I misjudged my emotional response in many ways. I saw the 5k sitting in my account and suddenly I'm open to all these trading possibilies. The kid inside of me screams out, "new toy!" and goes in guns blazing. Then I get a curve ball sent to me by not understand IB's platform throughly. Today I followed no system because I just wanted to be in the market. Honestly, nobody wants to lose money -- but I look at it like I just paid the entry fee to futures. I'd rather come off my first day with a loss that forces me to reflect and focus rather than win money from that haphazard trading. This is great stuff, actually. I'm in a community where others lean on each other when they need help. I obviously needed help today. A few months down the road maybe someone else will need help -- that's why we are a community of traders. We may be fighting for each other's money during the day, but when it is all said and done, we really care about one another. The kind of great advice and knowledge you find here on ET is second to none. No book has the quality of content that many intelligent posts made on ET contain. On a side note, besides the obvious pursuit of money, I think a far more rewarding aspect for me at this stage is learning discipline and controlling emotions. I think I could take those qualities and apply it to other aspects of life. In closing, I lost money today and I feel GREAT. (Where is the other pill .... )
"why not start out doing 100 share lots of SPY, or even 50 share lots of SPY" If you trade 50 share lots of SPY will there be any negative consequences like bad fills?
Aphie, play around with the demo a lot - setting up order lines - stops, etc. Do this until you are reasonably comfortable with tws. Then when you are trading live and make an order mistake - buy when meant to sell or sell when meant to buy- (and you will) - go ahead and kill the trade immeadiately - that habit learned early on will pay off in the longrun. Now enjoy your trading and make some bux. plumlazy
Good luck trading .... One thing to consider aphie, You cant really daytrade the spy but if you are looking for less dollar exposure you can trade the nq....1pt is 20.00 compared to the 50 on the es... Nick
NKNY, Yeah, i think that is a wise suggestion. I will proabably watch NQ tomorrow ... although I'm a lot more versed on how ES moves, I'm assuming it is somewhat similar.
May I suggest watching both of them ...even if you only trade the es I think you should watch the nq also.... after a few weeks to a month you will get a feal for how they interact... l Nick