Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : DAYTRADING Fundamentals -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ken Adams who wrote (1090)	6/19/1999 7:45:00 PM
From: TraderAlan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 18137

Ken, I use share size for risk management. I'll go through periods when most entries are 500 to 1k. If things aren't great, I'll drop to 300 - 600. Never traded over 1K and don't intend to. I don't trust my judgement THAT much ever. Besides I'm much more interested in hitting singles and doubles than home runs. I'd rather regularly put hundreds in my accounts than lose thousands any particular day. Also believe there is an optimum size for each unique strategy. In other words, results will suffer above or below a certain size. This is especially hard for the gunslingers to understand. All the Wizard books show traders making the BIG trade. This leads to a natural bias that more size = more success. Alan

To: Ken Adams who wrote (1090)	6/19/1999 7:54:00 PM
From: KM	Respond to of 18137

During the big internut run in March/April, I was able to scalp 4-6k a day using 100/200 share blocks of stocks like CMGI, CNET, NSOL, YHOO, etc. Usually, though, I stick with 700-800 shares on stuff I'm very confident about (EXDS is an example, a stock I trade almost every day now) and 300-500 if I'm doing something recommended by someone else (which I've checked out and keep a very tight stop on). 100-200 on the Internuts (sometimes more on a short sale which, for some goofy reason, I feel safer with), which makes me a big weenie, I guess. 1000 share blocks I have done on the so called tick stocks, like Dell, MSFT or ORCL if they're in a definite recognizable trend, but 1000 on anything else, well, I don't have the guts.

To: Ken Adams who wrote (1090)	6/19/1999 9:41:00 PM
From: id	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 18137

On surviving as a trader with a small bankroll...Ken's question on trading size got me thinking. So many on this thread and in the trading literature caution against beginning trading with less than (take your pick) 50k, 100k, 200k etc. Yet, consider this: someone on this thread suggested a while back the best way to learn to trade might be to trade only 100 lots initially and just focus on preserving your bankroll rather than making money--just to study entries, exits, patterns, indicators, stock behavior etc. Of course, one wouldn't even begin doing this with real money till after considerable study, market watching, such as KM mentioned she did, paper trading or perhaps (ahem...) whatever one has learned from previous misadventures in the markets. Suppose one set up a trading plan to trade 100 or 200 lots only of stocks under $10 (or $15 or $20), with a definite, focused strategy using stocks screened to meet some optimal criteria (such as Trader Alan's Dip Trips, or tradehards' under $10, plus one's own further DD, of couse), limited oneself to one trade a day or some such discipline, "cut your losses and let your profits run" with a preset dollar stop limit and perhaps an indicator or pattern exit signal such as discussed by the intelligent speculator on this thread, used a $10 broker like oh, say, Datek <g>, and kept and studied a daily trading journal for six months. Sure, that wouldn't provide a living but it seems to me one could nurse a 10k bankroll for some time and even build it up so that larger lots and/or higher priced stocks could be considered. Is such a strategy (or any other) really inevitably doomed? Maybe it's just my aging hippie idealism (had a ponytail for twenty years before I cut it off and went back to grad school <g>), but it just seems wrong to say there is NO viable trading strategy for the determined and disciplined little guy or gal with 10 or 20k. I would really appreciate a serious consideration of the above by any or all of you trading pros on this great thread. id