Things I Have Learned Being A "newbie Trader "

Discussion in 'Journals' started by ANERESS, Jan 25, 2006.

  1. ANERESS

    ANERESS

    I have decided to make a journal on my experience so far as a "Newbie" It has been about 20 days since I opened up a paper trading account at OptionsXpress. I want to go to live money by Feb 1st. I don't think it will happen. I ended up taking 20 days worth of losses today. My loss total I took was 3071.00. I am ahead 141.41.for the month.

    The things I have done wrong are not having a clear trading strategy. "Winging it, obviously is not going to do". Have decided I want to be to cash at the end of every trading day. Remedy here I want to be in and out of a stock in no more than 15 minutes.

    Mistakes So far
    #1
    Trading heavy volume stocks( of the day) held them overnight. The next morning the were down another 20%. Remedy here is close out positions by the end of the day and/or use stop losses.
    #2
    Have given all my profits away at the last hour of trading. Have tighter loss limits.
    #3
    Positions are too big for each trade. I am trading 1000 & 2000 share lots. Getting to greedy need to be realistic.
    #4
    Have seperate trading account for different strategies. Options going the wrong way kill my account way too quickly.
    #5
    Move account to Interactive Brokers from OptionsXpress. Commisssions are too high at optionsxpress on 1000 & 2000 share lot trades.
    #6
    Not making enough trades during the day. I've noticed the more volume I do the more profitable I have been so far.
    #7
    Yahoo live quotes suck..They aren't accurate. Charts suck too. Signed up with Interactive Brokers I hope it will be better.
    #8
    Need to find a chart that will give me the calculated mean over 5 and 15 minute. Something simple. I am searching and all this trading software is so complicated. I need to pick a software that is easy to use. Time is valuable at this point. Downloaded MedVed Quote tracker I am hoping for some simplicity...
    #9
    Haven't had enough computer screens. Remedy here bought 2 more 19 inch monitors this will give me 4 plus a laptop to work with. This should be enough.
    #10
    Need to remember to get up out of my chair during the day. My neck is killing me. Spent $200 on getting massages. Remedy is start doing some Yoga for stretching.
     
  2. ANERESS

    ANERESS

    Ok I actually followed the rules today I traded 100 share lots( down ($23.18) by the end of the day.( The fantasy dream of the 1000 lot rounds is over for now, it sucks having to be realistic, but with hard work it will pay. Only completed 3 trades. I had terrible entry and exit points. Need to trade more(goal I think is going to be 15 trades a day). Need to work the entire 50,000 ( hard for me to do right now trying to figure everything out) I traded AMD, RIMM, SLAB. (Reason being the were on the most actives.) I did find a good charting service( I think) downloaded IQ charts. Need to figure out how to use it now. ( Complicated). Decided to keep OptionsXpress account open ( I will do options in this account). Everything else will be in the Interactive Brokers account.( Better Commission for daytrading). I did close out of all my positions today though.