Thanks for posting the journal AT. Should be interesting. I am in a similar boat. I just quit my job and am going to take a break and just trade for a few months, and will probably put about 30K in the account just like you. Will probably post on here to make sure I think about my trades afterwards and learn from them, as well as get feedback. Not starting for a few weeks though, need to unwind first. I tried paper trading and hate it - my decision making is so different from real trading that it is a useless exercise. The most important components of trading are discipline and money management and paper trading does not train those skills the same way *FOR ME* (so no flames please). So I get what you mean. Question for you: how do you create the videos? They are pretty cool. I am not planning on doing like that, too lazy , but am curious. Thanks.
I donôt know any professionals that use stop orders. They might use mental ones, but not physical ones. There may be certain types of trading I am not familiar with that use real stop orders. But for buying plain stocks, I donôt think so. Not for over 40 years. Amateurs use them and lots of advice for amateurs on the internet recommend them. That is not necessarily good advice. If you are in a trend, and that trend explodes and you use geometry lines, any time the line under the trend goes to 70 degrees, you should be getting out.
Stops do not have to be used on under-leveraged investment stock trades or futures trades where the money management is simply committing low percentages of capital. However, they must be used on any trade that is leveraged and the higher the the leverage, the closer the stop. Professionals certainly know this and use stops in these instances.
Good luck on your trading. I will look forward to seeing your journal as well. I use Adobe After Effects for the animations. I am less than a novice at it. Hopefully you can watch me slowly get better at using it.
In 6 months I would like you to come back to this thread and reflect on what myself and Blotto have said. BTW I still am smelling a scheme to promote anitmatedtrades.com so quit mentioning it unless you pay for a sponsorship. Thanks
WTF? I am not affiliated with that site and did not even mention it. I am new to ET, but it seems there are a ton of posters who exist only to crap on other posters, which is the only reason I am not sure if I want to post my journal here. My problem, obviously, not yours - need to have a more sedate zen like attitude about negativity, but that is difficult for me.
There will always be more people who say "You can't" or "You won't" rather than "Give it a try". Even if I fail at trading, dealing with resistance is important no matter what endeavor I undergo. No one ever became successful by giving into the cynics. These people don't actually care about you or if you lose money. They just want their opinions heard. Which is great, everyone has some wisdom to give in some way or other. If you are not sure you want to post your journal because you will have to deal with the negativity of people, that is exactly why you should do it. Overcome that shi*.
Closed a trade today RDN (animated in updated spreadsheet) Position: Short Profit/Loss: +$320 R Multiple: .79R Days: 54 Not much happened in this trade. Just caught a little chunk of a downtrend, then got stopped out.