MPBigley

Will do torero, thanks for the posts. Capital is transferred today, we'll give it a Monday, July 2 start. I'll post a monthly update at the end of July. Best wishes to all of you. MPBigley

I appreciate the comments and I should tell you that I have a trading plan and have designed the rules for the system. The first month was spent tweaking and adjusting every time it blew up. Basically, the last three months I have spent 'paper trading or sim trading' through my broker real time using the appropriate dollar amount I would be trading with live. I have focused on preserving capital, limiting losses, and following the system rules. I laughed when I read both of your posts regarding advice, because, at first I did everything you guys described. Over traded, breaking the rules in order to just participate, lol. Once I found I had worked out the technical bugs, and trusted that the probability for a profitible trade existed when buy signals were generated, the results improved significantly. It does take an extreme amount of discipline to keep your hands off until the market conditions generate a probable buy signal. It appears the only way to truly know if I have the ability, discipline, and mentality to do this is to do it. I'll 'paper trade' until the end of June, then start live in July. I will pick up that book you mentioned, it sounds like an informative read. Any information to help is appreciated. I appreciate the time you took to answer and look forward to hearing more also. Thanks, I really appreciate this forum, as it is the best resource I have found on the web related to day to day trading. MPBigley

Some time ago I posted some questions regarding trading equities for a living. I believed at that time that I could daytrade equities. While papertrading a system I developed (simple, like me, lol) I ran across a couple of things that intruiged me, and began to build a simple trading system based on the idea. Granted I have only paper traded it for a few months, but I wanted to post some of the criteria to get all of your helpful input. Please feel free to shoot holes, offer advice, negative or positive as you wish. I'm looking for constructive or destructive, lol, criticism. Sorry, I must preface this, I can't get away from the equities thing, lol, and I know most of you all are futures traders, but, principles usually apply across the board. I manage some family members accounts, and was using some ETF's, specifically the Proshares indice ETF's long and short to hedge some portfolios back during the 'correction' in early March. I noted how these ETF's correlated to the indices and began to follow them daily. Specifically, Proshares has some X2 (long & short) ETF's that track the major indices. I began playing with the idea of attempting to build a simple trading system to profit daily from utilizing these vehicles to daytrade or scalp or swing trade. I also wanted to keep it simple, and trade one market, learn it, understand it, live it, and attempt to profit from it. What I did was use the QID(NASDAQ 100 SHORT ETF X2) and the QLD (NASDAQ 100 LONG ETF X2) and used two specific technical indicators (RSI & STOCHASTIC) on a 1 minute intraday chart. The ETF's trade completely opposite of each other, hence, when an extreme buy indicator is generated, on one ETF, the inverse ETF is generating an extreme sell indicator. Proshares has ETF's that track (X2) all of the indices long and short, and although I haven't researched it to the extent I did the QID/QLD relationship, I'm sure it can be applied across the board, although liquidity might be an issue on the other ETF's. Generally speaking, it usually generates a total of between 3 and 5 buy signals per trading day, and over 70% of the time it is a valid profitable signal. I initially worried about liquidity, but after following the daily volume and tape for some time, I belileve that is not an issue. I am also using stops (mental, though, not order wise). I stated I had about 100K in capital, but, have found using a small portion of that capital, I have been able to paper trade successfully for some time. I realize that, that literally means nothing, but, am wondering how long I should continue to paper trade this thing before attempting to get my feet wet ( or chopped off, lol). Am I onto something that I can make profitable here? Can anyone fire me some questions about problems that I am not foreseeing? Anyway, I began to research this more in detail after reading all of the wonderful information contained within this website from all of you. Some common themes I garnered were, keep it simple, do only one thing, understand it, live it, preserve capital, and constantly keep attempting to learn. I welcome any and all of your input, as you have generated a lot of ideas from just reading your posts. Thank you for your time, and I apologize for the length of this. MPBigley

Hello Syamster: I read through some of your posts on this board, and like you was getting started in day trading equities. I noticed you posted a few months ago and was wondering how you have been doing? It seems we have similar parameters and I was wondering if you were meeting your 1.5 to 2 % daily goal? What have been your biggest hurdles, obstacles? Successes? Would enjoy hearing some of your beginner experiences if you have time to post them. Thank you. MPBigley

Thank you for all of your responses, they were all helpful, and appreciated. I will look into the e mini futures also, to be honest, I never contemplated doing anything other than equities, although as an investor from time to time used put options for insurance and also some income selling calls on underlying equities I held. I will look into futures also, thanks for the tip. A couple of other questions that I have been wondering about also when you have some time. Does anyone know a good resource that can show me how to set up my trading as a business? Since I will not be 'quitting my day job' and probably actively trading also, how will I be treated by the IRS, since I will be deriving income from my primary job and also deriving and income (or loss) trading actively? Any suggestions, thoughts? Thanks for the help. MPBigley

I recently came upon this website and forum and have found it to be a great learning tool and resource. A couple of questions for any of you seasoned traders when you have some free time. I've been a short term and long term investor for some time (about seven or eight years now) and have always wanted to dabble or day trade. I've read quite a few books in the last three years on the subject. I tend to be a good short term and long term investor, but I fully understand this is a totally different animal. I'm willing to pay some 'tuition' in learning the trade and perhaps find a way to make a living doing something I've always enjoyed. In the next year I will have an equity account that approaches around 100K to begin to trade. I have accounts at AMTD and also Scottrade. Fine for what I do, but in looking into day trading I realize I'll need a much stronger platform. Best choices available? In the next year I am going to 'paper' trade. I've followed about 50 equity symbols for the last few years some liquid enough to daytrade and some not. I'm comfortable trading stocks. Is it more important to trade stocks you follow closely and know or seek out momemtum each hour, day, week, month? Of the fifty I mentioned above, I probably know twenty like the back of my hand, trading patterns, the business, the expectations, the growth patterns, and business cycles. I would be comfortable enough trading them, and have been, just not on a day to day basis. Is 100k account enough to survive, paying some learning tuition and perhaps turn a decent years profit? I'm not going to quit my 'day' job until I can prove to myself I can stand on my own two feet. Thanks for responses, and thanks for the resource of information here. MPBigley