Short Term traders - advice please

mmm, I tried to exclude my emotions from my trading for many years - and failed. Then I realised I had to live with them so I built my strategy to take account of them which either nullified them completely or reduced the damage they caused.

Even all these years later I still can't exclude my emotions when I'm tinkering in my play account but my main account has been made relatively safe from their influence.

good trading

jon
 
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Slorm said:
As others have mentioned the psychology is the hardest part. If you get a nasty feeling in the pit of your stomach when thing go against you, or exhilarated when you do well, then forget trading.
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A common misconception about trading is that psychology is the hardest part. It's not. It is putting the cart before the horse so to speak. The hardest part of trading is finding a durable edge with a positive expectancy that doesn't erode over time.
 
LondonUSTrader said:
A common misconception about trading is that psychology is the hardest part. It's not. It is putting the cart before the horse so to speak. The hardest part of trading is finding a durable edge with a positive expectancy that doesn't erode over time.
Click to expand...

you have to flatline your emotions,this is business,dont make it personal,save your feelings for loved ones.Taking losses is part of your continual training,keeps you humble and sharp.For all you paper traders out there,make yourself skip a meal on a loss over a certain size so you learn to take the pain
 
LondonUSTrader said:
A common misconception about trading is that psychology is the hardest part. It's not. It is putting the cart before the horse so to speak. The hardest part of trading is finding a durable edge with a positive expectancy that doesn't erode over time.
Click to expand...

You can have all the edge in the world but without the discipline to use and maintain it, it's worthless.

As in any other business, as soon as you let feelings get in the way you will lose that edge.
 
You can have all the edge in the world but without the discipline to use and maintain it, it's worthless.

As in any other business, as soon as you let feelings get in the way you will lose that edge.


I agree, use your discipline as your 'edge' - trading is simple but not easy...........

Look at dieting, granted there is 5% of the population who are overweight due to medical reasons, there is 5% who are underweight due to the same reason, but for the remaining 90% of the population there is only one excuse for being overweight - lack of discipline, either in their eating habits or lack of exercise.

To return to the original thread of this discussion, I feel we have hijacked Jackie's original request for help with all the psychological discussion, sorry Jackie I am partly to blame.
 
Slorm said:
You can have all the edge in the world but without the discipline to use and maintain it, it's worthless.

As in any other business, as soon as you let feelings get in the way you will lose that edge.
Click to expand...

Yes, but with no edge you won't win regardless of your discipline. You need the edge first, then after you have that psychological matters become important.
 
Tawe Trader said:
You can have all the edge in the world but without the discipline to use and maintain it, it's worthless.

I agree, use your discipline as your 'edge' - trading is simple but not easy...........

Look at dieting, granted there is 5% of the population who are overweight due to medical reasons, there is 5% who are underweight due to the same reason, but for the remaining 90% of the population there is only one excuse for being overweight - lack of discipline, either in their eating habits or lack of exercise.

To return to the original thread of this discussion, I feel we have hijacked Jackie's original request for help with all the psychological discussion, sorry Jackie I am partly to blame.
Click to expand...


Discipline is no edge. You can be the most disciplined trader in the world trading something that has a negative expectancy and guess what you will still lose!
 
LondonUSTrader said:
Yes, but with no edge you won't win regardless of your discipline. You need the edge first, then after you have that psychological matters become important.
Click to expand...

The relationship between edge and discipline is symbiotic, neither is likely to suceed without the other.
 
Instead of papertrading, try Tradindex's play account. If you can turn £20k into £30k in several trades then you've probably cracked it.
 
Hi guys!

thanks again for all your input. I'm nervous and excited about this, I'm worried it may become too difficult for me to select quality shares etc,.. but even if I don't decide to trade them, I still own them don't I ? and could trade them when I feel a bit more confident ? I was looking at some of the charting software (Sharescope) as receommended by a poster here, and I just wanted to ask how, if you use them, they would interface with the moving share price, or have I got that totally wrong and it is software you have to install at home or something ?

cheers
Jackie
 
With Sharescape Gold (the cheapest option) you install it on your PC. In the evenings, you can download the End Of Day data. If you are unsure what to select, then this software is useful because of its data mining facility. Omnitrader is apparently better as gives buy and sell signals but costs more. I am no expert in the two packages so don't really know the key differences... just bought SG cos it was cheaper and I didn't know if I would be trading longterm.
 
Jackie,
For what you need right now use this.....

http://www.prorealtime.com/en/

You can subscribe FOC to EOD stocks. Don't start paying when you don't have to, it's not good business.
You are free to do what you like ,but I would suggest you don't buy anything at all right now. From your post, you wouldn't have any idea what to do with it which means you're cannon fodder.
The above is a free charting/data service for you to play with whilst you read this and other sites to assemble a knowledge base. By all means use your excitement to motivate yourself whilst you are learning ,but contain it and don't let it get you into something you are not yet equipped for....LOL ,that's the second time I have said that..take your time, the markets will still be here next year and the year after that.
 
Ok ignore Sharescape Gold. Just had a quick play of that Prorealtime. It does everything I need to do in Sharescape Gold.

The only downside is that you can't run IG Index's graphs as Prorealtime as they use Java and seem to use the same window names, which causes problems. The other side is the nasty Mac-style multiple orphan windows which is terrible design from a user viewpoint.
 
In reference to my second paragraph, I've found out why. IG Index use ProRealTime's service for their graphing. I did wonder why the layout was so similar. In fact, if you want data for the last 20 years (EUR/JPY data back to 1982 :eek: ) plus tic-by-tic data live, you might as well sign up to IG Index. It even allows you to do programming (although I am not sure how and whether this can be set up to buy and sell automatically). Plus seeing something in a graph to give me the indication that the price is going the way I want is one thing; knowing how to put it into code is another. But if you are clever enough, I'm sure you could use it to your advantage.

Jesus, I sound like an IG Index sales person, albeit one that rambles.

PS: does anyone actually code stuff in IG Index/ProRealTime? How could I set up a higher lows detection system that pokes me in the ribs to wake me up?
 
I've tinkered around with ProRealTime/IG Index, I can't seem to work out how to do datamining. Anyone managed it?
 
shadowninja said:
I've tinkered around with ProRealTime/IG Index, I can't seem to work out how to do datamining. Anyone managed it?
Click to expand...

Hi shadowninja

I think Fibonelli's good with prorealtime, ask him, he may be able to help you, I did datamining when playing the now defunct t2w sharecomp, if nobody has replied I'll give it a go tomorrow, work nights and its way past kip time to do it now, soz. post up what you require and someone could give it a go.

Lightning
 
Why short term?

Jackie,

If you don't have the time to commit to short-term trading (monitoring news, research, and spending time at your screen etc), you might want to ponder long-term stocks investing as an alternative.

To pick up on what you should buy and how to select your own buys, take a look at fool.com or fool.co.uk. Those guys have a good rep and a decent track record, and their newsletters won't break the bank. Their buy-and-hold strategy is low on time commitment and light on commissions.

I don't write off short-term trading, as I'm in there myself. But I don't have a full-time day job that will keep me from giving this the attention that it needs and deserves.

I hope this helps.
 
Hi,

I'd also be interested in knowing how to datamine in ProRealTime. I'm contemplating getting Sharescope Gold for this very purpose, but if it can be done free elsewhere on the net, then I've already saved myself some money.

Thanks.
 
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