Welcome to NexusFi: the best trading community on the planet, with over 150,000 members Sign Up Now for Free
Genuine reviews from real traders, not fake reviews from stealth vendors
Quality education from leading professional traders
We are a friendly, helpful, and positive community
We do not tolerate rude behavior, trolling, or vendors advertising in posts
We are here to help, just let us know what you need
You'll need to register in order to view the content of the threads and start contributing to our community. It's free for basic access, or support us by becoming an Elite Member -- see if you qualify for a discount below.
-- Big Mike, Site Administrator
(If you already have an account, login at the top of the page)
Trading: The one I'm creating in the present....Index Futures mini/micro, ZF
Posts: 2,311 since Nov 2011
Thanks Given: 7,341
Thanks Received: 4,518
This sounds a lot like me. I very much like to have all my options open.
One suggestion I just thought of is perhaps to start with a broker since you mentioned “all markets” and to my mind this would mean Interactive Brokers. Just not FOREX with leverage.
Now, maybe take a look at which platforms will connect to them. There are many. At least a way to start.
If just futures interest you Stage5Trading is great and really care about their clients. Morad (FT71) is awesome and has done many webinars here at FIO. Anthony is just amazing, Kevin too.
Just as a reference I use Interactive Brokers, Stage5Trading and NinjaTrader Brokerages for FOREX.
But..... you can VERY quickly have too much information and start drowning with this type of approach.
To me you seem very open to learning which is just fantastic for this business. But the risk is going out in too many directions at once and lacking focus. With all these great platforms, tools in them or added to them and data feeds available to us one of my (and many others) challenges is info risk vs. price risk. Basically wanting more info (amounts to in part hesitation) to confirm a trade increasing one $risk.
Just what I was thinking reading through the past few pages.
The danger is that there is so much information it stops you ever starting. It is important to try things at the beginning to see whether you like fast/thin or slow/thick markets, see how they trade differently depending on the time of day, find a couple of tools that make sense to you etc. and then stick to them and only change things a little at a time if you think it really matters and makes sense.
I remember an FT71 webinar where he mentioned that when he was backing traders he only took people who had never traded before so they had no bad habit to hinder them that required unlearning. (He also said he liked people who had an elite or professional sports background because of their understanding of the importance of coaching and self analysis and living in the moment, not dwelling on the past. In that regard I have just re-read a book, I am almost embarrassed to mention it because it is such a trading cliché, and because of that most of the people who have read it are unlikely to be trading successfully, but Trading in the Zone by Mark Douglas really is very good and well worth reading to help give you an understand of the potential pitfalls that can make trading so hard).
John Grady at NoBS said something in a similar vein. When he started at a prop shop it specialised in the Treasuries. If you liked thick markets you chose the Ten Year Note, thin markets the Thirty Year Bond. Then you sat down in front of the Depth of Market (DOM) and worked it out.
Forums are great for asking good questions, like yours which has attracted a lot of useful replies, but be careful, especially if things aren’t going well; of adopting lots of new techniques continuously that you pick up from the webinars or reading journals of whoever happens to be doing well this month. In effect every time you significantly change something your learning goes back to the beginning.
You do not win as a trader, you just get to play again the next day. If that game doesn’t appeal to you then you should not trade. Gary Norden
I started trading 5 or 6 years ago, thinking it would be easy if I worked at it, well, you have to work at it and it still is not easy.. you have to really learn to control your mind, your thinking is a must. risk/reward disipline. not get careless or have bad mental days. you have to work at it and put the time in to see charts of all kinds and get a feel for what works for you. find a method and then apply good risk reward and really have no gamble... you must work a edge, look for your edge and trade the edge..... and that takes a long time to develop and trust.
but it is very much worth it. but you will have battle scars to enjoy.
Trading: The one I'm creating in the present....Index Futures mini/micro, ZF
Posts: 2,311 since Nov 2011
Thanks Given: 7,341
Thanks Received: 4,518
@navionpilot please take a moment and read this quote then please take two weeks and read the entire book as if your future self as a consistently profitable trader depended on it ..... because it does.....
Happy to contribute my opinion, not everyone might be a fan of my thoughts but I trade and have worked and sat next to guys who traded extremely large(300-1k contracts/trade) accounts and smaller accounts(5-30 contracts/trade) so I was fortunate to be exposed to different methods and see how they grew and blew their accounts. If you need any suggestions let me know. My advice for a platform to start on would be Think or Swim / TradeStation or Infinity Futures all are cost effective to start and learn on and all very reputable see which one you like the most
Im quite interested to hear more of your story planetmoto.
Did these traders (you?) have fear/anxiety/uncertainty issues at all? If so how did they deal with that?
What markets were traded and how did they scale into and out of trades with such large size...I mean how much 'influence' did their activity have on the market, were they sneaking around trying not to be noticed or were they rampaging bullies kicking sand in everyone eyes?
How often were they trading, was it mechanical, discretionary, team, fundamental, research based?
If there was a technical component to their trading then what was the reaction to exhausted looking markets such as when wyckoff accumulation and distribution patterns are unfolding? Did they even care?
You have been exposed to this institutional environment and also seen the retail side of trading so what would you say are the top 3 mistakes you see small traders making?
Interesting. If I might add that uncertainty and an over cautious approach is also a crippling malaise. Majority of movement is random and you have an edge if you can find sequences that are less than random. I see some great trade ideas in the various threads here but a lot of the time people just not giving their trades a chance to develop.
So for instance if you are watching bullish price action and you get a progression of strong buying candles you have to ask yourself what the odds are of continuation before the inevitable pullback? Adam Grimes has this binomial tree image that I always think of:
