Vince50

No nip, I understand you aren't telling me to buy it.You do make a good point,though. -) But.................your post gave me a great chance to explain some of the terrible things that happened to me in my trading career. I once made a mistake (or the keyboard was broken) and put 2 more zeros on my order and I wound up with 100 contracts of something instead of 1. And I don't know why the firm allowed it because I didn't have nearly enough money to cover it! I got out very fast with a small loss. As Oliver Velez the author of Trading tactics for the Day Trader said to me once-"He said, when you are really in the zone, when you have your trading plan polished up, when you are feeling good about your life, when you are making money almost every day....your cat could jump across your keyboard and buy you something and you come back an hour later and see you made $20,000 by accident! But when everything you do is wrong, that cat will always jump on the wrong button and wipe out your account.! Its just the way life works." YOU STILL NEED SOME LUCK! But, the longer you can hang in, the more time you give for luck to find you. This increases your odds tremendously. What i have learned is: THE MINUTE YOU FEEL STRESS WHEN YOU GO TO CLICK THE MOUSE, YOU SHOULDN'T BE TAKING THAT TRADE! I would bet my money on a guy who made 35% in one year but has enough to open 3 more accounts the same size if he goes broke, than to bet on a guy who made 70% in the last year, and he needs that money to pay his rent. We all have heard the story that "MONEY COMES TO MONEY." Why do traders think they are exempt from that rule. Besides, when you play with scared money, you are afraid to take time off and relax again when you have to. You are afraid to miss anything,right? That creates so muchy stress. And I dont ever want to go thru that again. Thats why IMHO, over 50% of traders probably shouldnt even be trading, because they cant afford to lose everything. And statisitics show you will probably go broke, blow up an account at least once. Many of the great traders have blown up their whole account 8 or 10 times. Anyone agree with me on that? And many of us cannot take that kind of stress. I cannot. So I always under trade my account. My opinion nip, the bottom line of all this that I learn, that I now make my NUMBER 1, NUMERO UNO RULE! :Always trade less than you can afford. When you trade so little that you dont even care if you win or lose, thats the first step to getting into that zone or that groove. I tell every New Forex Trader I know, if there is a secret to Forex,unless you are already a millionaire.... it would be to start with a micro account and trade 1,2,or 3 lots maximum. Its only 10 cents per pip, but even if you hold overnight , even if you bought at the top for the day, your downside shouldnt be more than 20 dollars! But if you win, its not 20 dollars you are winning, it is confidence you are winning. And that is much ,much nicer than a few dollars won or lost on any trade. Confidence stays with you. The money is soon spent. "The truth for me, may not be the truth for you."-Bruce Lee

Nip, I dont buy it.Not 100% anyway.Many guys following rules still lose year after year, in boxing they still get the crap kicked out of them ...year after year...in tennis they lose all the time cause they are too slow. There are soooooo many ways to lose when you are too stubborn to break your rules.For me the most important rule of going over every trade I made after the day was over, took me out of trading. I was way too stressed to force myself to do that after 4pm and i did it anyway. I was blown out mentally for over a year! But..does breaking your rules mean, paper trading another system and going sim for a couple of weeks, or does it mean you went on tilt and are now doubling up on size on each losing trade. Big difference between how you break the rules. one can take you out, the other is a fun learning experience. And that leads me to say: I never want to have a system that is too stressful or not fun to trade. You are going to be using it for years, maybe your whole career, if it aint fun and interesting...well you arent a trader, you just have a job,thats all! Look at what happened to richard dennis. I didnt even know he got back in a second time and lost 8 figures. but just on my experience alone, i can say that my strength is my discipline. I dont know coding, I dont have the mathematical mind to construct harmonic structures like garleys in my head, I just know when something isnt working to have the discipline to get out of the game. And as a reward, I DEFINITELY WILL take a trade if i sat for 2 hours and really need to be in something. many times these "dun" trades helped to keep me alert for the next move that came later.Truthfully, there will always be both discretionary and rule based traders. One will never go away. And of course you have hybrids of the 2. For me personally:when i was trading equities, if i had a rule to never add to a losing position but then a small bar appears in my direction, would i place another order with a stop right under that small bar if im risking 5 cents per share to make 50 cents. All day long, regardless of if its in my plan. I will also break my rules in reverse and feel the market is going my way but its just too whippy for me and i feel"uncentered" for some reason. I may turn my computer off with a trade that could make my whole day in 30 min if the movement or tempo seems "off" to me. I also dont believe in the old saw, a trader never lost money by sitting on his hands. Whoever made that rule up didnt have bills to pay and likely lived with his mother,rent free. To me, personally, a trader has to have money working for him as much as possible. period. But in equities its harder which is now why I am in forex and trading completely different rules than my equities tactics, using no moving averages at all which I thought id never do. In fact le t me end with that, as I grow as a trader, I want to be able "and" comfortable doing things I would never have thought of doing the year or the month before But Im really addressing the newbies more than you. I can tell youve been thru a lot of what I speak. You didnt start trading last week. Youre a sharpie. -) Happy trading guys!

