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Strategies & Market Trends : Daytrading Psychology -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: rocklobster who wrote (26)	12/1/2000 8:13:26 PM
From: Threei	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 104

rok, CMGI is hard to fill 1000?? What broker do you use?? You gotta be kidding, it's one of the easiest stocks execution wise. My guess would be, you are trading with online broker. I can't imagine any troubles with execution on most of the stocks you listed when using direct access. "market makers definitely rob the retail investors"... "I hate daytrading".... sigh... what can I say... just two things: 1. There is no way to win with this kind of attitude 2. I don't want to sound patronizing, but you might consider to give some thoughts to what the reality of the market is. I looked at last 10 or so of your posts - they show clearly that you are trading something that is far from reality. And btw, you don't really think that in multiday timeframe market is more friendly than intraday, do you? :) Vadym

To: rocklobster who wrote (26)	12/1/2000 8:27:58 PM
From: Technopeasant	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 104

Fascinating topic. I've been interested in the "taking the emotion out" aspect of trading for some time. With all due respect I don't really think its possible. We are human. I've been working on ways to harness or retrain the emotions. Stops are my concern. I've made every mistake possible with stops. I've cancelled stop orders because the price dropped too close. I've told myself a stop order is not necessary because the stock I just bought is going up, (or I wouldn't have bought it, right?). I've set stops too tight. I've set stops too loose. I have screamed as sudden short lived down spikes have robbed me of good position trades. For the last three months, (which means its specific to this market) I've been keeping a track of what happens with my stops. Almost 70% of the time when my stop triggers, the stock goes down below the set price. Interesting result. YMMV. I'm now telling myself that setting the stop and letting it trigger is THE HIGH PERCENTAGE PLAY. I can buy it back, but it is surprising how infrequently I do. By "rewarding" myself by recognizing the "success" of the stop, they are getting easier to handle and the emotion is turning to pleasure at having made the right play. The 30% of the time that I am "robbed" still irritates me though. Make no mistake about it, we are being robbed.

To: rocklobster who wrote (26)	12/2/2000 1:44:05 AM
From: Ken W	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 104

rok, Hi, new to the thread here and may be butting in. If I may suggest limiting your share size to smaller amounts, say 300 to 400 at the most. If the trade goes against you then your downside risk is limited to only 3 or 4 hundred dollars, rather than thousands. In this recent market I've found that 2 or 3 trades per day net 700 to 900 dollars per day. More than enough for my meager needs. My discipline is to trade only stocks that I know well, (there is 10 to 12) that I know will move at least 1 point each day. I take that point and do not go for more. If it a stock goes up 5 then oh well. I limit my downside to 5% of the cost base...except for MU recently, which totally blind sided me on a pullback from 41ish. <GGGG> Ken