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Strategies & Market Trends : Your Worst Trading Enemy.. You -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: shawnwolff who wrote (7)	1/15/2001 3:37:18 PM
From: Canuck Dave	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 223

OK Doctor, here's my situation. I started online trading about 2 1/2 years ago after being passed over for promotion at work (again) in a typical "Dilbert" place. After floundering for about 9 months, made a lot of money in 1999. Quit my job at the end of 1999 and made quite a lot more money in January and February of 2000. Since then, I have had 10 straight losing months. Since I'm being careful (most of the time!), the losses are small, but I'm getting worried. My problems are three fold. 1. I have a lot more capital to play with than when I started which requires a whole different approach. You don't go 100% into a Tech flier for a lot reasons now, least of which is you'll push the price around and have liquidity problems. I'm having trouble adapting to slow moving value stocks and sure miss the good old days. 2. Since I don't have the paycheck, I'm reluctant to make big trades, but small trades bore me and I end up being undisciplined. 3. I seem to be making nothing but bad entries, and miss good opportunities (like last week, never pulled the trigger on RBAK). Lost a bunch on silver and gold last fall, even though the charts were telling me bad things. You got any sage words? Guess I'm floundering again. CD

To: shawnwolff who wrote (7)	1/15/2001 5:12:47 PM
From: Steve Felix	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 223

shawnwolff, Nice thread. 1 point stop? I thought I was the only person doing that these days. <gg> I am not in position to be a day trader. I am more than happy to raise a stop into positive territory and give a stock a chance to work. IMHO too many people are willing to take too many small "wins" these days. " I just think that it is important to match strategies with your personality" Very well put. My experiences with small stocks differ from "On a very small stock I can keep 1/8 pt stops, but in those cases the potential is usually much smaller." Percentage return $ for $ can be much greater, albeit with much more risk. After a few intolerably too large losses I found the need to pare positions and give more room. Entering all positions knowing the loss will be held to 1% or less of my capital has made me a better trader. Seems I tend to take smaller positions in better risk/reward trades, picking my spots more carefully. In a way this seems backwards since I end less concentrated, in more positions. Am I dyslexic?? <gg>