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Strategies & Market Trends : Trading For A Living -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gary Metzer who wrote (1659)	4/23/1999
From: Roman S.	Respond to of 1729

To All, After reading the last one hundred posts from the last couple of days, had to put in my 3/32's. I've been trading for 3 years, now in my fourth. I quit my FT job with a public corporation in Chicago on Feb 5. Had the 401k, Employee stock purchase plan for 15% below market, good insurance, the whole nine yards. Had my hours changed from 830-5 to 10am-6 cst. Was trading the open hit & miss, sometimes carrying position into work, where I couldn't get my RTIII to work because of their firewall, which amounted to more consistent losses than gains. So far I'm down for the 3.5 years about $16k. Then my job wanted me back on 830-5. I had to make a decision whether to give up on my trading and all the time invested gaining knowledge, or dump the job. Since I dumped the job, which my wife could be less than happy about, my account dwindled to $800 cash in a cash only account around the beginning of March. Since then, I've gotten it back up to about $4k, not counting money I had withdrawn to pay the bills. I have found by not having to race against the clock to get into and out of a trade before going to work, has immensely helped me with my patience to pick the 'right' trade. I trade from home, ISDN dual channel line, AMD 350 CPU with 256Meg of RAM, built it myself. I use a discount broker and get good fills and confirmatons. I have mentioned them previously on SI and on Yahoo, and they got overrun with so much new business, I was having a hard time logging onto their site and executing trades. That was a couple months ago. They have since fixed that and now business back to normal, but you can see why I don't want to mention who they are. Since I have had time now to sit in front of the screen and really study what is going on, I have a better 'feel' for what 'may' happen with a stock that I'm considering to purchase for a daytrade. I watch for the right momentum building in a stock right before it takes off. Since April 1, I'm up $2900 net. Usually, I do just one trade a day due to limited capital. If I don't see what I need to see for action in a stock, I don't buy it. Even on a bad day, if you have the patience, you can wait for that 'one' right trade to come along that day. I'm averaging about $200 per day now. My losses don't exceed $250. The key is: "Know when to do NOTHING !". It is the most important rule I have found. If there is nothing out there acting right if you're just playing the long side, don't try to force a trade. If the whole market is shaky and hardly anything is going up, short if you can. If you have an all cash account, shut down the computer and go out to enjoy the day and come back tomorrow. The market will still be there, possibly with a couple of runners just waiting to happen. I had to give real daytrading a try, because if I never gave it my full focus, I would have never known if I could be successful. Now I know I can be successful. It's a matter of waiting for that 'right' trade to show itself for that day, and play only 500-1000 shares max to keep the hurt at a minimum if it doesn't go my way. I believe I will recoup all my money in due time, while being self employed, and having the freedom of setting my schedule to my needs. If I know I will be out of the house that day, I just leave it in cash and don't worry about whether my stop was hit and it ran back up, or a multitude of other things that can happen. The first stumbling block to not achieving a goal, is yourself being the first person to put a psychological but very real stumbling block in front of your path. This is by telling yourself, "I can't do it".

To: Gary Metzer who wrote (1659)	4/23/1999 9:39:00 AM
From: JParker	Respond to of 1729

Gary, Thanks for the advice and suggestions. I have yet to even return to papertrading and I am seriously considering a return to writing software. An interesting project has arrived and I may take it. The only complaint I had about Schwab is the way you cancel an order through the status screen. If you have done a number of orders, it would take a number of minutes for the screen to refresh. I decided to switch once after a stock dropped rapidly and I couldn't get out. Other than that, Schwab has been great. I have never had a negative experience with any Schwab personel. Good Luck, Jeff