Ed, what a fabulous story to share with us. Awesome! So let me ask you...you don't feel that certain candlestick patterns or Fibonacci targets or even just shapes like head and shoulders if used with "proper(?) money mgmt where you always are getting 2-1 r/r ratio on every trade you take, you mean its that hard to win more than the 33% needed to break even. I was thinking 40% would be very doable. What seems to be in the way? Also, what about cycles, where in jan this pattern happens more than that pattern. And of course our famous santa claus rally in december. Cant we trade off cyclical patterns as well as chart patterns to get the edge we need? thank you, Marc

In one paragraph please describe how you feel physically, emotionally and mentally at the end of your trading day. Regardless if your day is an entire open-close session of Equities or Forex, a couple of hours a day or whatever period you trade. Are you energized and cant wait to go jogging. Are you cranky? Do you want to fall asleep. Do you regret getting into trading? Do you miss your loved one or friends? Are you happy for the peace and quiet? Please include how many hours per day you trade and what time frames and instruments you follow. Tell us if you are Sim or live trading too.

None of them have been around long enough to win my trust. When I start to hear from posters on threads like this or Forex Factory that they are making money following another trader online, I will feel better about it. I'm not saying it wont make you money. Im saying, why dont we hear of people quitting their job and following these guys? First thing I think you have to do is take a printout of the leaders and their monthly % gain. Then 30 days later take another printout or snapshot. When someone can hold his own for 3 months straight, maybe, just maybe you want to follow him for real money. It should be interesting.

First of all, there is a big difference in discipline. Are we talking about having the discipline to always get up early enough in the morning to properly prepare yourself, always leaving extra time for unseem problems or thoughts to be dealt with. That is the kind we all need. But discipline to keep following the same trading routine no matter how it does, and even if you are winning you keep folowing it though you now cant sleep anymore and it makes you a nervous wreck, thats not good discipline. Discipline is good if it keeps you on the "right" course. But discipline in any art can often lead to "rigidity." I knew open minded traders that as soon as they found Elliot Waves or moving average systems, never ever explored anything new again.. And the software sellers are just waiting for people who dont know how to change their mind. No disrespect but, Im still waiting for one, just one Elliot Wave trader who ever made a living at the markets....with consistantly. Now why should we elliott traders carer. After all, if RN elliott himself never got rich with his own system, why should we bother with little "details" like that. LOL

Come on Blue, dont leave us hanging....what were the alarm bells?????? (smile) marc

I was simply making a point that some people break all the rules and become #1 because it "fits" them better. And also that a good trainer doesnt force his trainees to do things even if they are supposedly written in stone. For me...all the trading psychology advice I read doesnt sound right to me. Caused me too much stress and put me into overwhelm. Something is missing. But........ I apologize. I guess I should not have used a boxing analogy with trading. THE END! =)

