Determined to do it right....this time!

November 15th, 2009, 08:49 AM

Hi Everyone...greetings from the Philly area......great to be part of this forum. 10 years ago I tried daytrading the ES on a part time basis with limited training from a video course. Things did not work out and I decided to shelve it until I had the time to tool up properly and get the right education.
I now have the time to devote to this and am overwhelmed by the number of "educators" out there and some of the less than complementary stuff you can find on the web about them. So.....any condensed advice you can offer on getting the "better" resoruces in place would be appreciated.

trader23

January 10th, 2010, 05:17 PM

Hi trader23 (23! i like that...any relation to MJ

)

Well, interesting to see how I've found someone else here on this forum who is in my shoes. Although, I did not start active trading 10 years ago, I did get hooked when I was back at Uni in Sydney, Australia. And that's going back around 10 years.

I started trading full-time beginning of 2007 and did it for 2 years before I blew my account for a second time in 2009 and had to go back into the work force. I started my trading education with an education company in Australia, focusing on Stocks and CFDs. Then, when I came to America, I started becoming interested in Futures and bought Traders Internationals' course. I know this is not the place to talk about other companies but suffice to say, I do not recommend going with them at all. I have also attended many many seminars and webinars by other educators and can honestly tell you that my experience has been that you really don't need any of them.

Here's what I would do if I was to recommend something to someone interested in this business. Depending on their level of experience in trading, I would tell them that their first task would be to read a few books on basic technical analysis in order to find out what method or strategy they like best. It is then a matter of putting in the hard yards to fine tune that strategy and study as much material on the specific subject(s) as they can. Then, it's time to paper trade the strategy for at least 3 months. And then, if financially viable, I would recommend finding a good trading mentor and start trading live money with them. This will ensure that they are prepared before they begin and their mentor can coach them while they are facing all the emotions that go with trading rather than having to face it all on their own.

I'm not sure where you are in terms of your most recent experience with trading but happy to converse with you on it and share ideas.

Stay Sharp,
--Tom

January 10th, 2010, 05:39 PM

I totally agree that day trading is a numbers game. Get rid of your pride your assumption. Realize that you really do not know which way the market will go. With that said, try to find a "setup" that wins at least 50 percent of the time, use good money management and you will succeed. I know...easier said then down. keep at it and glad you are back in the game!!

January 10th, 2010, 05:44 PM

If you like indicators...I would suggest that you just pick one and stick with it. There is no holy grail. Use that one indicator to pick your direction, then use the price action to enter your trade. Hide behind pivots and s/r levels. I would also chose one instrument to trade, and learn it.

January 10th, 2010, 08:14 PM

I agree with everything said here also. Here's what has worked for me. I started out with my educators' 'proprietary' indicators and it just did not work for me. So then, I started to add more indicators until I got to a point where I could hardly see my price bars! And that's when I realized I'm going about this the wrong way. So, I started to study and study and finally came upon a methodology that was simple but yet gave me an edge. I have been quite successful with it over the past few months in paper trading it and fine tuning it and now, I am ready to get back into the game again.

I'm really excited, yet, quite nervous

I mean, I was doing this for 2 years full-time but it's amazing what a few months of being away from live trading does to you. But I've made it my mission and goal to be trading full-time in 6 months time if I choose to given I like my day job very much right now and have worked out a way to trade the morning session before going to work. So, it's all systems go for me and I can't wait to jump in.

So, just keep it simple and focus on price and volume. You really don't need anything else. The goal of these educators is to make money by selling their, 'whatever', otherwise, if they were successful traders, they would stick to that because they can make a lot more money trading than selling systems/indicators/etc.

Stay Sharp

January 13th, 2010, 07:08 PM

from my limited experience here is what I have learned about trading. You need to figure out what sort of trader you are, for me I believe it to be a scalper.

I also found that I then needed focused on the best method of charting that made me focus more on price movement rather than purely relying on indicators, again in my case this was a variety of range charts.

The other thing which I believe important is to apply the logic of

"if you see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck."

In other words if all of your trading rules say go long, then go long or vice versa.

Determined to do it right....this time!

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Determined to do it right....this time!