How Much Do You Make?

Oh dear.
The "investing/trading" scenario illustrated here is doomed to failure. The self confidence exhibited in adhering to such a "plan" guarantees failure and is literally suicidal. It will "work" short term if you are lucky, but only in a ranging market, not in a trending one.
I just hope no newbies are taken in by these "ideas".
I really mean no offence, it's just that I have seen so many folk lose out very heavily with such a naive approach it's sad to see it promulgated yet again. There have been so many good friends of mine who have lost so much despite my warnings, I hate to see anyone pursue self-destruction like this.
483 - if your mind works this way, get yourself an options education so you learn how make rather that lose money in all market types. For goodness sake man, at least buy some deep OTM puts to limit your losses.
I wouldn't train you - I don't coach gamblers.
Repeat - no offence intended.
 
No offence taken Mr Charts.

If I had invested all my money into a tracker fund - you would not think I was stupid or gambling. If I had left it all in cash you would not thinking I was stupid or gambling.

All I am doing is moving between the two. It is not possible for me to lose more money than I had if I had put it all in a tracker.

The only gamble I have taken is upped the stakes a little to a level I can happily live with. I have pretended I have more capital than I actually have and I won't be able to cope if the FTSE fell to 1000 without any bounces - but I don't think that will happen and I have only invested enough money that I would be prepared to lose if it did.

On the upside. I have been doing it for four months, the FTSE has fallen about 7.5% and I'm up 20% (I know this proves little long term, but I am happy so far). I have not had to spend three years or more learning about options, stochastics, charts. I do not have to invest in expensive news feeds or software. I do not have to watch the market all day.

I'm happy to admit that if you did not know what you are doing the system could be a quick way to lose all your money. but I've done the maths.

So please back off a little!

John.

P.S. I'd also be very grateful if nobody did follow my "ideas". Without your daytrading - I would make far far less.
 
If a trade goes well, you take the profit - all well and good. But if a trade goes badly, you put it to one side as an 'investment', hoping that it turns from a loser to a winner at some point. In the meantime, you continue trading to capture some of the volatility swings. Is that a reasonable assessment, jls?

It strikes me that this is just deferring your losses, not eliminating them.

I'll give a hypothetical example. Say you went long on the FTSE 100 index at (say) 3700, and it went down. Say it goes down to 3400 before coming back to 3710. At which point you take the profit (10 points). If you had cut your loss at 3680, and entered at 3410, you would have made 280 points instead. Not an implausible entry given that you actively trade for the volatility anyway.

The point I am trying to make is not that hindsight is a wonderful thing (although it is). What I am trying to say is that by deferring your losses instead of cutting them, they eat up any profits you might make. Cutting the losing trade early paves the way for bigger gains when you enter nearer the bottom. The old saying <i>cut your losses and let your profits run</i> is true. Your approach appears to be closer to <i>take your profits and let your losses run</i>.

Still, who am I to say? I'm only a paper trader at the moment (6 pence profit yesterday! whoopee!).

-svengali
 
John

There are some very experienced guys on here, and I have learned a lot by listening to what they have to say. You can be fairly sure that if the consensus is that your idea is bad, then it would probably be a good idea to rethink your strategy.

I think Mr Charts is just trying to save you money - Free advice from a respected professional, you don't see that very often these days, and that's what makes the T2W boards essential reading for beginners.

I would recommend reading the whole board, thread by thread. Better than any trading manual you can buy.

All the very best.

Gary
 
I don't think there is a middle ground. Either you cut your losses and day trade or you do as I do and just wait.

I'm happy to accept that this sounds crazy to somebody who can feel the vibe, read the charts and has the experience, but I can't.

You do need more a big pot to cover all of those losses, but the advantages are many - I mentioned many of them previously.

In answer to your points, I do defer all my losses until they become profits and I capture ALL of the volatility swings. My returns are made up of long term profits (from when I close a trade) and short-term fluctuations. It is possible to lose lots short term, but with time the profits taken outweigh the fluctuations. It could be a week, a month or even a year and can happen even with lots of positions still open.
 
Thanks for the advice Gary. I am reading all of the boards when I have time. I want to learn more because I'm happy to accept my system might not work so well if the FTSE rose to 6000 or the volatility disappeared.

I think the main point I would like to make is that my idea is different. I think everybody regarded Ford, Copernicus and lots of people who had different ideas as idiots as well. I have a maths degree I have worked out my potential losses and I have calculated my potential returns and I am happy.

I do have one thing to thank Mr Charts for and that is the title for the book. Suicidal Trading - perfect. At first the investors thought it was suicidal, now the traders do as well.

I didn't start this thread to persuade people that my system was best and everybody should use it. I wanted to hear what sort of traders are using the boards.

