the only people I know being able to trade multiple instruments managed their trades also on a portfolio level. I don't think it can be done any otherwise, esp. if you go overnight.
I have been a trader for years, I was a futures local on the options floor in Amsterdam, an options market maker for a bank, I have been a broker too for almost 8 years, been trading options for my own, I know quite a few fundmanagers and plenty of professional traders ...
not fulltime professional, more as a hobby at this moment due to health problems ... but this hobby takes mostly 8 hours a day ....
you seem have a lot of wisdom to share.what would be your best advise or list of things maybe what to do,and,more importantly what NOT to do,to a fellow trader? thanks in advance!
well any 'wisdom' I gathered was mostly gained by hitting my head against a brick wall over a few times. Not everything I 'know' can be put down in just a few lines. One thing you don't want to do: write naked options without being decently hedged somehow. Don't touch options if you don't understand the greeks well. Don't average down in any instrument either ... You always want to be thinking about the worst case first ... so know your stop before you enter. Try to throw math at trading. I became a real good options trader after I started working purely with spreadsheets. It seems to make the difference too in my directional trading. If you try to do multiple instruments, which I would advise against, be sure to not trade correlated stuff or you will blow up despite thinking you are being hedged somehow on portfolio level. Backtest your stuff and put it into a spreadsheet to analyse. Start small and try to slowly trade your way up with the initial money ... most likely you are going to blow up that account anyway if you are a beginner ... so it might as well be a small one ... Try to get some other source of income next to trading ... the chances are much bigger you will survive in the long run ... There is probably a lot more ...
this must be the hardest thing not to do.I always 'average down' well,not that i average down in the proper sense,but i enter into position from the different levels,say up to 10 levels,so i get the price somewhere in the middle.So i do not consider it as averaging down.To enter the position at the very take off seems almost impossible to me. This one is either a tough one.How do you know in advance,where the stop is?Or is it related to some money management stuff?
stop: I got my spreadsheet that shows me where my optimal stop is (I did some 3D modeling for that; it took me ages to get that one ... lol) and also look at the number of consecutive losers I expect ... from there one I try to "guesstimate" my maximum drawdown and adjust my leverage to that ... most people (me included) have a tendency to trade too leveraged and think that everything depends on the next trade. Being around a few smart traders thought me that it is the series of trades over the next coming month that counts much more ... The above took me years to find out for directional trading ...