Small Time Trading

[CPTMatt]

Just a thought but if you're going to post P&L by trade wouldn't it make sense to maintain either a chart or table in the Info area of your board to show performance over time?

I started trading back in the Freetrade by Ameritrade days of $1 commissions and free trades every month. My trigger never cooled and I was buying and selling like crazy for roughly one year. At the end I found that I had lost around $10k (which was a TON for the small amount of dough that I had) however when I did the math on how many trades I had made the commissions roughly totaled to my losses (Freetrade went away during that time so things got more spendy in the 2nd half).

The point being that for someone with a small bankroll it is important to consider transaction costs. Based on your posts it looks like commissions as a % of position size may not be an issue. I recall when I only had a couple grand. For anyone trying to trade with position sizes below $1,000 the win/loss ratio % to keep up with commission expenses (if trading regularly) becomes a hurdle.