I can not speak for a swing trader, but if you are a day trader, let me be honest without sugar coating anything: Thank God if you are flat after 3 months, appreciate if you break even after 6 months, you are guaranteed to lose money and get blown out, and your sole purpose right now is to minimize the damage. Any money you make is purely beginner's luck. There is nothing, absolutely nothing that will shorten the learning curve, regardless of how well you prepare yourself (I mean, come on, everyone did their home work, read some books before they started trading, it is hardly an advantage). Once you understand the above paragraph, you will know how to prepare yourself, I lost 19 out of 20 games when I started, and you will go through the same thing (better or worse). Think of your account as a stock that is guaranteed to free fall, then it will consolidate, then it bottoms, then it rebounds, and the day it breaks out into a new high, which will take a few months, a year, or never, you crossed the line as a profitable trader. DO NOT follow anyone's advice in those chat rooms, no one can be right more than 50% of the times, it is perfectly ok to look at the charts, see why they took it, but in the beginning, do not ride coat tails, it will only slow your progress to become profitable. Narrow down your watch list, trade no more than 10 stocks, follow them every day, learn their rhythm, DEVELOP your style. If you don't know what you want to do when the market opens, you are not even a trader, not even an unprofitable trader, you have to have a style, a strategy, a play, find it, master it.
Thanks for posting your journals up. They're really insightful. I'm kind of in the same stages you're in right now. I was wondering if you tried any of the relaxation or self hypnosis techniques to help you trade. I know that Michael Jordan and a lot of other atheletes use those techniques to win. I also know that Phil Jackson is very big on Zen. And this is kind of off topic but how do you like WorldCo? Are they supporting you? Are you being pressured to perform?
Guys, I just wanted to explain this chat room where we hang in. Hitman says well not to follow anyones advice in the rooms but this is a small private channel on mIRC where like 10ish traders havg every day (have been doing so for a looong time), and they really helped me progress in my trading, we exchange e mails, lessons, potential plays for the next day etc. Some of them trade futs some stocks. Couple of beginners like me.... So, basically nice crowd! Cheers Alex