Coyote Syndrome - when you have to chew your own arm off so you don't click the mouse again See the rest of Tastes Like Chicken's Daytraders glossary at: http://www.cousinshorty.com/ (you have to click on "do not click hear" then click on "stock market" then click on "cousin shorty's glossary".
here is the plan for learning not to overtrade.. 1.) Wake up on monday and lose your butt because of overtrading. 2.) Wake up on tuesday and lose your butt because of overtrading. 3.) Wake up on wednesday and lose your butt because of overtrading. 4.) Wake up on thursday and lose your butt because of overtrading. 5.) Wake up on friday and lose your butt because of overtrading. 6.) Repeat steps one through five until your account is on life support. eventually one of two things will happen.. either you will admit you are acting compulsively and begin the process of discovering why you act this way or you will pull the plug on your account and have a sad - teary eyed funeral. i hate to say it but suffering alot of pain is about the only cure ive been able to find.. -qwik
When an inexpensive broker like IB collects more in one day than I do, and I'm doing all the work and risking the capital, it was time to modify the old trading plan.
2 words: BOX GLOVES put them on around 11:00-11:30 am and don't take em off till 2:30 3:00 pm. Just by doing so, you demonstrate to yourself good discipline. Couple of benefits: if you decide you want to trade it will take time to take them off and by then the trade will not look as good, and you can also use them to take your frustrations out on a punchbag. Josh
Tommorow I am giving myself 5 trading coupons. Each one entitles me to a round trip trade whenever I want to use one. I never want to get to the point where I trade 20-30 during the day unless it is through a system approach that requires it. It seems to me that over trading can result from anger at the market from previous losses (aka Give me my damn money back!!! After my loss today, I wasn't so angry as I was humbled. Mr. hot shit similator trader (my little brother calls me affectionally "stock boy"). Yeah the similator works great because its easy to say, "oops! well I wouldn't have done it that way with a real account" after blowing up your simulated account. Paper-trading sucks. I prefer dealing with my issues with dollars involved because that kind of reward punishment is something you don't get by saying things like, "hey I would have taken that trade! That was a perfect setup!" Bullshit, now you're on the line, you've got money in the account and you're staring at the hard right edge wondering what's next. All the clues in the world won't change the fact that you've got to do what you're set out to do based on the system you came up with. I ignored my system and was just pissing in the wind. That won't happen tomorrow ... and I am definately not mad at the market. In fact, I'm grateful for the chance to realize just how easily one can FU in this game. This is going to be a long wild ride .... But getting to your post .... tell yourself you will only trade 5 times and do that. It is that simple. Find the 5 best setups during the day. If you take a 6 one, you just broke your discipline -- and that's not good. Surely I am not one to be giving advice out like this ... lol
Get off of a direct access platform. That's why they were designed, so you can trade a zillion times a day.
I use the same method. I look up every once in a while during trading hours to see how my net has changed.
me too- i keep an hourly track of my P/L vs shares traded- if i see that i am trading too much and commissions are really eating into my net (i.e. i am making no forward progress but just writing tickets) then i know to scale it back and get back to being more selective in the setups that i take- i want to have an ever rising P/L throughout the day and if i overtrade, i know that it cuts down on my daily net profits. and a really important one too- don't trade between 11:15-2:30 ET unless it is an absolute perfect setup and even then, be careful with size as liquidity dries up in this time and it is easier for the specialists to do their favorite trick- fucking over daytraders with lousy fills and bad prints. i usually trade 1000-2000 lots in the prime times and always under 1000 in the slow times.