Shoe, Please allow me the pleasure of answering this young mans question (smile). LIKE EVERY OTHER BOOK IN THE WORLD THAT YOU WANT....YOU GO TO AMAZON.COM FIRST. ALWAYS CHECK THERE FIRST. The book is $18 new and in the store its $27.00 So where else would you want to buy it. Im not yelling at yuh, Im just being a little silly. hA! HA! :haha: Buy yeah try amazon, but also becuase amazon.com lets you read some of the pages free before bying and with this book, they give you a loooooooooooot of free pages. Almost 1/4 of the book it seems. I started reading it myself. Now........... Shoe, ive worn your ear out enough, so you dont have to read further. im going to teach steven some of the games i watched being played when I was a broker.,You might know the rest of what im going to say. I dont know if the book gets into it, and I know about many of the games they mention in there already, having worked on wall street myself. But back in the 90's they had what they called SOS Bandits. You remember that term shoe? =) Liker 100 yrs ago. Anyway, that stands for Small Order Execution specialists and they would basically look to do manually and by phone, what these HFT's do automatically. I can say more but basically if you could always buy on the bid or in between the bid/ask, and just 50% of the time get rid of your stock on the ask, would you not make a boatload of money. Well, thats what those guys did. BUT, THAT IS NOT TRADING IMHO. Its just being a manipulator. Thats a job. Thats real work. That isnt outwitting anyone the way we all are trying to do it here. What pleasure can they have that we get by watching a pattern unfold and being on the right side of it! It may also be on the thin line of whats legal and whats not as well. I would never get involved. I wouldnt be shocked if they had organized syndicates,bad people involved in that stuff. In fact Lucky Luciano when he was given a tour of the NY stock exchange, commented "I think I joined the wrong mob," God knows what shady dealings going on every moment that they let him in on ! Steven, I had a friend who worked for a firm that put a stock out at .49 bid-..50 offer . They paid their brokers 20% of total sales. How is that possible? Because as my friend tells me, whenever someone wanted to sell, they held up orders until all the selling came in in the same 10 minutes and the stock went down to .02 on the offer!!!! A week later it was back up to .49 bid again. I dont know how my friend slept at night but I say these hft's do the same thing with more liquid bigger stocks but do it a penny or 2 at a time and so fast you cant see it. Before it was dome by phone calls, now its done with phone calls and computers. and then maybe another group just computers. Thought of the day: I always wondered, if you could find a way to make 1/4 penny on every share trading at 5 million shares or more per day, thats $ 50,000 a day. So if a handful of syndicates figured "my fantasy" out lol it still isnt that much money if done on 5-10 stocks per day. In forex it wouldnt even be noticed! As I told shoe, steven , with the market up 16% the last 12 months, how much can they really be stealing ,relative to the amount traded? I will say this, I think the idiots who spread this info scared a lot of big money into bonds and safer investments and thats where the real damage was done!!!

Mike, so what do you want to call the 2 million people we have in our prisons who cant get thru a day by themselves without being told what to do? And the drug cartels whose only discipline is murder? Here is an interesting point. In most things, art in particular, there are always 2 kinds of artists. The paint by the numbers type of person, and the true artist who does his own thing.(like a discretionary trader) In boxing there is the disciplined boxer who keeps his hands up at all times as 'all" disciplined boxers do, and then you have Muhammed Ali who almost never did it. Who wins:discipline or intuition. Just a thought. But intuition can be mistaken for a discretionary system, and discretionary systems have a lot of ways to get into trouble. However in stocks, the best traders who play opening gaps and need their eye to measure velocity of money moving a stock around, you must be discretionary.I myself started as a discretionary trader, and now I try to be a rule based trader but I must confess there is no greater thrill for me than to "out guess" my system and get out right in the middle of the pair going my way because the other corrolated instruments arent tagging along.And 1 minute later the top is in. Best feeling in the world!!!! Yes? And the wheel spins on and on........

What I find dismaying shoe, is that curve fitting itself would not produce countless winning systems ,simply because patterns repeat. So, let us for the moment use only the past and the present. Lets say we had a neural network that calculated 50 trades in the past with a return of 14% on those trades. Now let us say we use the same criteria and come up with another 25 trades during this week, the present. Why would we assume that the future, would hold a different result. Well everything is in flux,true. But why would we assume the result would be different enough for us not to want to trade the system!!!? Yet as I admitted in my purchase of a neural software, the whole curve didnt just change, it fell apart completely. (That will leave us to discuss another subject of "Are all systems destined to fail" ) ) an important question to be sure...for another time. -) But no she, getting back to the HFT's, I never mentioned them, you did. Because I dont consider them in the same light as Linda Rascke speaks,nor where there HFT'S around very much probably, when she even made the statement and might not have even known what they are. No, to me, HFT's are just a system within itself...........that may also be destined to fail ! Because in the cutthroat world of trading, do you not think a group of traders and programmers are working on something to counter that or suck the advantage out of HFT's? How about the flash crash we had last year? Could that be one example where all those HFTs profits of many weeks or months disappeared into one syndicates pocket in one day. And it is not a repeatable event for reasons both legal and for security. Do I think the HFT'S are going to one day implode as did the great Internet boom of the 90's did..."after" making many people rich............absolutely. So to me shoe, Expert Advisors and Neural networks arent related to Hft's which is more like just ultra fast scalping to me. With a topping of specific programming. Where is the "art" the visuals on a chart as any real system has? I think HFT'S are making a lot of software sellers rich with claims of how you can "do that too." And book writers who write about them as if it was a conspiracy on the level of the Illuminati and that whole secret society stuff which may or may not be true...to a point, but it rings the cash register. I think there are far fewer of them than we think or price in stocks would never fluctuate more than 1-2% on any given day. And we wouldnt have the s&p returning around 16% for the year. The HFT's would have stolen half of that already. Right? Oh, dont leave out the conspiracy that China is allowing our dollar to stay stable while they stockpile all the gold in the world which is going to $10,000 an ounce. And next to that book I have one that assures me that we have more oil than we could go thru in 100 yrs, and its next to my other book that tells us(by a professor of geology!!!) we are being lied to and oiul will run out in our lifetime and govt doesnt want to create a panic. LOL Never has the media/Internet/Forex/stock/futures markets been such a well oiled machine of bullshit, hah? -)

