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Absolutely not true. Observational learning is one of the most prevalent types of learning we implement, weather it's conscious or subconscious. Learning from the experiences of others is a great way to grow yourself. If you observe that 10 out of 12 people lost money trading over the course of a year, and you could go through each of them interviewing them on what their strategies were and how they went about trading, you could possibly gain imperative knowledge. Maybe you see that the 10 negative accounts all traded off of what CNBC said. Maybe the 10 losers all cut winners short while running with losers. The two positive account can also give you insight as to what they did differently to separate themselves from the others. The winners may have had a more strategic battle plan, they may have been more regiment, etc etc. The point, you absolutely can learn from others experiences.
Your posts are far too long to read through. The first couple sentences in this quote is a problem. You are moving yourself into a business that comes with losing and being wrong. Hopefully your ego is big enough to cushion your fall after you get thrown to the ground by the market. You have repeatedly been lectured by various people who all have given you detailed responses regarding their opinions. You are asking far too much because you are yet to take in anything you are being told.
If you are new an completely inexperienced in any field, seeking out experienced assistance is a great way to jump start your path to success. If you were getting into boxing, and the all time champions of each class came to you to offer assistance, you listen. It's acceptable to have your own opinion and ideas, but you need to take in and really think about what the experienced/successful are offering to you. Don't jump into a boxing ring against a pro without prior training, analysis, and strategy development. Similarly, don't jump into trading/investing without the same three requirements. Going off of what you "think" will work is going to get you one thing, the 10 count.
Absolutely, experience is non-transferrable. I can give you instructions for hours, days, weeks, even months, on how to ride a horse, but not one bit of it matters until you're in the saddle and have to negotiate a mutally agreeable course of
action with a 1200 pound animal that has a mind of its own.
But I can tell you how to avoid getting kicked in the face by said horse. Don't startle him, particularly from behind.
You can take hundreds of hours of classroom learning in how to fly a plane but until you're at the controls with air under
your wings, you don't have any experience that actually teaches you how to FLY the plane.
I never want to read someone saying "Your posts are too long". This is an indicator of a short attention span which is
a serious problem with most Americans today. Spending three minutes reading someone's complete comments will NOT hurt you.
Your other comments are relevant and applicable. I KNOW that developing a plan of action is very important to learning how to be a successful trader.
I HAVE asked for constructive input. And you know what I've gotten so far, from some people?
I ask about A and I get a long diatribe about B which has nothing to do with what I asked. Or I get people telling
me I'm doing it wrong and am going to lose money BUT they won't give me any specific advice.
So I'm not asking for advice anymore. I will simply read up on the many valuable articles regarding technicals
and many other subjects, which can be found here on this site. I will let those articles be my instructors and guides.
And I will continue to post results of my trades as I make them, unless I get bored with it or decide to be less open
about my personal finances.
I came here to learn. I can still do that from the library articles even if people participating in this topic have (mostly) proven that they are unwilling to answer a simple question directly.
Really I think that several people who have commented here have lorded their experience and skills over me and told
me I will fail without actually bothering to give any really useful advice. This doesn't apply to everyone, to be sure,
and whether you fit into one category or another, I don't have to name names. You KNOW which category you fit into as whomever you are, you know what responses you have made to me. Would you (anybody reading) characterize your comments as encouraging or discouraging? I'll let you answer that question for yourself and I don't need you to write your reply in this topic. It's enough that YOU know.
My trade activity for the day consisted of watching SEAS climb to a high of about 20.78 per share and drop to 20.27 at the end of the day, which would be a gain of 1.17 per share for me at the price of 20.27. I am still in and am more
sure than ever that I will meet my 21 to 22 dollar per share goal withing maybe a week.
Of course I do. And I've revised it to a higher value so as long as my brokerage executes the order in a timely fashion, I've now locked in a reasonable profit margin.
I'm not very experienced but I'm not dumb. I'm well into profitable levels for this trade so of course the stop would be set so as to preserve those profits. Or most of them, anyway.
