Welcome to NexusFi: the best trading community on the planet, with over 150,000 members Sign Up Now for Free
Genuine reviews from real traders, not fake reviews from stealth vendors
Quality education from leading professional traders
We are a friendly, helpful, and positive community
We do not tolerate rude behavior, trolling, or vendors advertising in posts
We are here to help, just let us know what you need
You'll need to register in order to view the content of the threads and start contributing to our community. It's free for basic access, or support us by becoming an Elite Member -- see if you qualify for a discount below.
-- Big Mike, Site Administrator
(If you already have an account, login at the top of the page)
Interesting that I've told myself something similar several times and know it was dangerous to not treat the sim account as the real account. I highlighted those trades that I know I would never have done with real cash and set them as a goal for correction if I encounter the situation again. Sometimes it is so hard to recognize whether your execution/ strategy was off or because I was just unlucky, because you can always make up a reason why the trade was failed. It's a hard pill to swallow in this business.
I agree Kevin, It took me also four years to break even on some positions I held during the financial crisis.
What's really funny is if Ron99 was such a fortune teller, why didn't he just buy some VIX puts before Lehman Brothers fell? He would have been a multi-millionaire
For me, the school of hard knocks has been the best way to learn how to profitable trade options. I have learned to not let fear control my trading. The most profitable trade I have done this year has been my FB puts during the analytica scandal. Those type of opportunities do not come around often on such a fundamental strong company as FB
I will say this, Ninja Trader fills on /ES sim is pretty darn close to actual fills. I was actually really surprised, much better than TOS fills on /ES
Volatility is good for the market and trading.
Preservation of capital is the most important concept for those who want to stay in the trading game for the long haul. - Van Tharp
Start off by making some longer term trades or investments, hit some singles first. Nothing flashy or 1000% ROI but I guarantee you will be more profitable than trying to day-trade/ES
Volatility is good for the market and trading.
Preservation of capital is the most important concept for those who want to stay in the trading game for the long haul. - Van Tharp
You’re absolutely right in this. I’m still trying to determine the risk level that I’m comfortable with, given my budget to open the account is only $5000. I certainly do not plan to blow out the account so I’ll need to make sure I train enough to increase the probability of win rate before going live.
Your in-depth response is very comprehensive and valuable. Thank you for spending the time to share your thoughts! I’m currently joining a trading room and using their strategy to trade, at the same time trying to learn to read the market and define my own style, such as risk tolerance and whatnot. Interesting about the 2% of luck as I thought this % would be higher, otherwise you can get to the success rate of 98% given you can master the other controllable factors. It definitely sounds manageable though.
I started trading fx and stocks about 5 years ago but never really took them serious did it more for a get rich quick thing. Then i got a good job and it took a seat on the back burner but I still trader FX. The hours killed me as I would wake up at 2 am to trade the London session. I finally decided to stop as I was constantly break even and wasn't happy so about 8 months to a year ago I started to really take this serious and try to pursue full time eventually. Always wanted to trade full time but was never able to find what I wanted to trade.
So long story short I'm in save mode right now and not in a rush to get back into the game its not going any where. I trade P/A take a look at my journal normally update it every day!
I'm trading all the Emini Indexes and I using the method from the trading room where they look at the relationship between markets and the support and resistant levels defined by their program. I like their program but I also customize it to fit to my own risk tolerance. The area that I have many problems with is the psychological aspect that heavily impacts my decision on when to enter a trade. I think if I can get it down then I can make profit consistently. Time will tell, but I don't have much time left though. I have a good paid job (but very stressful and long hours) that I need to decide whether I want to go back in less than a month or so. Oh how much I want this to work out but I may need to do what you're doing and not making a rush decision.
So much thoughtful advice coming from experience has been provided already in this thread that it sounds redundant to pen another. But I'm going to do it for two reasons:
1) The first is about the bit in your quote above I have placed in bold. It is my belief that to even have a fighting chance to make it in this game one has to have a degree of conviction way beyond that of most people. It's a whatever-it-takes, failure-not-an-option, type of conviction. Anything short of that and the probabilities of success are greatly diminished.
2) I don't have kids, so I am unable to talk from personal experience, but from what I have seen around me, kids will always come first, above anything else: their needs, their priorities, their expenses (that has an impact too). It's the rules and we all understand this is the way it's supposed to be.
One of the several things that trading has taught me is that a mindset fine-tuned for trading takes considerably longer than anticipated, even when being conservative. So, like others have pointed out, your assumption of saving time may turn out to be optimistic to say the least.
I find FIO an incredibly helpful resource to turn to for support and for great content, and lots of people help each other, but it is very important that people have clear expectations from the start about this endeavour.