Recent content by bkbigfish

Update: I hit 14 winners in a row, and reached 20 contracts today. Then, horror of horrors, I lost one! I was numb for a bit, but fortunately I jumped right back in - and won the next 2. So I'm up $2,000 for the day, minus commissions (which start to add up, by the way), and up from 10 to 20...

Update: I'm up to 10 contracts (I transferred some money out of the account, otherwise I'd be at 12, or even 14), and won 2 trades with 10 contracts ($1,000 each!). My broker raised my limit, subject to equity, to 50 contracts, so no delay there! Let's see, that's 11 winners in a row, and I...

Thanks to everyone for the supportive advice, and to be cautious. That is exactly what I would tell anyone else considering/trading futures (though, honestly, my best advice would be to stay the hell away - even if this works now, it took 3 years and at least $100,000 to get to this point, I had...

Thanks for the replies. I feared I was going to get flamed, which is why I tried to make it clear that, as far as I could tell, this current winning streak of mine isn't beginner's luck or blind optimism. In fact, I'm taking it one day at a time, because there have been many, many winning...

This is a serious question, so please try to answer seriously. I'm looking for actual information, even secondhand, rather than speculation. A little history, to show that I'm not a noob. I started day-trading ES futures, as everyone does, because of the enormous leverage. I started out...

I think good poker players would make the best traders. Trading success is mostly psychological. I suggest that the "trading mind" can be summed up in the words "patient aggressivity." You need to be able to sit there and monitor the market, depending on your time frame, for hours, days, or...

Well, the way the KOSPI derivatives are set up, the futures are full-sized - there is no mini - so the margin is like US$10,000 per. Roughly speaking, the options are like minis, as the equity is closer to US$2,000. They are technically the most liquid options in the world, because the spread...

I use it sometimes. However, it's incredibly slow, and while it offers a lot of ways to screen for stocks, and lots of built in features like customized charting and fundamental data, the screening is just not flexible enough for me, and again, it's extremely slow - like Windows 95 slow. It's a...

Interactive Brokers - $0.005 per share, minimum $1.00 per trade MB Trading - $0.01 per share, minimum $1.00 per trade I use MB Trading. There are no hidden or monthly fees. They offer you a trading program (no charts, but Level 2 included) and Medved Quote Tracker (a simple charting program)...

There are many resources out there on shorting, but I'll give a brief overview. Shorting is just the opposite of buying. If you think a stock will go down, you borrow it from your broker (more on that later) and sell it now. You buy it back later, when the price has hopefully gone down. The...

Another word of advice: don't quit your day job (or night job) yet. Almost every successful veteran trader has gone bankrupt, or close to it, at first. Even if you have excellent coaching, and show significant paper trade profits, the pressure of having to earn your living through the markets...

I use direct access, as do most day or short-term traders, simply because of the commissions and execution speed. An online broker forces you to route the order through their servers, which then send it to their trade desk, which then executes it. A direct access broker gives you a direct line...

Direct-access firm MB Trading. Equities $0.01 per share, minimum $1.00. Options $1 each. Excellent customer service, free charting program (although very basic), integrated trading with good charting programs, and very reliable. You can check them out anywhere in the Net to see they're...

Just to fill in the gaps, any account initially starts out as a regular (non day trading) account. Your account is declared day trading if you trade in and out of anything (equity, option, future) three times within a five-day period. You usually have one appeal to the brokerage. The second time...

Bucket shop From everything I've seen about GCI Financial (although I've never traded with them), it seems obvious that it is a bucket shop. What that means is it is essentially a market-maker, or bookie, rather than a broker. You do not actually buy and sell currencies and equities on an...