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

To: Apakhabar who wrote (15200)	2/9/2002 12:30:46 PM
From: KymarFye	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18137

Point taken - I may have been speaking a little too loosely when I used the word "disaster." A trading disaster would be "short the world on full margin when the Fed surprises" or "long the world full margin when the terrorists attack," or any of the sometimes slower-motion disasters that can afflict novice position trader-investors, as in "averaging down on 'oversold' tech throughout 2000" or "believing management's rosy scenarios and putting your entire portfolio in The Company." I was really referring to the kind of lower scale, tactical rather than strategic disasters that even relatively experienced traders can find themselves experiencing and re-experiencing - like, for instance, buying a poorly set-up breakout that appears to have support from a larger market move, but instead turns down, and continues down, spiraling down the drain, even while "everyone else" is participating in a big move up - letting the stop slide a little, a lot, a real lot... (the boiling frog syndrome). Or getting whipsawed on a move up, reversing, getting whipsawed again, reversing, getting whipsawed again... Or hovering over a "perfect" set-up that goes nowhere or turns around while several others on your watch list, but ignored for the moment, launch into hyperspace off slightly less than "perfect" set-ups. Sure, we all know there are trading rules and other methods that are supposed to prevent those kinds of things from happening, at least most of the time, but I'd be lying if I didn't say that just putting two days in a row without SOMETHING like that happening still seems to me like a daytrading accomplishment.