This is very true. Concentrated, or not, naked overnight risk is simply not viable for any leveraged strategy. I have in front of me, a handful of swing trading strategies that outperform my hedged strategies 4 fold, and wouldn’t dare risk good sleep on any of them.
Yet, i would go short, on idea, that you belong to any of those 3 categories with zebra picture above. Higly unlikely, any of them reads threads like this, many multiple reasons as well & one way or another, they already, know THE* secret as mentioned. The pdf was a nice reminder as well, as i went through 5 different stratagies myself, in the past 18 months. I think i saw quotes by J.R Tolkien and Ray Dalio in pdf. Overall, thanks qlay.
Yeah, I know and I am thinking that way too. But I prefer the dax trading hours since I live in Europe. At this moment I don't have any constrictions yet. I am first going to trade the size limit at Tickmill first (that's 100 lots. My current size is 26 CFD's. I was then planning to move to a real futures broker (I have infinty futures in mind). I was then planning to hire someone that I trust and is intelligent and going to make him an offer to trade with me with my system mostly the morning part of S&p500. Doing two markets at the same does not seem too wise. As you state there are less size restrictions with S&P500 futures. The next thing would be to start swingtrading off the daily charts with more or less the same kinda setups that I use intraday. But Rome wasn't build in a day. Daytrading is hard but not impossible ... I used up 14 years to get to the stage I am now at. My options vol arbitrage took me about the same time so don't be surprised if learning how to trade takes quite a while. It's not rocket science but it just ain't easy either.
This thread could be titled: For some traders Swing trading is better then intraday. Clearly, one's skill set, personality and time schedules and number of other factors influence the choices of how to approach markets. If someone felt swing trading should be their thing it would still benefit them to bone up on daytrading skills because from time to time the market offers opportunities like fading gap openings, etc. that can improve a swing trader's bottom line. I look at this as moving to the fast lane when driving when the need arises. One should have the skill and confidence. Not that swing trading is an armchair style, one can over leverage swing trading and experience the intensity of daytrading. Everything being equal one should settle on the most intense style that one personality and schedule allows because the shorter time frames offer proportionally more opportunities. These days one can trade ES or CL off 15 second bar charts as they show well formed patterns and there is good liquidity. For example if one doesn't mind getting up at 2 or 3 am (ET) one could identify 5-7 good trends by the time the am news cycle kicks in or the US markets open. One task is to decide to what degree one should let trading invade, take over one's life. When I traded commodities and index options in the pits in my younger years I would literally leave trading out of my mind when I left the building until next market day morning. These days, since I am doing more swing trading, I spend a good bit of time after hours and weekends studying, honing my skills and I probably could not get trading out of my mind even if I tried to. (I get so absorbed in it "Honey, is everything OK?", my girlfriend may ask.) Regards, GC
I appreciate your kind words. Unfortunately(or fortunately), I have not proven to myself yet that I am not "Idiot #2 : The Gambler." I just said to myself ... F@#$! it, I am going for it slow and as steady as possible ... no regrets.
Not easy to tell: I was 'destined' to become a market maker in options and wrote a book about that. That forced me to do thorough research. I worked for a subsidiary of what is now called KBC securities as an option broker and alternate market maker in options. I always remained optimistic (in spite of otherwise seeing my account not grow). I by accident stumbled on semi-options market making in DIA options when I wanted to hedge something. From then off it was easy sailing and I made something like 15000 USD a month with about 2 days losing money in the amount of 50 USD. I have always been good at 'feeling math' That lasted till IB started asking cancelation costs. At that point I had to start all over again from scratch. I tried forextrading intraday but that didn't work out all too well. I then joined a group of traders with several members of ET. We were all put in delusion for 7 years by a would be mentor that turned out to be just a booster for his own ego and I highly expect doenst know how to trade. So that was 7 years wasted. I then tried several things and only after another few years things started to click in my head. I came up with a 4 dimensional model on how the markets should be traded. All my charts staring did help in the end. What helped me through the bad periods was the fact that I had another source of income and my true belief in myself that I was 'born to trade'. I had feelings of dispair at times but always came back mentally untill I found my setups I am using now. I know I have a pretty high IQ but the markets don't care about that. It's more my determination that helped me in the end and my not willing to give up. It's not for everyone. The fact that I had been succesfully once before helped me to believe in myself as I considered the option model I had build in Visual Basic to be top notch. Futures trading is however totally different to what I did then.