Oh my, that's not good. Three weeks of loses? Small loses?? I hadn't really noticed you around before and looking through your messages I see you hang out on AJTJ's board mostly. I thought you were a more experienced trader and knew about trading the spoos. I'm coming up on 5 years as a full time trader. And I'm only adding the futures as another tool in my tool box. Getting to be my most favorite tool. :-)
Last day? Why's today your last day? We might be able to get you pointed in the right direction. Or at least not losing all the time. I've more than once tried losing all my money. Some how I've lived to trade on. Hopefully I've curred that problem. <g> Taking those small loses before they get to be big loses is probably the most important thing a trader can learn. Then you can live to trade another day. Of course small depends on how much money you are playing with. Yesterday I got myself a bit over $700 in the hole on the futures, stopped for a bit till I got my bearings, and then came roaring back winning back $1300 to end $600 to the good. Today I didn't believe my indicators and got caught leaning the wrong way. Put on a short that happened to be in the middle of the trading range. It never quite hit my cover price, and didn't go enough to take the small loss until it finally ran. I wanted to turn and go long, but kept waiting for just a little more down. Never got it. Should have just took the smaller profit and got back to trading instead of watching and waiting. Still learning the feel of the futures. A bit different from stocks.
You trying to trade to many contracts at a time while you learn? I'm limiting myself to only two contracts at a time, except when I "cheat" and put on a second helping. But a maximum of 4 and then I treat the second helping as a hot potato and get rid of it as fast as possible. And if you seem to be losing money, no putting on a second one, and maybe reduce the first to only one contract at a time. That's called limiting your losses.
One of the things a trader needs to learn is how many shares, or for futures, contracts to trade at a time. One factor is how fast of a trader are you? Huh, how fast of a trader??? What? Do you have to think about a trade for a while, even while in the middle of it? Or can you size it up and instantly move. The slower you are, especially if you are daytrading, the fewer shares at a time you should trade. It lowers your risk and if going against you, the loss doesn't grow as fast while you think about it. One way to speed up your trading is to plan the play and play the plan. Haven't I heard that some place before. <g> Then as you are playing the plan you don't have to think about it as much since you are just doing the plan. Of course if as you are doing the plan it ain't working, get out and THEN, after the fact figure out what went wrong. And before getting back in, plan another play.
Another factor is how volatile is a stock. The more volatile, the fewer shares you should trade. Again it limits your risk. A fast moving stock going the wrong direction can really rack up those losses. Besides it's not necessary to trade the highly volatile rocket fuel stocks to make a decent living at it. If you've got 4-5 traders that you can consistently over the day take .10-.20 out of after commissions, then 500-1000 shares on these "slow" movers will make you $100,000 a year. I can live on that. And if you're willing to use your daytrading buying power, you need some where around at least $40-60,000 to do that. Preferably more though to be on the "safe" side.
Futures being more leveraged though, you can get by with less. A lot less. Even trading just one contract a day and consistently making only 2 points a day on it, that's $25,000 a year. You could figure 2.25 points to cover commissions. Three trades of .75 points each. Or four trades, three of .5 point and one of .75 points. 6.5 "regular" trading hours a day, so say give yourself 1.5 hours to make .5 point, and 2 hours for the .75 point. No need to rush, or force a trade. You've got 90 minutes to try and scalp .5 point without giving any back. If you can't do that, tradings probably not for you. Don't worry about how many points you need for the day, just concentrate on you need .5 point in the next 90 minutes, and work on planning the play depending on what the market is doing, and then do it. Then after you are consistently doing 2.25 points a day, or more, and getting a feel for it, go to two contracts. That would up you to $50,000 a year, .5 a point at a time. What do you think? No, sorry, you can't start out trading like Zeev. Zeev has been trading since before there was the internet. He's had a lot of practice at it. It's probably why he's so good.
If you can still play tomorrow, let me know and maybe we can work on getting you .5 point. It's all you need to start.
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