money). And, like people said, the taxes are much less of a headache as far as documenting it goes plus futures get a special tax treatment, part of it is counted as long-term capital gains no matter how short your holding period actually was. I looked into trading Forex at one point. The sticking point for me is that there's no volume data, and I do use volume data in my trading, and I'm not ready to give up the volume data yet. So, it's not for me at this point. The interruptions as a mom can be very, very difficult. My husband works from home and can handle some of them or honestly I wouldn't be daytrading at all. I did try it at one point while he was working out of the home (years ago), lost money, realized the reason why was because of all the interruptions, so I stopped. Remember, swing trading is always an option, too. A holding period of more than a day is a good way to make the interruptions not matter so much.
Thank you for the feedback. Joe Doaks and jeb9999 , I'm going to open an IB account and take a look at e-signals. Thanks for the tips, and I'm glad to have learned about the order-routing differences. I have noticed that I haven't been first to get a fill when the price hit my limit order number. I will take a good look at futures. I appreciate the encouragement and the information about them being easier on the tax preparer (me!). Even the acronyms are a bit foreign, but luckily with the Internet I can easily tackle that part of the learning curve. ???Can futures be day traded, in and out quickly??? ??? Am I correct in thinking that futures can be traded 24/7 on the weekdays? ???How easy it to make the mistake of selling / buying a future and end up owing way more money than you anticipated? Palatine, I agree that I am trading too soon. I'm hoping that as I get better at analyzing data and also analyzing the trades as a Monday morning quarterback, I'll get much better timing. Thank you for the chart. About adding basic support and resistance levels â yes, I defiantly want to learn more about indicators so I can do that. I looked up some info on support and resistance levels. The kinds of indicators I saw were⦠---Fibonacci arcs & retracements ---Moving averages (would the Ballinger bands be considered a way of studying moving averages?) ---Candle stick patterns Is that what you mean by support and resistance levels? Is that a Fibonacci retracement you used in on the chart? Your chart is exactly what Iâm looking for to help me justify holding for more $$$. Thank you for the thoughts on stops. Susannah, when you say trade on Volume data, do you mean that with FOREX, you can't tell how many trades are being made at that moment? Thank you for the information about futures as well as tips on good starting points. Swing trading --- I would be willing to give it a try in a simulator using indicators. Trade King emails to me their indicators, so I can start with some of those. For anyone as new as myself following this thread, here is where I found some information on support and resistance⦠http://en.mimi.hu/stockmarket/support_and_resistance.html http://www.chartfilter.com/reports/c14.htm (Fibonacci arcs & retracements) http://stockcharts.com/school/doku.php?id=chart_school:chart_analysis I really appreciate the feedback. I am going to spend the next few weeks researching the information from here. Mom