A year in. Lessons Learnt, Fingers Burnt

Originally Posted by medic

I've been live trading a year now and though it worth sharing some of the highs and lows of my journey.

I got into trading after my daughter was born. I'd taken 3 months off work and decided I could solely focus on day/swing trading with the 100K I had in savings.
Being in a technical profession (also have a PhD in math) my style was indicator/rule based and to that end I watched every trading seminar, read every blog and learned about all the technical tools I could over the first month.
I went live placing 10K-50K trades on stocks I'd researched and charts I or others had liked. Sometimes I'd stay in the trade a long time (I still hold my first stock bought), but mostly I'd be out before the close not wanted to suffer opening bell shock.

I entered stops until i got level 2 access when on too many occasions saw the action move right in to take my stop before rebounding away. After that paranoia had me write my stops down and then manually exit trades that reached them.

I kept a trading journal and kept account of my P/L, plus did a nightly debrief on how (and why) the day had gone.

On a good day I'd make 500 bucks, on a bad day I'd lose 1000. The nightly tally showed I was slowly getting poorer and over time was not getting better.

It got to a point where I'd spend couple hours researching my picks then enter trades in the opposite direction as I came to understand the market was not behaving to any of the indicators or patterns I'd learned from any of the hundreds of Guru trainings I'd been through.

About 6 months in I came to realize that even with my account size intra-day was too hard to play, so my time frames move to weeks then months. I finally entered a trade that I was convinced about which went against me for 5 months. I'd decided to stay long in the stock regardless as I was that sure. The stock blew through any rational limit I would have set and I decided to wait for it to recover. I eventually sold for a 40% loss through fear that the company would go bankrupt.

At one point in the year I was 15% up. I'm out now (apart from my first stock) for a total loss of 15%.

I've never really failed at anything and have been very humbled by the experience. Learning so much in a short time about trading and then failing to make it work has left me with the feeling that knowledge, a strict trading plan, and the willingness to put in full time hours really offer no guarantee of preserving capital let alone make a healthy living.

Respect to those that make it work. For a time I was one of you but for now I'm poorer and out.

Originally Posted by pboyles

Try selling poetry, its more profitable according to The Guardian.

The £100 challenge | Money | The Observer

Originally Posted by sweatyslouch

Hi, I swear all you need to do is take all indicators off your charts. Plot support and resistance using a 4 hour chart and then only trade at those levels. Buy support, sell resistance. If you get stopped out wait for a retest of the support or resistance that was broken to be retested and reverse your direction. The day it clicked with me (6 years before I became profitable every week) was when I completely embraced the idea that I have no idea if the market will go up or down. I do not care. Every time you analyse the market you are interested in, plan a trade that is a buy, and plan a trade that is a sell. This way you will never get married to the idea of wanting to be either long or short. By not having a bias you will always be with the flow of the market. You will never be fighting it.

Originally Posted by tomorton

Could be as near the Holy Grail as we get: the implication being that there is no Holy Grail. If there was a Holy Grail, it would effectively give the user artificial power within / over the market, when maybe what we need less force used, to bend with the market more readily, to embvrace the riskl, not try to eliminate it with layered indicators, not to fight against the market, but to surf its power.

Originally Posted by PATrader

Don't lose heart its only a year. While you are out, take the time to learn more, practice more. then come back with a bang if you want