TB, mephistoII has told you something that is really worth looking into. There are a lot of traders helping each other out on that thread. I have followed it from the start and it takes hard work and hours every evening when your trading day ends, but it is worth all the energy you put in to it. i am not sure how to attatch the thread but mephistoII has it on his post. Spydertrader and a large group of traders have great info there. good luck
People will help you when you ask constructive questions. I'll give my opinions on trades you post, though I'm a tape reader, so I probably can't help too much if you're trading purely off the squigglies. Just post trades, why you think they would work, and see what people say. Don't obsess over the concept of having an individualized mentor; instead, let everyone on ET who wants to contribute to your development as a trader respond with their opinions when you ask constructive, meaningful questions. Then, you may pickup several successful traders who continually answer your questions in a mentor-like fashion, which will allow you to gain more than you ever could by having a single mentor talk to you over PMs. Keep your head up, remember everyone was a losing trader... at the same time, remember the market owes you nothing and doesn't care about you, and that that's not a bad thing at all. The market is just neutral. It WILL teach you what your mistakes are; you have to be receptive to the lessons. Being someone who has a mentor myself, I can tell you that 90% of the work I've done to reach the (very, very minimal) level of success I've reached has been purely from understanding my own psychology and from having "ah-ha" moments where I applied exactly what I intuitively knew I should with perfection. A mentor only helped keep me off the wrong path, kept me from wasting time with methods which had no chance of working, and pointed out my most painful mistakes. This is also my bias, because I'm a very, very short term trader, but I think the shorter the timeframe you trade on, the faster you can learn. I'm sure daytrading is harder than position or swing trading, but it also gives you more lessons; you can make 20-30 trades/day daytrading, and maybe only 2-3 per day swing trading. At the stage you're in, each trade is like a lesson. Getting 10x the lessons will definitely improve the rate at which you succeed, and daytrading will also help you gain a higher awareness of the price action. I can sit down and watch a stock trade for 2-3 hours on end and pick up subtleties in how the stock is trading and who is doing what with it that I would never have been able to pickup a few months ago; some of these give me clues I can use to figure out where a stock will be 2-3 hours from now, even though my usual timeframe for a trade is ~45 seconds. I'm trying to actually slowly drift towards a longer timeframe, as I find that my very, very short-term timeframed entries can actually be excellent entries for longer-term trades; this is because watching the market all day has taught me the fundamentals of why price moves... and while I still may pay too much attention to what an intraday position trader might call noise, I get better daily at sorting that out. I think it's easier to learn the longer timeframes after knowing the micro timeframes, but I'm sure many others - with far, far more experience and P/L to boot - will disagree with me.
thanks because i really feel like giving up, i feel worthless and i feel as if my system is very worthless at times.. :'(
You need to papertrade your system until you are profitable for several weeks. Don't risk one dollar until you are consistently profitable.
First nice moderating. Don't ever quit, that is one thing that Don Trump has right and he's richer than most of the PHD's on this board. Trade small, then trade small some more. You only have so much capital so unless some bored rich trader wants to fund you, trade small. Stay in the game first. Here is a link to the turtle rules. I recommend reading these because it is a complete system. That is it gives entry, exit, stop, target, etc. Keep posting your trades, we can all learn from your thread. One of the real turtles is active on et by the way. http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/files/turtlerules.pdf
How is reading the Turtle Rules going to help him learn basic risk management and trade entry rules? The New York cheesecake and Baked Alaska are more useful to successful trader with a nice double espresso! el surdo
Here is a link to the turtle rules. I recommend reading these because it is a complete system. I think he should understand system trading, feel free to post any other system this is a simple Donchian system.
You gotta stop tak'in things so personally Nanook. None of this is personal (and you gotta admit, that sounds like a helluva good sugar rush). JJ