My stop is set at a profit of a dollar per share. Which in this case would be about 5 percent profit, and 371 dollars net if the order executed at my stop.
This is actually the first time I've set a stop order while in profitable territory. Not a bad feeling.
One limitation I have with my current brokerage is that I can only have one standing order type active on a given position at any given time.
I can have a sell stop in place, OR a buy limit, but not both. So I had to choose between the sell stop and the automatic sell order
at 21 dollars a share.
Since I want to protect my profits I determined that it's safer to keep the sell stop. But this will require me to keep a close eye on
upward movement in the coming days.
This is yet another reason why I want to move my trading to another brokerage. It would be nice to be able to put a stop loss
on an order AND also put a trailing stop on it at the same time. In this case I'd set the trailing stop to trail somewhere between 10 to 20 cents off the peak. (Subject to revision, of course.)
My current brokerage doesn't even offer the trailing stop type of order. I have suggested to them that this is something that any active trader would really appreciate.
We are speaking about similar generalized concepts but different at the core in very important ways. Let's take driving a manual car as an example, I'm sure some will be able to literally relate. If you want to learn how to drive a manual car, coming from automatic, there are many things you have to understand. How to work the clutch, what is a clutch!? When to shift, how to shift, why do I shift? etc etc etc. I went through this exact situation. I was able to listen to people who had manual cars, watch them drive, and watch youtube videos on people explaining how to drive a manual car. Through other peoples experience and observational learning I was able to deduct important concepts when it comes to driving a manual car. As you say, was I able to jump in the drivers seat and launch that car, shift at the blink of an eye, rev match around turns, and put to shame pros, no.. But, I was exponentially further advanced than most, and within a couple weeks I already had more skill that most of my friends. So yes, at the end of the day, you absolutely need your own personal experience, but, along the way, learning from others experience / observing successful individuals can help to potentially accelerate your success and increase your potential.
It will not hurt me, but it also would not have helped me to further understand/answer what I was trying to figure out. That comment mostly referenced the difficulty of the post to provide clear/concise points. I read the post.
Not true. You absolutely have received clear and concise advice. I believe it was @josh who mentioned that you must know everything about something you are invested in. You are not trading simple price action of tape info, you are in SEAS for a "longer term" investment in the company, because of that, knowing all possible information is imperative to making educated decisions in reference to your investment. Also, @Underexposed provided you with a detailed break down along with statistical significance, not sure how much more you can expect. I'm not sure who, but someone else recommended taking some time off from live trading, which I also believe could be smart.
Just as a final note, simply telling you that you are headed down a non-lucrative road wouldn't be enough, I agree. But you are being told that in reference to your current trading style. There is nothing wrong with that. It's no different then telling an amateur Golfer to not hold the club by head when making a drive, because if they do, they will fail at driving. Constructive criticism.
I read the first couple of posts on this thread from you and then jumped to the most recent. What a difference in your tone.
Please go back to your early posts and reeread and remember why you started this. Ignore the useless comments. Literally ignore - they are easy to spot. Continue to concentrate on your goals and good luck.
@Limitless100, I get what you're saying about experience vs education. I think we've both made valid points.
To compare that to my own personal experience, I spent many hundreds of hours flying flight simulators on the PC
before I actually took my first real world flying lessons. Actually my simulator logbook had about 2000 hours logged.
At my very first flight, my instructor observed my aircraft handling skills and asked me if I've ever flown before. He
commented that I was extremely smooth on my control inputs and flew like a veteran.
Of course I took that as quite a compliment. I told him that I'd been simming for about 2000 hours logged time
and he replied "I figured it might be that. A good simulator is very useful and that's why the whole industry uses them.
What kind of planes do you fly in your sims?"
I replied "F-16s, via Falcon 4.0." He laughed. Although a Cessna 150 is very different from an F-16, the same
principles of flight apply. Learning to fly a simulated fighter smoothly and precisely made it that much easier to fly the Cessna or Piper starting from the very first flight.
So, yes, I do completely agree that observation and education are very useful but we should agree that they are not a drop-in replacement for actual experience in the saddle...cockpit...trader's armchair.