It appears that the interest in this thread is beginning to slip away. I'll try to stimulate a little discussion by reviewing some of the things I have done and learned during the past 6-9 months.
As some of you might remember (beginning with post 163), I began my daytrading pursuit by developing an automated daytrading platform over a year and a half ago. This past September, I began working only part-time last September to enable more focus on my trading and hopefully determine whether I could be a successful daytrader before giving up my job as an engineer. I would strongly recommend this to others considering a career in daytrading. DO NOT give up your career on the hope of 'making it' as a daytrader. Most people lose money daytrading. Repeat: Most people lose money daytrading. Do not burn any bridges at work, or even leave your full time career unless you are confident you can succeed at trading. Propose to work part-time, or take a leave of absence, if possible, to allow yourself to explore daytrading.
Respect the fact that the odds are against you to succeed. With this in mind, explain to yourself why you think that you will be able to succeed despite the odds. If you don't have some reason or edge that will help you succeed, then you will probably fail.
For me, I believed that computerizing and automating my trading would give me the speed and reproducibility to have an edge in the market. If I could develop a successful trading system, automation of my trading would allow me to reproduce my results without the stress and difficulty of making split second decisions consistently the same week-in and week-out. In addition, I had been 'paper trading' several momentum systems, and they were consistently profitable while trading 40-100 trades per day for several months. Therefore, I took a big step and went part-time from my job.
It didn't take long to find out that there is a huge difference between 'paper trading' and real trading. I thought that I was being conservative in my paper trading by assuming $25/ticket commissions and giving up the spread on every trade. However I learned that the biggest challenge in momentum trading is actually getting filled! Market makers will not (often) fill you at their posted price when you want to buy in a rising market. This was not intuitive for me; I assumed, incorrectly, that a posted price would be honored and that my orders would be executed against. NOT!
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