Richard, Im very happy to read your article on Fibs. It reminded me of something very important I discovered about them. As you say they are just zones, mot exact buy/sell points, although a very few can use them as such. For ,what I do lately and am seeing more and more of, is that when price is approaching an important area, you say to yourself "yellow light, get read ,something may happen". Then it gets to the area, and if it bounces off the area and you take it and you win all is well. But if ity hits your area ,bounces and then falls thru the area....I still go "uh oh, yellow light, proceed with caution." I dont throw the level out like I used to. Also, when a level is broken and then price comes back to it and then it keeps going back and forth or at least hanging around that level, often it is wise to look for another trade as indecision has set in! Thanks for this article. As someone getting involved in Harmonic fibonacci trading, this is something I must be aware of. Why? WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU STOP OUT OF A TRADE BUT THEN PRICE COMES BACK INTO THE ZONE AGAIN...DO YOU TRY AGAIN? OR..WHAT DO YOU CHANGE IN YOUR STRATEGY? Shhhhhhhhhh....dont tell anyone, but if I get stopped out on lets say a USD long pair but see 2 other USD pairs keep going, this may give me the reason to try a second time. If I dont see this I never will. Its over. Next trade. Agree?

I am not a programmer and not that Internet savvy. Im a trader. A chart reader! And I have always wondered if I was at a disadvantage by not being able to use the Expert Advisers and Backtesting stuff MT4 Platforms give you. As cwell, I didnt find Ninja Traders tools or back testing stuff to be easily usable. So I am wondering, are Neural Network software just a constant rehash of the "magic black box" they keep trying to sell traders on, and who has found a platform that letting them do your backtesting on your system turned out to be profitable? I ask because trade station programmers wouldnt be getting $100 an hour to program whatever you want if backtesting thru coding really was the answer. They would just code themselves up a neat simple winning system, no? Also, what is all this backtesting tools with Ninja Trader and MT4. I post this here because it seems they focus this kind of stuff on the futures market first, then Forex and then stock traders. So..am I missing something guys, or what? BTW.....I went thru a lengthy browser based software program that let me enter any stock I wanted and tweak the results with 2 or 3 dials ( and I could get most stocks to give me a back tested return over 2 years of over 100% annually and almost always 50% or better W/L/ ratio. In forward testing on paper and also in real trading I had a dismal 80% loss ratio!!! So I decided to make lemonade out of lemons and take the opposite trade, (go long if they said short) and I still go decimated. So after 18 months of tweaking this thing, I couldnt understand why it wouldn't work either thru massive winners or massive losers. Has any human being done well with a Neural network program/software or is it all junk? I now am finding success with Harmonic patterns with Fibonacci work so all that is past me now. I just want to know if I gave up too soon on those platforms. Linda Raschke pointed out, not to my liking that Charles Dow, and Elliot and all the greats of the stock market in the 30's and 40's did all their charts by hand. And she believes that gives you an edge of some sort. I personally will never trade again if I ever had to hand draw my charts. But maybe nueral networks and Expert advisers are going one step too far in the opposite direction. Comments please..............

