Took me two years and about 75% of initial trading capital (which wasn't big to begin with) to go from total newbie to consistantly profitable trader. It certainly wasn't single realisation. It was more like pieces of puzzle coming together one by one until things clicked. Each big loss (there were three of them, huge chunks lost on single trade) served as a lesson. Fortunately, last one put me merely in position "can't lose anymore" - not a good position to be in but still better than "can't trade anymore". Start of recovery was not an immediate process - took several months of ascillations near the borderline... up, down, up, down... All this process dgradually worked out to finding that elusive "edge" - zone of my personal comfort, both psychological and trading system wise. Minor setbacks that occured after 1998 were just that - usual for any profitable trader temporary retreats that were dealt with properly thanks to experience accumulated in those toughest two years. Hard to list everything that helped or was understood in short post. Many previous posters listed very correct things that worked for me also, and I already wrote plenty on this topic... nonetheless, if you got particular questions I'll be glad to try and answer.
I'm not sure if my system really applies here, but I have 42 consecutive closed profitable trades of 15% or better.
LOL!!!!!!! Trading is a profession, period. These kind of comments crack me up, when I'm pretty sure this same person would never consider making them to a med student 5 years into their education, residency still to come, tens of thousands in loans already accrued. Go figure.
Good one bundle. Amazing how noone would even think of making a living in any serious profession without long and often costly education, but trading for some reason is expected to deliver stable income right away. Meanwhile plenty of those that made it say that it was the toughest endeavor they've ever taken.
Hi To me the switch did not happen all at once although most of the events happened within short period of time. - Increased worry about the account going down and repeated realisation that I must do something or quit. - My obsession was with the long white bar on daily chart. I could never capture the entire bar. I may have been in the stock or thinking about getting into it, and at best I would exit with 1/3rd - there was always something that made not to enter the trade or exit too early if I was already in. After two days of thinking what went wrong each time and how to fix it I ended up with nothing, I couldn't tell what and why. But I made a resolution that next time I am in a big move I will not exit on the same day, no matter what. And it was a torture. But after the close I realised I an do it and I spent many days developing new ways of capturing it again, then moved on to other patterns until I had quite a few to choose from. - Another thing was noticing that the account no longer goes south. - And probably the most important (in retrospect, not at the time) was that I developed my own philosophy. I read about many traders and their metaphores of trading. I thought it was rather excentric to compare trading to war (sun tzu), snapping rubber band, chess game, ocean tides etc. As I was watching screens I found myself applying my life philosphy, the yin yang, to trading and soon I noticed that this symbolic thinking made the trading decisions if not easier then definitely much faster and firmer.
The original poster clarified that he works part time and trades part time. Threei mentioned it took him 2 years. LBR suggests around 3 years. Clearly this is a gray area and will differ from one person to the next. I think it was Gary Smith who took 12 years (while working night shifts as a security guard). I am not sure why you were offended by my comment which was only to emphasis that this is not an easy business to get into as the popular media might suggest and that you need a lot of internal fortitude and capital to make it to the other side. Just my 2 cents. - rcm
M.Mauboussin, CSFB .. from jwlabno. No; we are better suited to cerebral activity .. way above all others animals. And human running speed is not a patch on those animals built for that purpose .. they not only move faster but they have such superior acceleration from a still start! And the now defunct sabre tooth tiger - well, you need to have spotted him first .. before he became extinct, of course.
At one time I was a scalper, and I lost big and made big. Then I turned consistantly profitable by: Cutting my trades from 500 day to an average of 5 Cutting the number of different products I trade from 60 to 1 Cutting the number of monitors I look at from 8 to 2 Cutting the numbers of directions I go from 2 to 1 (ie short only) Throwing out all my TA software Stepping back and forcing myself to think of the big picture before each trade. Now my average trade last 22 minutes and I have a goal of 30 cents per share. For a small guy, I trade fairly large size. Message: I simplified everything to where even I could understand it. I think there are about a half dozen of us on this board who trade something like this. Most of us once worked in NY or Chicago and a few of us know each other. I trade a stock but some guys do futures. Of the guys I know, the stock guys are doing better. Hope this was helpful to someone.