I suppose the original question comes from someone who has been trading stocks and is now planning to trade eMinis... In this case, I would say that capitalization is the first requirement: otherwise you'll get killed by volatility + leverage, even before you start understanding what you're doing wrong. alberto
JII, In order to become a professional trader, you have to have all of your shit (skills) "together." Any part where you have a weakness always seems to be the time when the market seems to punish you hard, and weeks of gains can disappear in a trade or two. There are skills that all of us have to master in order to become good traders, like the "cliches" that are stated in my signature. You have to remeber though, that I am a pure daytrader and therefore some of those things will make less sense or be of less importance to someone with a longer time frame. For example, the longer your time frame, the less important is the _exact_ entry into the market. Also, "costs" are not likely to be an issue, etc. I at least wanted to comment on that aspect of my "philosophy." When you ask "how," I will leave you with this: The foundation of all trading is buying from someone something they no longer want, holding it, and then offering it to someone else when you deem it not worth holding any more, or vice versa when shorting something. Note the self-referncial character of this sequence, that is, on your way in, that maybe because someone has deemed it not worth holding anymore (in the case where you going long) or it maybe that they have hit their pain threshold. In either case, if you are trading intraday, what possible other motivation could you have other than a _psychological_ one for entering and exiting a trade in the smallest time frames? Does the value of GE change from 1 minute to the next by millions (billions) of dollars? Do the spoos? I think not, and yet GE moves by millions of dollars from one minute to the next? In my time frame, it is clear then that trading is a human activity (except for program trading for arbitrage opportunities ,which is a huge part of the market) Also remember, the reason the particular market _exists_ - e.g., to allow hedgers to hedge themselves, to allow us to have retirement money, etc. Most people work their way _forward_ from learning systems or technical patterns, etc. I instead have worked myself _backwards_ from the psychological aspects of trading and the reason the particular instrument I am trading _exists_, and the context of that instrument in the world that is the rest of the market. That is, I ask myself, _when_ do I want to buy and _when_ do I want to sell (in the presence of knowing that trading is a human activity,) and _how_ aggresive do I think this trade deserves? Once you answer those questions, the whole of my signature and all of technical analysis will start to make sense to you. nitro
nitro [/B][/QUOTE] hahahaha a thousand entries per day, impatient exits, 1 tick stops and most importantly 1 lots. yeah, u da man nitro!!!!
A thousand entries per day? Only in my dreams, as that would allow my edge to more fully be apparent (assuming I don't churn and go nowhere, which happens .) Impatient exits? Hardly, more like "strict discipline on stops." 1 lots yes. I do not feel comfortable trading more than 1 - 5 at a time at this moment. When I trade equities, 2000 shares at a time is my sweet spot when the liquidity is there. As I get my commission structure down, I will bump my size up to 3 - 8 as my risk tolerance warrants it. nitro
Hmmmmm.... Definitely something to ruminate on. Quite interesting that I have very similar ideas. As a matter of fact, for the time being I can only think about short-time day trading. Not only because I want to sleep at inght (the margin call nighmare wouldn't leave me even with tight stops !) In other words - discipline, not to freak out too early but not to stay in praying, hoping and begging the market to turn around, and to have the guts to get out when planned and not to saty in hoping for more. Sound pretty simple - but when in position the brain seems to slip from it's original place to.... well, nicely put, "somwhere else" Will try my best......
Someone told me recently that traders have a shorter lifespan (as much as 20 years by the way) than say sportsmen. Do we really want to be a frenetic daytrader rather than taking a more relaxed outlook ? Jack