" got a negative spread, you can't sell the high........" ..................................... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJswUui3SRM ..................................... hey , whatzzzzzzz zup.......? rock star trader http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aacVKplbGWA .............................. unbelievable. s
Wall Street Trader. Are you promoting your own bad music song production efforts? LOL So you were consistantly profitable in 3 months when you started without any mentor? No answer = answer. I don't know of anyone consistanly profitable after 3 months after they began as a day trader. Misquote all you want. It's funny that you'll waste your time to go back and misquote me. Apparently you can't get past the day trader rockstar quote. Who knows what voodoo witch stock doctor you paid attention to when you started. LOL Back to the paper trades today.. If I counted commissions/fees, I would probably be +50 on the day. I'm consistently profitable on paper trades. I would've posted the results with a screen shot but I did a ton of paper scalps that I couldn't get it all to fit on the screen. Paper is paper. Gets boring after a while. I'm gonna stick with paper for 2 more days and resume. I'm only funding the account to barely above 25K so if I blow it again, I will have another few days to think before trading live again.
Actually the losses would not be that bad for recent times if I didn't have that day where I ended up holding overnight where it ended up being a -700 loss. You said you have a day job. It's good to have a day job to fund your venture but you really also have to have a lot of screen time to trade with consistency. It's hard if you are limited in your time. Well if you are trading futures, you can do it during off hours but I would say trade with paper until consistent, then go to the real deal. Of course, I don't have problems with paper but just the real deal. Easier said than done. You should contact the moderators if you have problems with the forum and messaging. I recall not really being able to post messages and replies when I signed up in the beginning. They said that it was normal and you will over a few days or something to that effect. I thought it was all screwed up too but it's ok now. Good luck and hope you'll pull it out. Put up your journal entry when you get a chance. Would be interested in reading it.
To everyone here that loves to criticize. Everytime, I ask that question (whether they were consistantly profitable day trading without mentoring 3 months in) of people here, people all stay quiet and yeah I know why. Probably because they've all lost their asses in the beginning. Some are tough enough to stick around and figure out what works for them. I plan on being one of them. Don't get me wrong, constructive criticism is good and I'm open to it but if you're going to misquote and not read the whole journal all the way through before ranting, I ask you to take a good look at yourself first before commenting and especially think back to when you began.
We live in a world where there is more sarcatic responses than men being men and answering with manners, a time gone by or not taught by parents. It took me seven years to learn how to trade futures and paid several folks for their training/courses, still came down to a ton of backtesting and very long years. All the money made in stocks which I found very easy to trade was blown in futures. Back then, I didn't understand futures, didn't understand price movements of futures are different than stocks I traded, and each instrument has different personalities. I for most part switched from day trading stocks when exchanges went from 16ths to pennies to futures, my methods just didn't work well enough after the change over. And wished I had simmed for a couple years instead of doing real time. but we all learn the hard way.
Think real about if 25K are in your mind when you are trading. Your mind is pressing hard on you that you have to stay above 25K. This is problem number 1. If you are under 25K you have only 3 day-trades, right? Don´t you think you should try trading futures on SIM? I think day-trading stocks is for old-established traders and those who have a few millions. How much do you pay for a roundturn with 100 x GS? do you know this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEArG8ebxAg I think it´s nice to know. Good luck
First, I try to trade with what I know and what I'm familar with. I'm not a pro by any means, not even close. I'm right now trying to get the mechanisms of trading down. I don't know the ins and outs of futures trades. I know there is leverage, etc. I heard too that you can lose a lot with futures also, worse than stock trading. When I first considered day trading, I read an article with Pete Milman in New York Magazine. A guy my age and one of the top day traders out there. He trades stocks and doesn't do futures. I suppose he could though or maybe he does now. Who knows. I stick with what I am familar with right now. I don't know how to even process futures contracts and that would take more time to learn. Just trying to get basic trading down. Actually learning to get basic live trading down. Paper trading is a joke for me and I do mostly limit orders on those ones. As far as having less than 25K to day trade, yes you only get 3 trades per week. I don't pay much for commissions if you're talking about a round trip. With both entry and exit via limit orders, I pay around $2 (round trip) on 200 x GS. You also have margin too with a day trade account so you can buy more than what your principle is. So if you have 25 K, they can allow you do trade up to 100K. Just don't hold over night or they charge you juice. Well, don't hold overnight regardless. If you're doing both market orders on entry and exit, I pay around $4 (round trip). It's easier to have your entry order be a limit order and most likely your exit order be a market order in an emergency. For that, it's like $3.50 or something to that effect. As mentioned, I use Lightspeed but their website is a mess and is horrible (ie if you want to do ACHs and look at your account statements). Their commissions is what lets me scalp but their website issues have been around for a long as I've signed up. Makes me wonder if they're too cheap, lazy, or finding a way to scam people. Don't know. The reason why I do GS is because the higher the stock price, the cheaper it is for commissions. GS has enough volume with minimal slippage for someone to get in and out easily.
+1 Handle, that is one of the most real, honest, and down to earth responses from veteran traders I've gotten. I think often people nowadays have become too self-serving. Some are just sociopaths where they don't care about anyone else but themselves. The fact is that we are not much different than one another. We've all been down that road. Some based on their positions now cannot think or refuse to think back to when they were humbled. That is the problem with people today, lack of compassion and lack of any effort to puts themselves in the shoes of others.
OK I havn´t traded stocks very long, but you should know that every stock has it´s own personality. If you find one that fits you, perfect. GS I have monitored years ago. For me sometimes it was very hard to find a trend that established, often got trapped. My view, GS is massivly manipulated by ... GS. There are also from time to time 4 Horseman stocks that trade and lead the market very nicely. You need to watch them. What charts do you watch at your trading station during the day and what charts do you include in your decision to make a trade? Today was good. All day very overbought. See Ya
Today's fake paper gains .. I really started to bored half way through and went back to bed for a couple hours .. I get so tired of the paper trade. It must've been a while since I had a losing day with the paper. Don't count the one SPY trade for 1000 shares. I went to SLV for a little bit and used 1000 fake shares and forgot to change the share quantity back to 200. However in real life, if someone were trading 1000 shares of SPY, it wouldn't be an issue. Plenty of that to go around. Make that a +4 instead of +30 in you're trying to calculate paper P&L. Screen shots are good for posting paper trades. I write down my real trades here in case there were issues with my account so that I use this journal as a backup. A lot of the issues today is whether to scalp or not to scalp. Scalp or let it run. I opted for the old scalpage. Yeah I know, tough decisions for paper. LOL