AbeSmith

Thanks Brownsfan. I will look into it. The problem is that I withdrew most of the funds from my account and only left about $100 to pay the $10 maintenance fee for 10 months. I would like to go with Tradestation, but I don't think they offer free paper trading account. Thanks. Those are excellent observations.

Trade 4: -4.

Trade 3: +1.

Trade 2: +16.

Thanks Brownsfan. Good trading.

Trade 1: -15.

Hello. The Dow is down is premarket. Fed looks like they will pump more money into system around 9:30ET. Major European markets in the red, Asia and Pacific in the red. Good luck.

Thanks Brownsfan.

Excellent topic. I look forward to reading it every day.

Thanks Tin.

I've been noticing also the the VBC is an excellent chart and I think I will pay more attention to it. Like you say, I need to find something that works and stick with it.

Currenlty my learning strategy is to get real time market experience. I figure as long as I'm there everyday paper trading and recording all my trades I will learn very valuable lessons about trading. I record every trade with annotated chart, and at the end of the day I go over all those trades to reevaluate them and see what I did wrong. Although it is alot of work and distraction from the beat of the market to record each trades on charts right after the trade, it is more helpful for me at this point. I also record my trading summary on Google Speradsheet which includes how many trades I did that day, how many points I made or lost, and the realized gains or loss. This way I will be able to idenify how I'm doing per week and per month and identify when I become consistently profitable. Regarding my trading and what is working and what is not working: 1. I need to be more patient. I feel recently I'm doing alot of trades without being patient enough and diligent enough. In the last 3 days of trading I had an average of 13 trades per day. So I need to do less trades and concentrate on good trades with diligence. Partly that is because I was trying to adjust my trading habit from before when I felt I was running away from the market as soon as I made some profit. So I decided I would face the market head on and get over the fear of losing. On 8/10 for example early in the day I had over $600 paper profit from just one contract, and typically I would run away, but that day I decided to face the market and ended up losing most of it. Later when I went over my trading that day I was amazed at how stupid some of my trades were. So clearly I need to readjust my trading and be more conservative with my trades. I think I'm having trouble balancing. When I try to adjust my actions I tend to over adjust. But with time I think that will improve. 2. I need to concentrate more on going with the trend, and less on trying to catch falling knives. Looking at the VBC 1250 today I see for the most part the green candles are followed by green and the red are followed by red. 3. I need to use volume in my trading. 4. I need to rely more on multiple time frames. 5. I need to excercize due diligence with my trades. I feel I'm still making impulsive trades that should have been thought out better. But for the most part I feel I just need to trade every day, record every trade, go over each trade at the end of the day, and keep learning from trial and error until I improve. That is the best way I know to learn to trade. I like to thank all the nice people on TL. You have been tremendously helpful and I'm very luckly to have found this great site with great people.

Thanks Brownsfan. There is so much information out there that I'm still trying to digest. The best way I can describe what is going on right now is a combination of trial and error, and trying to get screen time with the market as much as possible and see how things develop from there and try to improve on it.

My trading Summary Today: 14 roundtrips. +11 YM points. Realized paper loss of $4.64. Had a poor start, and almost hit my loss limit for today. But made a comeback towards the end. Tin had an excellent idea that it is a good time to reevaluate my trading and see what is working and what is not working. So I will be working on that now.

That's excellent advice Tim. Thanks.

Trade 14: +13.

Trade 13: +24.

Trade 12: -16.

Thanks Cooter. I'm also using, in addition to the 1 minute chart, the 5 minute, 2500VBC, and 1250VBC. I try to look at all these charts before deciding to enter a trade. As you know the situation can look drastically different depending on which chart one is looking at.

Trade 11: +19.

Thanks Cooter.

Good question Tin. I went long because of the two bullish hammers. But clearly I was wrong. Seems like I'm going against the market when I should be going with the trend.

Trade 10: -14.

Thanks Brownsfan. I will definitely be paying more attention to the volume.