Wow, I am really enjoying sharing my experiences with all of you here as this forum has some newbies that honestly want to learn, no just talk. My opinion, other than asking questions, and do that a lot, no one should do more posting than reading until they are winners. Till then, keep asking the questions and reading the threads and culling all the free gold out there that pre-Internet days, you'd never find in 100 years. The old 80/20 rule again. Anyway, when I embarked on my career as a professional poker player, I found that there were 2 ways I could make money. #1-You have to keep increasing your skills so that as smart as the players you are playing with, you are a little smarter. #2- Find a game with much worse players than you so you automatically are the best player in the game!!!*** Do any of you see the correlation between poker and Forex trading. The best way of course is to do both because unlike poker we aren't going to get any easy games to pick off as I did in Vegas in the 80's. By the way, now that so many people are into poker via the Internet and TV coverage of the big tournaments. Guess what......I am no longer good enough to have an edge I can "count" on to make a living week in and week out as in the 80's. So, what is the way a trader would find an "easy" game since there aren't any,really. I have a few ideas but I will share one. That is, you keep trying your system on different "instruments" until you click with the way the mindset and the herd of the players in that instrument think. Specialize! For example, I went from individual stocks, to triple leveraged ETF's, to futures(Gold, mid cap 400's,etc) to finally Forex. I advise even if you know what you want to trade, until you are doing it professionally that you look at all 3 markets-Spot Forex,Futures,Individual stocks/indices. You will discover that each has a different personality ,but at different times. And you may start out loving stocks because you love playing those big gap ups in the morning(that was my thing), but then find that gold trends better and that for some reason The spot currency pairs dont seem to move fast enough to suit you. Lets be honest, its very easy to find a stock that will move 3% a day,almost every day. But when was the last time a Forex pair moved that much. So look at all 3 markets and this way by seeing the differences among instruments, you will then see more clearly what is different about the instruments YOU! want to trade. Lets end on this note.....take a guy who is trading gold in this market. Ask him why he is not trading silver as well. After all, they move in correlation, yes? Find a man who is successful trading the EUR/USD but never trades GPD/USD! Ask him why. Think about that, and many new doors of perception of markets will open for you..... Feel free to PM me with any questions if they are serious. ***-Remind me next week to tell you what bad players in poker do that bad players in trading do that are identical! (Yes, over trading is one of them. lol)

Don't worry. With new people coming into trading all the time, the pool will never dry up. So don't rush!!! But it would be nicer though to have all the BAD TRADERS still trading from 2,3,4 or 5 years ago(usually the suckers in the beginning stage) AS WELL as the current pool of traders we have. But thats not what happens in real life. So lets make up a typical scenario, the numbers are all approximate of course. 15% of the least capitalized and/or least skilled traders go bust each year, but 16 or 17% new traders replace them every year and part of the 17% new blood, are some of the "old" traders who borrow money and are trying again. So every year stories of "easy money/easy life" written by the brokerage firms(The house) and the software vendors with their beach chair ads, suck in new money every year. Thus opportunity will ALWAYS be there. Im just saying though, that if we could keep the 20% worst traders in the game, keep them from going bust from over-trading, thats where 80% of the income for the rest of us would be. And thats on top of the new inexperienced 17% jumping into the pool each year!!! THEN IT WOULD BE MUCH EASIER TO MAKE A LIVING IN FOREX. You know the 80/20 rule. 80% of the bad players in any game supply 20% of the good ones. Problem is we keep losing the bad ones and have to replace them. . But don't worry, there will always be fresh faces to feed the machine. And when the trend starts to reverse and volume falls down, you know what happens. The industry will come out with new gimmicks as they are doing now such as 1)-10% bonus added to your account upon opening, 2-free charts 3-Free this and free that, all designed to feed that little Pac-man gremlin and keep his teeth chewing. A/K/A...THE HOUSE. Remember the house mouse or gremlin doesn't know if the money they are chewing up with spreads,etc., is the stupid money or the smart money. It all tastes the same to him. But yes there will be cycles of suckers drying up and thats why I personally think the turtles and all those guys from market wizards who made hundreds of millions of dollars, well...do you know how many people got taken out and how many accounts they had to destroy to get that money? So simplify it this way. Before you ever hit yuour mouse button for the first time, you have 3 opponents waiting for you 1:The house 2-The banks and expert traders which incudes the manipulators who are also banks and traders on the other side of your trade. 3- You have YOURSELF, and this is where discipline DOES come into it.As well as LUCK in finding a system or set of tactics that will hold up long enough for you to double your account before it stops working. See, if the Turtles(best traders in the world,right?) would have started today, we may never have heard of therm, and they might all be driving a cab for a living. So LUCK (being in the right place and right time for "your" system) to be most effective is papramount. Some traders argue that if you cant stand the drawdown you are under capitalized and shouldnt be trading. But they never tell you if you were under capitalized or just not good enough when you went broke. So the key is you have to last. And to last in this business as far as Imk concerned, especially with accounts under 30k, you have to double your account size , so if we have a black swan event, or you go on tilt(as we poker players say) you can whether the storm....OR ......find out your system isnt good enough. How about my story, I waited 3 years while just investing in things I know about till I finally made the move to become a day trader as I was promised to be backed for life even if I lost my initial investment,. The firm was bankrupt 12 months later.(Thank God I got some intense training in that year, at least) Then I save up money to start again on my own, and my mother dies, and I go thru all my trading money just to live. So anyone who tells you if you want it bad enough, you'll DEFINITELY succeed in trading....is either lying or they are not wise. Or they have a softwere system to sell you that with enough dedication(they always seem to put it on you) youll be working 3 hours a day enjoying the good life...too!!! Yeah, OK. This leads to another reason we lose 95% or more of our retail traders. No matter how well they are capitalized, most of them either blow their whole account on one system by being to stubborn(overly disciplined? lol) or jumping from one thing to another. Sadly by the time we find out which group we are in, we went broke. Oh....and I would like to make a large wager that many of the "Market Wizards" wont tell you how much money they REALLY had to beg,borrow or steal till they made it." Once you are a success....you can re-invent your whole biography as they say. Let me just say I would not want to know the number of wives and girlfriends who have no bank account and all their credit cards are maxed OUT, and maybe even lost their home because their man said "Baby this time I know it will work." You never hear those stories. And after 15 years of bad luck, bad experiences and studying my butt off, I am finally on my way. How many of you out there would starve for 15 years if that was the price you had to pay to succeed as a trader? It isn't for everyone. Hey we should start a thread on that one. Some one go for it! Lesson Done.

