Many daytraders come to the conclusion around age 50 that if they had just DCA into an index fund and worked a job they liked, they could retire.
And they would be correct. But being young and dumb, they chase the "excitement" of it all. Thus they live with a bit of regret on that bit.
If you hate day-trading that much, then it might not be sustainable long-term because eventually the ‘unhappy part’ of you might engage in subconscious self-sabotage and you might end up running in circles. Do some soul searching, maybe you could be transferring some issue onto the market. At least I was, I didn’t want to commit to trading in a new time zone and eventually I had to make a peace with it. It still sucks somewhat, but now I’m focusing on gratitude and that makes things more enjoyable. By the way, judging your performance by P/L can mislead you. Consider more objective metrics, such as entering your “risk-multiples’ distribution into a spreadsheet, and then start analysing where your problems are and then come up with implementing solutions. Ask yourself if the R-multiples distribution is suffering due to you not cutting losses, or not nailing down profits, or a style drift, or poor stock selection, or not following you rules, etc. . . Then also separately analyse the consistency of your position sizing, and wether or not you’re appropriately scaling up when trading well, and scaling down when trading poorly, or trading too large so you cannot sleep at night. Maybe variables like these needs to be addressed to get your swing trading into profits. You can also calculate your “Trading Efficiency Ratio” and use that as an objective guideline for improvemnt. The formula for this is: “Your number of trades in which you followed your rules divided by the total number of your trades.” This will reveal how inefficient you’re as a trader, and then you can start working on your inefficiencies as separate variables from your TA strategies instead of mixing up all the variable together. Either way, you need to figure out which timeframes and trading style fit your own personality, and then come up with ways to enjoy it. I’m not good at holding swing trades either, the trading style and time-frame needs to fit you, it really does.
I am just making it known here that PPC's avatar is wholly triggering the OCD, man. It is not the content, but the colors. Ack!
People who have edge realized that in 1-2 years of profitable trading. Some decided to leave day trading, change to swing trading and got into corporate world back. Some decided to day trade for living because they could not get back into corporate world back, no career growth in their job or the paycheck is low.
But there are some smart ones like @Overnight's good friend @SimpleMeLike, who does DCA with index funds and use a small % to trade ES future to quickly gets his million $ payout instead of waiting till 50. Some could have their cake and eat it too.
Very sage advice. My biggest problem with day trading is exactly that, I don't enjoy the daily grind because I hate losing trades and you cannot avoid a few losses every day.
Where is WXYtrader when you need him? He has a simple solution.... Dont like losing trades?? Simple Start on the smallest time frame possible,and if wrong, follow the ABC's of trading A) Day Trader> B) Swing Trader> C) Investor No need to ever realize a loss
Thank you everyone. I will find the solution for myself eventually. Both Day trading and Swing trading have advantages and disadvantages. The more I consider things I realize that I like day trading, if done correctly. 1 trade at a time, 1 or 2 trades per day and no more. Utilize bracket orders for exit to automate the exit. I do like that I am flat at the end of the day. No worrying over night about a Gap up or down, which for options does happen. I also like the quick result, either win or lose.