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A little background information, I use to trade spot FX with a swing trading approach mainly on the 4hr and daily TF after about a year of being a break even trader and hating the constant long holding periods and waking up for the London sessions I decided that I needed to go back to the drawing board.
I firstly was honest with my self and I knew that waking up to trade London was not something i wanted to do anymore. FX was no longer an option for me I looked around to see what i could find and enjoy trading. Futures was always an interest but for some reason always found an excuse not to participate. After looking through all the available options. I had came to the conclusion that i was not a long medium/long term trader and was rather a short term trader.. i wanted my money and i wanted out, I was forcing my self to trade someone else "game plan " rather then looking for my own.
So about a year ago i opened a demo account to start testing out this new approach ( will explain if anyone wants to know but not the point behind this post) quickly figured out i need to make this very systematic due to self control issues. few months of testing that everything was ironed out, added journaling in the mix, each trade is added to a journal and a picture and description of why and how is added to each at the end of the trading period. Read countless books on psychology to help with a few underlying issues, have all my computers set up.
I still work a 9-5 i am under 25 and quickly advancing through my company. I have the ability to trade during my desired time window but for me i find if i can not devote all my attention to the charts then it is a waste. After work i replay at least 2 days a night. I mainly trade the Emini but enjoy the 6E and Gold , it has gotten to the point that if i follow my rules and plan it has become easy.
I know the vast majority of you will say well you had sim trading, i have traded real money before and have lost a decent amount of money as well and earned it back. Before i step back up to the plate i want to make sure i am ready to hit the ball.
( sorry for the ramble )
But it seems like there is still a hole in my game plan somewhere, i have spent the last week trying to figure out what i have been missing but have been unable to come up with exactly what i need to improve on.
( almost done )
I don't know if i need to spend more time learning the economics behind all the markets i know my strategy inside and out, or learning the exchanges and exactly how they flow. I know i wont be able to know everything, and this game is like a marathon, that you will constantly be learning over your course of participation.
If anyone has any ideas what i could add to this i would really appreciate it, or if any one that trades full time could send me a PM and let me pick your brain for a message or two that would be great!
( sorry for the long post and i know there has been tons of these " tell me if im ready posts" but i couldn't find what i was looking for)
You’re still young and the market isn’t going anywhere. I wish I started with this stuff a lot earlier. Focus more on your work career, when you have anough savings and confident about your financial being, then you can be more serious with this. Having enough money in your bank will give you enough comfort that if your trading journey doesn’t work out as you wanted to be, there’s always a shelter go back to. Don’t make trading your no. 1 priority at this point of time. If you said you are pretty much break even trader, that’s good. Just imagine now you are already breakeven, if you take more time and effort to do this in the future you can do better (hopefully).
Another thing I want to add, if you play it right, trading is a very long term career thing. You can still play it even you’re already retired from work (imho).
Another question would be "Do you have the risk muscle to trade the size you are planning to trade?"
If not, is there any way you can get the size smaller? With the plan of slowly scaling it up as you build the psychological strength to handle the bigger amounts of risk.
"Persistence is very important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up." -- Elon Musk
currently working on acquiring capital, saving roughly half my yearly income for a nest egg and adding to the old fx account and new futures account. along with a new eCommerce business ( https://www.bleueyewear.com ) if i cant post that ill gladly remove... dont want to step on any toes.
i forget the pod cast but one trader spoke about funding an account with 25k just above for PDT limit ( i know this wont affect futures ) but at the end of the month he would either subtract his winnings back to 25k or add to the account for a negative month and the idea behind this was to keep his trade size at a reasonable limit within his plan, my plan is to do something similar. This should keep me from trading to large as each month i have to go back to the original trade size.
my next question would be when does to much sim become negative for growth, I'm a person who unfortunately learns the majority of my lessons the hard way and sim trading has been great but i dont want to end up hurting my self in the long run.
I am still young but this has turned into an obsession of mine, i would much rather go broke and loose everything at 25-30 then retire and loose my house. I wouldn't say im in a rush in get in the market as i am trying to be smart about this but i also dont want to wait until im 50. I would like to become full time ( wouldnt we all lol) once the nest egg capital is there im either going to have to s**t or get off the pot lol.
But one of the best things ive learned from all these books is you cant make trading pay for anything( coats/cars/house) and its much easier to trade once you get that in your head or free from the worries scratching pennies together .
it all depends on what im trading , 6E/gold markets are normally traded with a 20 tick chart with a 900 and daily open for trend , Emini is traded with 900 tick and with a 4500 tick for direction and a daily as well.. will trade off the 4500 but only at major levels and where i think i can hold for awhile, awhile to me is longer then 5 minutes. I've basically taken my swing trading strategy from the 4hr and daily charts moved them to smaller time frames with a few tweeks.
I agree a 100% I'm more concerned about building extra capital right now then building a huge account so I can trade a huge line. Account will be large enough to trade 3 contracts of the emini 5 6e's and 4 gc. Nothing large but would be similar in risk from my fx trading and that was fine with me.
