jzw

what?? overnight margins are like 5K / ES contract. How is that extraordinarily high? Also overnight liquidity is less but unless you are trying to dump a 1000+ contracts there is no problem.

He's trading the Russell 2000 futures (a favourite of day traders for its high volatility and low margin requirements) and I think its Jan 2008. He's gone long on Friday, probably averaging down a losing position and decides to carry it over the weekend. Monday is a US holiday but Europe is trading and Europe tanks. Its one of those days when the Dow was down something like -500 intraday. After the event it becomes clear that SocGen triggered the collapse by unwinding the positions put on by its rouge trader into an already weak market. Anyway - my votes go for Don Miller and MBAGearHead. Most of the others are good for comedy value if you want to know why 95% of traders lose.

If you ever hesitate about closing a losing trade - you should stop right there. Until you overcome your psychological block to closing a trade you always risk blowing up regardless of how good your trade selection is. >>I use VSA and Wyckoff method mostly(still learning), Candlesticks analysis, chart patterns(tops, bottoms, triangles and all), S&R lines, trend lines, and i look at fibonacci retracement levels at times. Using lots of different bits from different techniques can often confuse more than it helps. Start with something simple that works like horizontal S&R lines and add bits if you need them. Trading intraday you really need a simple method because your decision making process must be pretty quick.

great - hopefully the other replies on this thread make more sense now.

There is no such thing as a sell order. So you have 6 primitive types - buy market, sell market, buy limit, sell limit & buy stop, sell stop. [some exchanges support other types]

The order book consists only of limit orders. Buy limit orders below the current price and sell limit orders above the current price. These limit orders wait passively to be matched against market orders. Limit orders do not move the current price only market orders do. There can't be any sell offers below the current price because they would fill immediately at the current price (not at their stated limit price which would be worse).