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I appreciate the comments. I question my methods myself all the time and I wonder if its too complicated. I do agree that the difficulty I've had is psychological. In some ways they may be more difficult to correct than other issues. I also agree that trading is hard enough without the added life challenges.
1. Yes
2. So far so good, this in a way is a loaded question though IMO because i tend to look at it more from an investor point of view vs the way the "real" traders I meet look at it. Meaning that I look at my gains in relation to the capital I am trading. The more experienced people I have met seem to have already found their sweetspot for max risk and tend to just keep working on eliminating their risk of ruin. It seems all of us online people tend to talk about % gain or pips. The old schoolers I have met who are still around just talk about $.
3. 2 years with no life, neglected family and bloodshot eyes
I have been profitable for more than 7 months now but I only trade intraweek positions (2-5 trades a week) so I guess I could just be running lucky
I have about 1200 hours of screen time. I think its more but not really sure at this point. A lot of it was spent jumping around from trading room to trading room and trying different indicators. This means that of the 1200 hours of screen time, I really have only about 200 hours per method. This is not good. However, I dumped the trading rooms a month ago, got down to business developing my own methods and now have about 200 hours on my OWN method. i am getting comfortable with it.
As to the money part, I have not made any money yet. But I have not blown up an account yet either.Yes I've lost money but not enough to get me out of the game.
I know the odds are against me, but in business, the odd are always against you. I came from an industry where even in the good times with money growing on trees, the wash out rate over 5 years was 95%. I managed to make it into the top 20% of all performers in the country. It took me 3 years to do it but I did it. And I will do it again with trading.
I too like Sharky, paid thousands of dollars for training and mentor-ship in my previous career. It paid dividends like I never imagined it would. In trading, I am getting my education by reading everything I can get my hands on, participating in forums like this one and spending as much time in front of the market as possible. In the end, like every thing else that has enormous profit potential, trading is simple, not easy. I am trying my best to simplify everything I have read and learned into a simple (not easy) to understand and execute trading methodology.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, Leonardo da Vinci
Most people chose unhappiness over uncertainty, Tim Ferris
1 - No, but the true answer is: I would like to be a good trader, lets say earning enough to live from it.
2 - No I never earn anything from real trading, I am mostly on SIM and looking for a new strategy. I try more times real money ( 3 times) but each time that I had a lost of money, then I was feeling not good. I think all of you know this strange feeling. Now I will trade without any feelings, meaning my strategy is there, i go into the market, CAUSE i know i can trust the strategie.
I trade something like 8-9 months now on SIM, trading the ES but now I will change it to the YM. I do not trust the ES anymore, and I feel better in the YM. I started to trade with indicators, a lot of them, so much that i can not see the market anymore. but now i deleted all and i trade lets say without any. from time to time i look on BigMike forum to see if an indicator can help me but i am not an indicator-freak anymore.
I use also this post to say THANKS to Mike for the forum, but also THANKS to all traders too. I really learned a lot here. AND I hope i will continue like this...
Sorry I continue the post regarding the hours on screen. it is really hard to say. 8 months ca, 8-10 hours per day. week end looking to ananlyse strategie and creating a new one. lets say minimum 200 hours per month, ca 1500 hours in 8 months (i cut holidays day and day i do something else). like i say 200 hours per month is the minimum. But actually it is more 12-13 hours per day on the screen.
I've always been more of a investor and position trader and done pretty well. As a software developer, I've also been interested in the technical aspects of the market and the ability to predict price movement through algorithms and indicators. I've created plenty of strategies that work on daily and above time frames, but never been completely happy with any intraday strategies. They either trade too often, have too much drawdown, or lack consistency. At the end of the day, I've always thought I could do better than a machine in trading a Market based on the subjective emotions of human beings.
So I recently gave it a try and opened a futures account. At first I would sense the market going in a certain direction, buy or sell and then wish the market to move in my direction. Didn't have that much success and it was frustrating at times. So instead of predicting the market I began letting the market tell me where it was going. Now I simply place my trade in the natural path of the market and when it moves my direction and takes my trade, its telling me I'm right, I'm not telling it I'm right... and like a surfer, I ride that wave until it putters out and wait for the next one. Sometimes it's a short ride, sometimes I get lucky and get a long one. I just take what it gives me.
We'll, see how it goes in the long term, but in trading for about 40 days, I've made $3200 on making one or two trades before work using a single contract. It really is enjoyable, but I doubt I will ever rely on it for a living. I can make way more with large position trades on only 2-3 trades a month. But it is very satisfying to know you can make $200-$300 before you even head out the door.
1) No - not yet, but this is my long term ambition.
2) No - so far I have been trading for approximately six months in FX. To date I have had one positive month for swing trades in FOREX, so I am on my way to break even...
3) See above - I have also joined up with one FX Educator / Trading Room which has been positive. I have a very demanding job and so can only spend a couple of hours in the evening in front of the screen. Consequently I am now concentrating upon swing trades as opposed to scalping. Also I have programming background and so am concentrating on this for backtesting a system with the long term view to auto trade...
"We'll, see how it goes in the long term, but in trading for about 40 days, I've made $3200 on making one or two trades before work using a single contract. It really is enjoyable, but I doubt I will ever rely on it for a living. I can make way more with large position trades on only 2-3 trades a month. But it is very satisfying to know you can make $200-$300 before you even head out the door. "
Sublime, per your post thats a great track record.
With $3200 profit, and assuming you mean 40 trading days above and an average of two trades per day that works out to an average of $40 per trade or just 4 ticks of profit.
Doesnt sound like much but if your strategy is scaleable and you can take more trades with more contracts, you can quickly see how most profitable traders don't need to hit home runs to make a very good living.
4 ticks a day on 5 contracts is $200. 8 ticks on 5 contracts is $400. 8 ticks on 10 contracts is $800.
Its the old concept of the tortoise and the hare. The tortoise can win the race 4 ticks at a time !
I do keep a record of trades and jot down why I made certain decisions. You are pretty close on the track record. I show 68 trades, 50 winners 18 losers with an average of around $53 per trade. 12 max consecutive winners and 4 max consecutive losers and average win is $150 and average loss is $218.
Hopefully this will improve as these numbers include some pretty bad decisions in the first several weeks. I think I'm getting better, but time will tell. If the consistency is there, I will certainly add contracts and start scaling out to let some of these trades run a bit longer.
It is likely that most dreamers have punched numbers into a calculator or a spreadsheet and said if I can only get 4 ticks everyday, and double my account to $10K in less than 3 months. Then I could add another contract and get to $15 K by the end of month four, And then by the end of the year I could be making nearly $3K per day. All on just 4 ticks a day. I could get to a $million before the end of the second year. But I'm only dreaming, and I like to dream big.
Has anybody actually accomplished this task? Ok maybe not to a $Million, maybe $100K? It seems simple enough, its just not that easy to do.
I just hope that you guys realise that if you really want to earn money, you should not be daytrading.
With these amounts of efforts time wise people put in to chase the dream of living of a computer screen, you could start up any business that sells something that people need everyday and really earn a lot of money.
I know it sucks but if only 2% succeed, what the hell are we doing here ? 2% ?? Statisticly that's the same as NOBODY. Why are we so blind ?
I love the trading game and all the learning about it. It has something magic. But I always have a feeling that I'm getting screwed by a happy few (those 2%).