Patuca is 100% right. I think waqy too much emphasis is placed on discipline because it allows people who are not traders to sell books and courses!!! I'm in this game 15 years and I can tell you this,if you have a great system, you can afford to not be disciplined once in a while and you will still do great. I think we need to focus on this: WHAT is wrong with my system that I cant be disciplined with it all the time? #2-Or...Is this the right system for my personality that discipline is a problem? Maybe it is not me, it is the system. If you told every trader on this board, they could maker a living just buying over the previous days high and selling when it breaks any days low, would there be one person foolish enough not to be able to follow that? No! Everyone has enough discipline for that. So then what is the real problem? I could tell you, but then.....(smile)

Soultrader, you might not remember even posting this it was so long ago but I have to throw my 2 cents in. I joined a service when I just got into trading futures as I was trading stocks and spot forex but never futures and so I watched this guy who would get go long any stock indice if it went over the high of the previous day and short if moving over low of previous day. Then the trailing stops were his own secret propriatary blend of a lot of things. Anyway he was winning at a rate of 400% at midcap 400 futures and almost the same for gold. My friend who recommended this service already doubled his account and after watching him for over a month I decided to take the plunge. Well, let me tell you...after almost 2 years of this system with just one entry rule kicking butt I was up about 20% in my own account in about 3 weeks, and then suddenly, every trade I took ,it was like the market makers knew that certain "entities would drive the price over the previous high to get momentum going but then another group would come in and make the momentum of that fail. Over and over! So within 3 months my acct was gone and in 6 months my friends was also. This was around 2008. So maybe it worked before then, but I would never trust it again. How have you made out all this time using it as a guide if I may ask?

You are quite welcome. To me, if every trader asked themself this question before they placed every trade, its possible the Forex and even the stock market would no longer be exciting, as volume would get cut by 2/3! And that is "How much am I going to pay the house at the end of a year to keep making this trade? And if it is even profitable, will it be worth my time after the cut,commissions,stealing on the back end,and 50 things I cant figure out why my money is going faster in my account than my journal shows! Let me know if I can help you in any way. Oh, BTW...I may be interested in starting up a chat room if I can get someone to set it up for me and it would be free for the few of us who started it up, so if you know a few people that all like the same market or instruments, we can give it a shot. Better than paying money to a stranger,right?

Hi, Just share with us your overall "journey". Were you just making all that stuff up or did trading get you that crazy? And don't tell us w"war stories" you know, like about individual trades unless like me, it broke you in half or blew out your account. I want to hear what you 1-FELT and what you 2-LEARNED. Anything another trader could get something out of or relate to. Anything!!!!! -) Hey, Im over 50 and I am up now at 4:30am trading Forex and I haven't slept regularly in years because of trading. Thats another thing, how did trading affect your habits and lifesstyle. For me, I lost all most of my friends. Because I found they really couldn't give a damn about me succeeding. Never ever asked "How is your trading going" knowing it was life or death for me sometimes V.

