To learn the trading ropes or stay out

Hello all, this is my first post and trade2win and I need some advice if I should continue with my thoughts on learning to trade or if I should abandon it and continue with my buy and hold mentality.

Backstory:

I live in the US and have been maxing out my Roth IRA accounts every year investing passively in index mutual funds. My account value has grown over the years and now I sit around $60,000 in my IRA. I recently have been pulling money out of the index funds and buying individual stocks. I have been following investor's business daily's buy and sell rules and have so far not made any money with the approach. I tend to get positions up 10%-15% on a breakout and then fall back below my purchase price and I end up selling for a loss. Because of this price action, I'm thinking that my goal of large profit %'s from IBD may not be the best approach for me. I tend to get in at the right time to capture 5-10% profits right away before I left the profits slip away.

So i'm thinking that I adjust my strategy and go back to buy and hold inside of my IRA and start trading futures contracts in hope of capturing short term gains. At this point right now I'm not going to count on trading to provide for my family. I'm planning on opening an account with $5,000 and only trade 1 contract at a time until I build my capital up (through winning trades) to $10,000. Once I get $10,000 in capital, I then plan on trading 2 contracts until I get $15,000 and so on. I really want to be sure that I keep double the margin requirement in the account because I really don't want to stress out about margin calls.

I plan on keeping tight stop losses in order not to risk more than 2% of my initial $5,000 capital on any one trade. I really feel that if I can break-even during the first year or even a small loss, it will be a great victory. I enjoy being around the market and trading so I hope that venturing into futures will be beneficial since I can trade outside of normal market hours in which I will be working a full time job.

Question:

I've been reading a lot of articles that say 70-80-90% or more of day traders blow their accounts out. Am I crazy for thinking of going this direction? I can afford to blow the initial $5,000 but I really wouldn't want to take a much bigger hit if I had to come up with a bunch of margin money. I could use some thoughts, suggestions, or encouragement.


Thanks for reading, I'm glad to have signed up here. There appears to be a wealth of information here and it appears to me that the trading world is a jungle out there looking to eat up newbies like me.

hey

just try it and see......demo it first

N

NVP said:

hey

just try it and see......demo it first

N

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Best advice...

PS: I started to trade my very first time 5 min tf charts right of the bat (which now that I'm much better trader than I was, and above all much more experienced, I TOTALLY don't recommend at all) and I never blew any account, so, do not be discouraged to try it after following the logical steps, and make sure you do know what you are doing crystal clearly...

If you honestly have a tendency to make 10-15% profits all you need to do is take your profits instead of letting them turn to losses, which is retarded. Letting profits slipaway is your fault not IBDs.


If you're letting longish term positions come back for a loss, imo daytrading futures will murder you in the face.

The best online resource I've seen for learning how to scalp futures is nobsdaytrading

rawrschach said:

If you honestly have a tendency to make 10-15% profits all you need to do is take your profits instead of letting them turn to losses, which is retarded. Letting profits slipaway is your fault not IBDs.


If you're letting longish term positions come back for a loss, imo daytrading futures will murder you in the face.

The best online resource I've seen for learning how to scalp futures is nobsdaytrading

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By no means am I a guru making 10-15% profits on every trade but what has been happening consistently is that I'm buying on the breakout and the stock runs up for a day or two and then collapses beneath my buy point and I end up selling around a 5% loss. I think IBD is a good system, I'm just not sure I'm capable of picking stocks that are going to run up 25% to meet their exit strategy price.

K i don't even know what you mean by IBD, but you need to learn to bank profits, 10-15% is not something to sneeze at. Sounds like you can't exit a trade unless you 25% up?

either way, if you want to trade intraday check out the link, it's the real deal - i used to be a prop trader and that guy is teaching stuff you only learn on a trading floor, if you're lucky.

rawrschach said:

K i don't even know what you mean by IBD, .

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Investor's business daily. I think this is based on the CANSLIM entries.

You probably think you're making 10-15% on almost every trade, but that could be just your selection bias. I suggest you review the charts/prices for each of your previous trades and if you can see an edge which lasts a day or two after breakout then you could have strategy around which to build a profitable system.

Remember that a system comprises of far more than just entries.

This reads like yet another troll / t2w setup / the leopard multi nic wind up.

He's making 10-15% and then giving it all back some, cos he wants to make 25% and he's peed off when he doesn't make it.

Seriously, wtf is going on here.

rsh01 said:

This reads like yet another troll / t2w setup / the leopard multi nic wind up.

He's making 10-15% and then giving it all back some, cos he wants to make 25% and he's peed off when he doesn't make it.

Seriously, wtf is going on here.

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Really????? I simply am asking experienced traders some advice on if I should learn to day trade since my current methods aren't working well for me. The whole 10% gain is not on every trade, I was simply asking if I should switch investing timeframes and take shorter losses and smaller gains.