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Strategies & Market Trends : Dow Jones Futures -- A free paper trading service -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Patrick Slevin who wrote (484)	4/15/2000 9:53:00 PM
From: David	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 797

Pat, Glad that you've done well. My intuition tells me that you made a very good advice. Our boy is in the 4th grade, girl in the 2nd. We live in the Bay Area, Calif. and pay monthly mortgage. If I quit day job, I have to pay medical insurance out of my own pocket. Just too risky to quit. My wife is very supportive to my trading and thinks I can quit. The worst, she says, is that I find another day job when the trading fails. I spend much more time trading stocks and options than trading futures. And I spend a lot of time studying markets, designing systems and strategies. Trading futures requires far less time, if one uses a system doing position trading, than trading equities. If one has a system, one just follows the signal and trades it, until the system stops working. In trading stocks, however, one needs to adjust strategies constantly, based on market trend, sector rotations, etc. In my view, every stock trader and investor alike needs to study future trading, so that he is able to adjust accordingly when the trend changes, but a future trader doesn't need to know much about individual stocks. I know a long term investor who started investing some 20 years ago. His portfolio peaked in July 98 at over 6 millions and now drops to around 2 millions. Other than adding positions, he never touches his holdings on these years. What I am saying is that if one can not watch the market, one should not even 'invest' oneself. I run my future trading system daily against both DOW and NDX data. NDX part switched to sell zone on 3/9. I used that as a warning to my stocks trading. But I don't trade NDX future because it is too volatile. I will stop trading stocks for a while and increase the size on future trading. Up to now, my trading size ranges between 2 to 5 Dow contracts. Average premium is less than 1 contract of SP future. Anyway, I greatly appreciate your valuable advice, and will think about it more. Take care, D.