I am hoping this thread will "morph" into one of the most popular tyhreads on the Internet. Why? Because this is a first. It is a place for people to do what they normally never would do. And that is: Show where they messed up in trading, How did they fail, what indicators did they use wrong, what bad habits do they feel they couldnt lick, and basically what got in the way of them succeeding. Now before you click to another thread with another new system or piece of advice, let me ask you all a question. If you wanted to learn to be a champion Professional boxer, who would you go to for coaching-Mike Tyson or Cus D'mato/Kevin Rooney/Teddy Atlas, Mikes trainers and advisors? Would you go to Muhammad Ali or Angelo Dundee to learn boxing. By the way, Angelo and Cus were both horrible boxers I dont think either one won a pro fight or even fought in one. So why did these two "LOSERS", Angelo and Cus, create 2 of the greatest boxers the world has ever seen? I can answer that, but I wont.....not right away. I spent 25 years researching where greatness comes from and whether it is made and molded, genetic or luck....or all 3. Or, none of the above! You see, losers have as much to teach us as winners. But losers don't sell books. Losers can't sell courses on trading.(Unless they just make stuff up). Losers opinions, arent usually highly regarded. And I will tell you,that is the biggest reason why most people never reach their full potential. So, if we all learned so much from reading about the most successful traders in the world "Market Wizards", why arent we all rich like them? Come on now...that books been out for what, 20 years or so now. There are no excuses. So, what could our failure to be a professional trader be caused by? I say, we let the people who went through the war, were the real casualties and tried everything and maybe more than the winners did ,let us hear from them! That means you if you are reading this and cannot make a living trading yet and have been trading or studying for 2 years or more. Talk to us. Right here, right now! . I don't think everyone gets how deep that can really go. You see, we always hear stories about a trader who "unveils" his story to us about how he succeeded. What I want is to hear the stories of guys who blew up 5 trading accounts, lost their house, lost their regular job cause they couldn't stay off the Internet(me!),lost their wife and even lost their perspective OF life. We don't hear from THOSE people....and those people are far, far in the majority. I think if we have a book called Market Wizards, we should have its opposite called Market failures. In fact, I should start a thread here to do just that. Trading is a merciless business. You can put in 40 years and still wind up like Edward Levebre from the "Stock Operator" book and die alone and broke in a hotel room after making millions trading. Those are far more common. We need to hear those stories...not just to pay homage to the "fallen soldiers" who may have been smarter than a Market Wizard" but just not luckier. Or destined to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Myself: I have never emotionally gotten over buying 500 shares of APPL at 33, watched it go to 35 but set my stop at 33 and said I would get back in as soon as it picked up momentum.Then, I got so involved with day trading in a prop room, I forgot about AAPL it until 3 months later when it was way to high. I will wait for a pullback I said. It then went on to skyrocket past $700 and I wanted to have a position of at least 1000 shares when it went past 50. I can likely never get an opportunity like that again and would have been set for life. Hell, Warren Buffett probably never had that happen to him. So what I'm saying is, brains or not, persistence or not, it is soooo much easier to fail at trading than to succeed. And the real kick in the rump is we never really have control. We can only "hope" that what we do continues to hold its edge or else we might have to start all over again. How many suicides have taken place because of this addicting,exciting profession? Look at Gann, Elliot, Charles Dow and all the forefathers of stock trading. They all were/ became very physically sick. Was it from trading...or just coincidence? So I start this thread, hoping you guys out there who have thus far not made it yet, tell us your biggest mistakes youve made. But tell them in 2 or 3 paragraphs at most so the next guy can be heard. You are welcome to keep coming back once a day and write something fresh. So lets go. Right here. Right now! Who wants to be first to kick this off? And by the way, here is my disclaimer: DISCLAIMER-i HAVE THE RIGHT TO USE ANY MATERIAL PRESENTED HERE ON THIS THREAD IN ANY FORMAT I CHOOSE. I WILL NEVER BE FINANCIALLY RESPONSIBLE TO PAY ANYONE POSTING HERE ANY MONEY REGARDLESS OF WHAT HAPPENS FROM THIS THREAD. I hope helping another trader will be reward enough for you folks. So who wants to go first?

Firewalker, I love that quote!!! Priceless as you say. I dont think everyone gets how deep that can really go. You see, we always hear stories about a trader who "unveils" his story to us about how he succeeded. What I want is to hear the stories of guys who blew up 5 trading accounts, lost their house, lost their regular job cause they couldnt stay off the Internet(me!),lost their wife and even lost their perspective OF life. We dont hear from THOSE people....and those people are far, far in the majority. I think if we have a book called Market Wizards, we should have its opposite called Market failures. In fact, I should start a thread here to do just that. Trading is a merciless business. You can put in 40 years and still wind up like Edward Levebre from the "Stock Operator" book and die alone and broke in a hotel room after making millions trading. Those are far more common. We need to hear rthose stories...not just to pay homage to the "fallen soldiers" who may have been smarter than a Market Wizard" but not luckier. Or destined to be in thew wrong place at the wrong time. Myself: I have never gotten over buying 300 shares of APPL at 33, watched it go to 35 but set my stop at 33 and said I would get back in as soon as it picked up momentum. I got so involved with daytrading in a prop room, I forgot about it until 3 months later when it was way to high. I will wait for a pullback I said. It then went on to skyrocket past $700 and I wanted to have a position of at least 1000 shares when it went past 50. I can likely never get an opportunity like thsat again. Hell, Warren Buffett prbably never had that happen to him. So what Im saying is, brains or not, persistance or not, it is soooo much easier to fail at trading than to succeed. And the real kick in the rump is we never have control. We can only "hope" that what we do continues to hold its edge or else we might have to start all over again. How many suicides have taken place because of this addicting,exciting profession? Look at Gann, Elliot, Charles Dow and all the forefathers of stock trading. They all were/ became very physically sick. Was it from trading...or just coincidence?

