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

To: Hands Off who wrote (1258)	6/22/1999 5:01:00 PM
From: Michael Friesen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18137

Marshall, Most traders have this problem sooner or later. The shorter term you trade, often, the harder it gets to "pull the trigger." There is no formula for how to deal with this. My suggestions: 1) Often the root is a fear of taking losses. You need to have a trading plan that keeps your losses small. Only by taking losses will you get to the winning trades that make up for it all and then some. 2) In light of #1 - are you trading with true "risk capital" that you can afford to lose? If not - then get some first. If it is risk capital, then, assuming your plan uses good risk control, say: "I will follow my plan and trade aggressively when that is called for, until and unless my capital declines by X%" Decide what X is BEFORE you do anything else. 3) Don't feel like you have to be trading all the time just because you have real-time quotes. Your goal should initially be to make just a little bit of money each day, consistently. Don't worry about making a killing. Refine your trading plan to give you only a few positions each day (if that) to focus on. I'm still learning. Hope this helps, Michael Friesen (The Quant) intelligentspeculator.com

To: Hands Off who wrote (1258)	6/22/1999 8:03:00 PM
From: -	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18137

Marshall, Thanks for the note, it was indeed a most amazing day in the markets. This was strictly hardball-city, us vs. the big boys. WRT your post, please allow me to direct your attention to my first three rules of daytrading (from a prior post): #1: Don't lose money! Rules #2 and #3: are the same rule. Seriously, if you're switching to full time, here's the best advice I can give you. Go read my "Equity Curve" technique (archived on this thread), build yourself one either with a pencil and paper, or in Excel, and stare at it, focus on it, every single day. I still do that everyday, and I can testify that this is the single most powerful technique in my arsenal to insure you don't violate rules #1, 2, and 3. Because you're staring at a chart of your Trading performance (gain/loss in equity marked-to-market including carryovers), updated every day. The feedback is sent both to your conscious logical mind, and very powerfully to your subconscious thinking, which will go to work to improve your trading performance. It works, trust me on that. The best athletes all use this kind of stuff, it is not hocus-pocus. Good trading is a lot like high-intensity sports competition. If you don't damage your trading equity, you can stay in the game... but your post sounds a little scary. Being in the market real-time is like flying an F-18, you'd must become very decisive, more than anything else! I'm sure others can add to this starting point recommendation. The deer-in-headlights syndrome is well known to us all, and effects almost every trader at times (excuse me while I move my antlers :) Good trading, -Steve