DANGER WILL ROBINSON!! DANGER!! LONG RAMBLING POST AHEAD!!!
Ketan-
I'll take a stab at a few of your questions, but bear in mind that I consider myself a trading rookie...so take my thoughts with a large grain of salt.
<<if you traded so many positions all in one day, doesn't that diversify too much? i.e. hard to track.>>
Yes. I prefer two or three open positions at a time, but will go to a maximum of six. I use MB Trading, and their position minder makes it fairly easy to keep track of all of your open positions and react quickly to changes in those positions.
<<you must have a lot of money to play with to have the broker fees be minimal, right?>>
Like any any biz, undercapitalization can be a primary cause of failure. You must have enough money so that 1) you can take a loss and still be in biz and 2)you can take a loss and not have fear stress you out to the point that you can't trade effectively. I went to cash in my long term portfolio in early August...giving me more money to do short term trades with. Now like I said, I'm still a rookie, so on days when the gaps are saying to short, my trade size is so small that there's no way that I'm going to get back my transaction costs...that's a business cost, a tuition of sorts. I paper traded first, then I'll start learning with small amounts. On days like yesterday, I'll buy larger amounts, because I feel that my previous trading has given me reason to feel confident with the long trades.
<<I have 26-24 winning %. Unfortunately, I have a loss for the year due mostly to the last 3 months, getting killed.>>
I began doing this for a living at the beginning of this year, paper traded for about one month, then went for it. Like a lot of people, I could do no wrong. The don't "confuse brains with a bull market" adage was lost on me. I started experiencing losses in late July, came to the conclusion that I didn't know jack, and went back to paper trading a few weeks ago. You can't keep going back to the same well for water if it's gone dry.
So why not put your money in the bank for now, get out a pencil and paper, and try to develope a stratagy that produces consistent profits and you're comfortable with? I can tell you thru personal experience that the people on this thread will go out of their way to help you learn.
Jay
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