Glass, Your story is indeed interesting, but like a plot in a good movie that just has a blase ending and everyone goes "huh" I must say I felt this way about your story. Something is missing. First of all, Ive been investing,swing trading and day trading for years. If having a willo of steel, a never give up attitude and huge thirst and dseire to succeed was truly enough, than all the guys we really (and foolishly) think are gurus who write books...wouldnt be writing books! Guys like Bulkowski and Van tharp and Douglas and on and on and on. These are brilliant people with a lifetime of work in their books. I dont believe 1/3 of them are profitable and not 10% ablle to trade at a professional level. Money folows least amount of time. If any person could make more money trading than writing they would surely trade. We all know this and we keep buying the books, listren to the same old story about: 1-having a stop loss 2-dont be over leveraged 3-stick to your plan 4-wake up early and review your day 5-not to many things cluttering up your chart,etc. And suddenly you find after years that aside from chart patterns, moving averages and cutting your losses and letting your winners run, what does anyone writing a book have to offer you? A very,very few have that something special, but still, is it enough to make you a pro? So I am saying that I dont believe all of us can be a pro who want it bad enopugh. Heaven knows I never would have gotten into trading if I knew so many years would pass before I got the knowledge I have. Some people physically cant do it. Some people have thew wrong nervous system yet the right brain. Some peole just are unlucky and after back testing a system for 6-12 months start using real money right at the systems biggest drawdown start. Also your atmosphere of where you trade makes up soooo much of the quality of your life it goes far beyond just winning and losing money. No one talks about this at all! I will continue another time. V.

Thank you. I had always dreamed of starting a trading room that no one ever tried before. And that is where every person takes one trade, and it could be based on anything he wants, from the most simple to the most complex, and as his trade is unfolding he will "walk us thru the trade.' It would be incredible how our mistakes and silly assumptions would be weeded out 10x quicker than if we left it up to ourselves. And we would be forced to copy our best trade of the day and let everyone see it, and same with worst and.....I will tell you a secret, 50% of the traders will realize it isn't for them within 3-9 months, not years. See, my feeling is, if you invest more than 4 years learning about trading, you damn well better be sure you can make a living at it. Sadly no one who is not profitable after 4 years can ever make that claim. A room like that would help people speed up their learning curve...about themselves! And with a room full of people we could automate and backtest systems and strategies in days, not months!!!!! I wonder if they will let me start a p[oll in here. I want to ask: What would you do if you knew you could never be successful at trading? Ive always thought that answer was sooooo interesting because TRADERS are unique and interesting. Winners or not.

I will even be so brazen to say that some of the smaller firms might fill 1/10th of the order at the limit price, even if its at the bid price....and then fill the rest of the order at say 10-20 pips higher and claim that price moved while the order was being ok'ed by the "boss" and as stupid as that answer is, they would chance it and hope the guy accepted the answer. Worst case for the firm..............theyd have to break the trade. Best case, they pocket hundreds of thousands of dollars. Worst case for the trader....the firm shuts down, especially if located outsiDE THE usa! "They have games they havent even invented yet." Read that last sentence again. -) Ask if you need clarification.

Shinobi, being an ex stock broker I could answer the question better for equities as my seat was often next door to the trading room. As far as Forex goes, because the re is no centralized location most people couldnt answer that if they were in the biz 20 years. Most, not all. Le t me say from my watching documentaries on big players in both futures and forex as well as general common sense of 15 years as a small trader I can take an educated guess at the answer. If the order is a market order, the trader is going to get reamed. His order is going to as they say in trading room parlance, its going to get "worked." But even on a limit order, many factors come into play, politics being one. One thing is for sure...he is going to get a phone call from some guy out in God knows where to negotiate the price with him. And you can bet its a guy that makes a living doing exactly that!!!! Part salesman, part manager, part head trader for a firm and/or market maker. WHAT ELSE COULD POSSIBLY HAPPEN WITH SIZE THAT BIG. First of all if Im putting in anything over 5 million dollars I am not paying more than 1 -1/4 pip spread at most. Most!