Keep doing what you are doing, and keep losing money. Eventually you will either quit, or find it within yourself to change. You won't change because of something a mentor says. You won't change because of something a random stranger on an internat chatboard says. You will change because you want to change. Maybe this cannot happen until after you have suffered some more.
My advice is to hire an 18 kid just out of school, and pay HER 6 bucks an hour, providing she has an ample sized chest, ofcourse. Advise her if she ever ignores or fails to follow an instruction, you will be entitled to spank her bottom. (make sure you enter this into the contractual agreement in order to avoid a claim for unfair dismissal in the event she refuses to perform her obligations).
Best post I've read on here in a while. We all have to change, because the market demands it of us or it takes our money. The question is, and always will be, do we want to change? Those with the self-awareness and malleability and discipline will make it, while the others won't.
rode FNM from 13 to 6. when you are on the wrong wagon, what do you think? you may keep praying/wishing while you saw you are on a wrong boat. rode WM to 0.2cents, you are away from the market, that means you are not working on something. trading is not a zero+game, you paid nothing to get something: that is naive thinking. the market is 24hrs a day moving, some movement is totally out of imagination or expected. I thought you should focus on scalping only, not speculative things, trade what you see, not what you think or what you want. work like a dog, not a pet.
Your mentor must really suck f---in balls man. Hell, pm me and I'll teach you to trade in no time...seriously it aint hard. Like the other posters have said,KISS...the simpler the better. However some people keep doing the same shit, and expect different results. I did for years unfortuatly, until i met a friend that opened my eyes to seeing the market in a new way. The markets all about support and resistance, nothing else. You short when markets go up, and buy when markets are low...what the fu-k does that mean?, it means as price drops, we look for areas of support, then a break of the previous candle's high. this signals a shift in s/d (supply/ demand), and we place stops below the previous candles low This is why you DONT buy stocks when they go up...generally speaking, because price is coming to a resistance point. thats a simple explanation of what I do, its not rocket science, but common sense and disipline are crutial. If you have AIM,I can help you out some time.
^ Ummm, I actually do the opposite. I buy when the stock is moving up (and looking for support areas to buy) and short when the stock is going down (looking for resistance areas to short). Especially when it is breaking out.
i did the same thing as you, i did not buy if it is not moving up. if it is going down, I will not short it. there is no support or resistance there, if market is that kind of simple, how people still did not get it? just if it is dropping and I feel the drop will stop, I will wait in the sideline and see any burst up, actually I jumped in YM afternoon at 6780, and sold it at 6839. then shorted it at 6720, and covered it at 6613 in ah. I want to jump in when it is strong, and I want to short when the market is very weak. of course you need fast finger, otherwise this kind of style will burn you very hard. since lots of thrust is fake
1. Open a chart. 2. Identify the beautiful patterns/formations/signals/trends and memorize them so you know your signals for the future trades 3. Get a piece of paper and cover the whole chart. 4. Move the paper to the right one bar at a time until your first signal sets up. 5. Memorize what it looks like at that point, but don't forget to visualize what it looked like in real time! For example, a tiny red bar with a large wick sticking out the top, was a big green bar at first, then it retraced all of its gain, fell further and became a red shooting star. Probably a nice short signal, but something else on the chart may have told you it would be a good short while it was still a big green bar (stochastics overbought, or it's near a major resistance level, or it's the 3rd big green bar in a row, etc). 6. Now watch for these signals in real time the next day and trade them, knowing your stops in advance and honoring them no matter what. Do this again and again and you will succeed, because there are indeed beautiful signals that work the vast majority of the time and you don't even have to be right the majority of the time to make a profit trading. Someone else on this thread said, "If you have the right ideas but can't pull the trigger, then the best solution is to hire someone else who can pull the trigger." Many times I've called a trade to my husband, who jumps right in and pulls off a beautiful trade while I putz around trying get a specific limit order filled. So I can vouch that this might be a good idea for you!
i love this thread, first thread ive read through in a long time without the bs. thanks to a lot of traders who post their comments, bc some of the things you guys/girls say actually may seem like normal talk, but just clicked and made it memorable to me and helped me see some of my mistakes in trading. i feel that another part of the story maybe trading the wrong stocks...n most of the time we may love to trade stocks that move like crazy bc we can see the potential $ in it, but its not matching your risk management. not sure if i made sense there but....ya....