Khaosphere

Blehhhhhhh... Just went through the IB website and in order to open what they call a 'daytrading' account, there is a minimum of 25k needed. I have 15k lol. They say if their algorythm catches a 'regular' account which opens and closes positions daily too often (thats what I do every day), they will freeze the account for 90 days unless it has been identified as a daytrading account with the 25k min. Not good... I'll call my actual broker monday and put pressure on them to give me a 'volume' rebate or some free trades every month since I make more than 200 trades a month... Up until I reach 25k then I switch!!! me=wise newbie (obviously with your help guys!!!)

I actually use Disnat (In Canada) and the price range is from $5 to $9.95 depending on the quantity and price of the stocks. I checked the IB website and the trades starts from $1 (1 cent / share for canadian trades and 1/2 cent per sare for USA) That seems effectively way lower than my broker! Thank you for the insight, as I said in my first post I am a newbie in this field and learning the hard way!!! Guess where I'm gonna call monday morning: Ib canada. Thank you

Hello all!!! Yes I'm still at it and I enjoy it more than ever. I have completed my 104th trade (208 transactions) yesterday. I'm still walking up the learning curve but so far so good!!! 59 trades were with profits - 45 were losses. Overall I am losing $467 so far. Why I'm losing if almost 60% of my transactions were with profits? I identified 5 major points: 1- I tend to keep my positions a bit too long when they are not going in the direction I predicted. 2- The 1000 points mini-crash last week cost me $524 (I had 3 positions when it happened and all 3 hit the stop protection in a record time and my 3 positions were sold!). Too bad I had 3 long positions instead of short... 3- The transactions, ECN and SEC fees are astronomical. I paid more than $1,800 in fees so far. 4- I sell my winning positions too fast and I don't wait until the trend changes (yeah, at first I was excited like a baby to see 3-4 positions flashing in green, now I get used to it lol). 5- I transgressed the daytraders law that stipulates that we must NEVER keep a stock overnight. I did it 3 times and lost on the 3 positions I had. I thought that I would save the commission by keeping the stock overnight... it did cost me more than the commissions!!! So this is it so far. I am learning the hard way in a very volatile market but I like it that way. On the other hand, I made great moves and out of a $15,000 starting capital I was able to do many $200+ net profit transactions within less than 1 hour. My best daytrader transaction was on NASDAQ when I went long of 1500 shares of JDSU (JDS Uniphase) at $12.15 on May 12 around 11h30 (on MACD and stochastics indicators on the NASDAQ index and the stock as well) and sold it just before 16h00 at $12.73 for a $844 net profit. I can't wait for my first $1k+ profit from a single trade within the same day because I will not transgress the RULE anymore I'll try to find time to post more often on my 'daytrader initiation'. I am very busy playing poker and also with my regular day job (part time thought) which is coaching weightlifting at my club in Brossard, Quebec as well as coaching the Canadian National Team since 1997. Here's my club website: http://www.clubfortius.com And on poker side in 2005 I won a World Series Of Poker Series Golden Ring which was depicted in this blog: PokerPages.com Poker News - Harrah's Showboat, Atlantic City WSOP Circuit Event 1 Okay... markets open in 1 minute, I have money to make!!! Take care!!

3rd day of trading completed: - 13 trades completed and closed (26 transactions). - 7 trades profitable and 6 trades where I loss money. - the trades were 11 long and 2 short. - I managed a $216 net profit overall (after Commissions and ECN/SEC fees). - now able to adjust the VTSO not too close to avoid automatic fills when there is a small change of direction. Still learning a lot, still fascinated! most of the time it's analysis and wait, few decisions to take very fast. love it! Khaosphere.

For now I try my hands on stocks, mainly high volume stocks with very liquid market. I traded 8 different stocks today, the company are not really important since I use technical analysis intraday strategy. Since I'm canadian, I started with stock on the TSX (Toronto Stock Exchange) but NYSE / NASDAQ will be added this week also. I plan on trading also futures / options / gold / currencies in the future.

Started trading today. - Opened my trading account with 10k. (plan on adding 5k this week) - 8 trades completed and closed. - 4 trades profitable and 4 trades where I loss money. - the trades were 7 long and 1 short. - I managed a $56 net profit overall (after Commissions and ECN/SEC fees). - 3 trades automatically filled due to a VTSO (virtual trailing stop order) placed maybe too close to the trading range. Learning a lot, fascinated! most of the time it's analysis and wait, few decisions to take very fast. love it! Khaosphere.

Quick question: I saw many post referring to 'ES'. What's the actual meaning of it?

Thanks for the information! I'll use it wisely!

Hello, This is my first post since I am a perfect newbie in the world of trading. I have been a poker player for the past 5 years and I will begin to swing trade and day trade next week. I am Canadian and I live in Montreal. I will mainly trade on the Toronto exchange and NY. I have been studying this idea for quite a while now and I decided to try it for real. I read 4 interesting books about trading (reminiscences of a stock operator, the visual investor,trading for a living, secrets for profiting in a bull and a bear market), opened an account on a discount broker website, etc... The most fascinating thing I have noticed so far are the huge similarities betwen both activities: - the rake in poker is like the commissions in trading - the psychology is quite the same - what someone wins is what someone loses (minus the commissions) - tilting can happen both in poker and in trading - in both activities, emotions must remain calm in order to avoid a bigger mistake later - there are huge swings in both activities - new techniques (or playing style) are tested in a daily basis etc,etc... I'll let you know maybe every week how things develop but I found your forum very interesting and this is where I found the most information and well classified!