This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com
I have been very busy with family stuff. I may also start up a business as a side venture. I didn’t want to at first, but I plan on taking less trades and starting a business may be the perfect thing to keep me busy while not trading. I will see. I wasn’t looking for this business opportunity, it was just kinda thrown at me. It involves imports from Columbia to Mexico, then onto the USA…..kidding of course ;). I feel guilty not posting my losses the past week. Overtrading has been the key problem. I have solved that problem by planning to take 0-2 trades per day in the future. Over the next year, if I do that, I will make plenty of money with a lot less stress……A.K.A. drawdown. Oh, and I will have time to post my trades ;). The fact that my smaller daytrade account is up 21% in 2 months, with less than 3 trades per week, helped me make this decision. I wish I could trade more, but it is not condusive to my style.
GM:
This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com
September 27th, 2007 at 7:50 am
Really nice trade. I dropped the ball on this one. It had a nice 10 cent risk on the 30 min too. Good trade. Also it doesn’t hurt to talk about the losers but make sure you always focus on your winners. It creates that positive attitude and burns that image of a good setup in your mind. Probably the most important thing I’ve learned from X.
September 27th, 2007 at 8:04 am
Nice, Zoomie. I’ve been nailed by the automakers in the past, so I shy away from trading those gaps, but you played this one very well. Good luck in your business opp.
I think the answer to the problem of wanting to trade more is found in adding trading systems or styles to your arsenal. Pressing your excellent method for more setups is not conducive, as you say. Some days (and sometimes weeks) are also not good for gap trades, I have found.
I still remember that Acrary from EliteTrader said that one thing he would have done differently is to stop trying to find that holy grail indicator or setup or parameters to tune the last 10% out of a particular system. He said he would have employed several different systems simultaneously–for example, trend following, cyclical/oscillators/range-bound, fading–and let the results fall out.
Say we get a big trend day, but there’s no way of knowing that it will be a big trend day at the start. If you just choose one system, if it’s the wrong one for the day you’ll get stopped out and lose money. If you deployed all of your systems, as the trend went on, the fading system would get stopped out for -1R and the trend following system would go on and on for as many R’s as the day’s trend brings. I’d like to get to this point in my trading someday. My thoughts on this are still not any more concrete than what I just wrote here, though.
My trading yesterday was an attempt to do this, but not simultaneously. I traded Muddy momo at the open, traded gaps around 11:00 ET, and then StreetSmack parabolic short in the late afternoon. I’ll be thinking about this more in future–sorry to hijack your comments thread. :)
September 27th, 2007 at 8:54 am
gl with the business opportunity…u have a winning system, and if liquidity permits, i would think u could just increase your share size…now that’s coming from someone with a losing system :-)
join me and prospectus this weekend for a game of shirtless volleyball at his house…its quite the motivator
September 27th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
Zoomie, nice to see you’re still out there and trading, albeit distracted by the evil side - business opportunity? sounds too much like real work ;-)
John, you cracked me up man :-)
September 27th, 2007 at 5:10 pm
[...] I talked about in the comment on Zoomie’s post, I planned to rotate through several styles today that I am familiar with: Momentum breakouts at [...]
September 27th, 2007 at 10:21 pm
Thanks for the inputs traders! I am very agressive at limiting my losses on my gap plays. This has worked well for me for the best trades take off right away and never look back. Now I need to limit my losses for the trading day. To give myself a maximum dollar loss only encouraged me too keep trading on a day possibly not condusive to my style. So, 2 plays max, no matter what. Maoxian seemed to have day traded this way. At first I thought I was applying a band-aid solution. Now I think cutting my losses daily just makes sense. Trading is a losing game. He who loses best wins. I would love to branch out in different styles; however, I need to pay the bills.
September 27th, 2007 at 10:24 pm
John, you are on. My pec implants will give me an edge with the babes. I need calve implants too though. My buddy asked me, “Are those your legs, or are you riding a chicken?”
September 28th, 2007 at 8:40 am
zoomie: please hold off on the breast (errr pec) transplants…i have a feeling that when u tell chicks u are a fighter pilot, that’s enough! :-)