I was wondering if anyone has found this month harder to trade then others. I'm down almost 10 % this month after having a great run the past few months, I'm getting a little worried. I'm not having touble cutting my losses...(My Old problem) It just seems that my winners aren't running. Thy just seem to be hanging around like they don't know what to do. Nick
It's a trading style thing. In zero sum game, the dough you lost went into somebody's pocket. The summer can discourage momentum players severely... especially this summer, after the bear market, the dumb money in the pool is even less than last year. I am so discouraged these days and have given up intraday totally and start testing swings on paper. Not that I lost any dough, it's just the net gains are so small, just not worth it to shed any sweat for.
I don't know whether this month was harder, but I certainly found today difficult. I only made a few hundred, when I should be pulling in at least $2k daily. The reason why today was difficult was the narrow range on the futures contracts and dismally low overall volume on the exchanges, combining to produce very little follow through. With hindsight, I should have had a 3 day weekend.
It is just a summer month, I can't really say whether this month was better than last, although my numbers picked up I think I am just adapting to this market environment. Taking quick profits not expecting huge moves helped me a lot. Avoiding dead zone / afternoon churning also worked wonders. Last but not least, I stopped playing breakouts entirely, gotta look for other setups . . . Overall, most traders at my firm make less than 10% of their yearly profit in summer time, so hang in there, hopefully things will improve by September. Just remember everyday there are still money to be made if you are good. One of the top ten traders at my firm who is up more than one million YTD (2.5 million last year), is doing just fine. He made at least six figures every single month this year, including a couple of 200-300K months. In June he made six figures, in July he took first two weeks off and still up more than 40K, it CAN BE done. (BTW, since I don't want a barrage of e-mails asking me what his style is, he is a basket trader who trades 20-40 stocks a day, most of them I have never heard of, always some small caps. He does 150-200K shares a day and comes to work at 6AM everyday, not THAT consistent but gets a lot of 10K day'sm got his own trading desk and has been trading since 1997.
Dozu, Upto 5000 shares per trade, usually lower. Bear in mind that the money is secondary for me. I do it for the independence primarily, and therefore am not too intensive in my trading. If I were a bit more aggressive about things, I would probably make more ... but making more doesn't interest me as much as having a neat, relatively stress-free, lifestyle.
I'm flat for the month. I would say that I've found the choppy water a little hard to tread. Should have gone on vacation for the summer.
NKNY Not sure from your post if you are an intraday or swing trader. My intraday trading this month was not as profitable as last month. Thru keeping a detailed diary I have realized A} Most profitable days are trading 1-2 carefully planned round trips of 500 share lots. B} Losing days are trading 5-6 round trips and even with small losses a few of these days eat into profits due to $30 rtrip commissions. C} 75% of losing trades were the result of breaking a rule to enter the trade. just my 2 cents Monee
This month has been very slow but the last week has been one of the worst. It is not that I have lost money, but I see little opportunity to make any. With the low volume, it is too easy for these fu@#$%& market makers to kill momentum moves. I hope that the introduction of super Soes shakes things up a bit.
Nick, Yea, I noticed the same thing. Winners aren't running and I'm getting stopped out more often. It's been very hard trading this sloppy/choppy market during July. remarkable understatement: ----------------------------------- "There has been a little distress selling on the stock exchange" Thomas Lamont, senior Morgan partner, 12:30pm October 24, 1929