Cheers.

John.
 
The single greatest attribute of a successful trader is to lose her/his ego and accept small losses. That is irrespective of time frame.
Now I'm off to trade the US and should make money from some of these :
ERTS BKS INTU STT ESIO ADBE
 
jls483

I have to say as a relative newbie to actual trading (but having studied markets/ trading for about 3 yrs now) I have to agree with the majority here.

I don't know how to copy extracts from other posts, but you say "you either cut your losses and day trade or do as I do and just wait".

You don't have to be a day trader to read a chart, apply TA, follow a trend, pick precise entry/ exit points, go short in a downtrend and long in an uptrend.

This can be done over any time period, as short term as using 1 min bars for day trading to doing longer term analysis using 1 week bars or longer.

You can be a "trader" with any time horizon. A day trader may be looking to make profits in a matter of minutes, a longer term trader may have a time horizon of a few days or weeks, possibly even months.

The point is, your methods seem purely based on luck. A succesful trader stacks the odds in their favour by using any variety of methods. Take a look at Chartman's thread, (Day trading the DOW) for detailed descriptions of his methods. He is a day trader but I am sure similar methods could be utilised over longer time spans.

If you stack the odds in your favour, you can still make good gains AND preserve capital. Your methods may well sustain heavy "paper losses" for long periods of time.

You may prove us all wrong of course and make spectacular gains but your risk of failure I would guess is high.
 
DarrenF

Before this gets carried away any further, let me just make completely clear I am not advocating my methods if you are a succesful day trader.

There are plenty of good day traders out there who make a profit, good luck to them, one day I would be happy to earn some of my money this way - which is why I read these boards.

However, until that time I have a system which is somewhere between investing and trading which given the level of the FTSE and the current high volatiltiy is doing alright thank you very much.

It is a no brainer to run, can use limit orders, does not require any insights or special software, and can be updated once or twice a day. I don't care which way the market moves and I sleep soundly at night. The overall risk is clearly defined. With day trading you know the risk for one trade and know that you will be blown out with 10 bad trades in a row. With Suicidal trading you know that with 10,000 in the pot you can cope with a fall to 3000 and if it falls to 2500 you will need another 10,000 and if it falls to 2200 you will need another 10,000 and so on. I also know to a surprising degree of accuracy what my long term profits will be - somewhere in the region of 10,000 a year.

Okay so I may fluctuate up and down by 10,000 or so each year, but after five years I'm going to have 50,000 plus or minus 10,000.

Not better than a good trader, but a hella lot better than a bad one! You only have to read the journals of this web site to see there are plenty of traders who don't make a profit.

Let's not waste any more time worrying about my sanity. Either I'm mad or I'm not and either way I'm not agreeing with people who tell me I have not worked out the risk. If you want to know more about Suicidal Trading you will just have to come on one of my £345 a day courses.

All the best,

John.
 
No. I will happily give a course in Suicidal Trading for just £345 a day. Or you could just wait for the book.
 
jls483

If it works for you-fine! After all, every one has to have a system they are happy with.

If you do aspire to be a day trader though (as I do), I would encourage you to learn about charts, t/a, entry/ exit points, money management techniques and apply them to longer term strategies first. This will help you devise a strategy which can be used/ adapted to shorter term trading.

Youv'e definately found the right place to learn about this kind of stuff. I've learnt more about short term trading from the discussion boards here than 3 yrs spent reading books etc

best of luck
 
Being the perpetual skeptic i suspect a clever ploy to get some advertising on these boards rather than the usual "my friend told me about this web site that is really amazing..etc go and check it out"

What does everyone else think :?:
 
gpegler - no Suicidal Trading is not just a simpe exit strategy. It is an entire system devised by yours truly. The course covers all aspects of when to trade and more importantly how to predict how much capital to invest, how to balance the risk you are exposed to against the returns you can expect.

It is not rocket science. All just common sense with a bit of maths thrown in.

John.
 
Newton, Take it from me. I would not have taken the abuse I did if I wanted to sell a course. Read the whole thread. The sooner this thread changes from talking to me to talking about what sort of trading people do - the happier I'll be.

Also ask yourself who would want to come on a course given by somebody who almost universally seems to be regarded as a few losing trades short of a bankrupt.

I do genuinely believe that what I have to say is worthy of a course - but lets leave it at that. If you are at all sceptical - don't sign up.

John.
 
Hi John,

If you want to flog a course on here you'll need to pay for it :)

Please contact Sharky to ask for details.


Incidentally we run fairly regular "Suicide Trading" sessions over on the Eurostoxx site and I for one think they are a great way of liberating you from some of the fears of trying to make points all the time :)


Cheers
 
Helen - sorry I won't mention the course again.

I'm a little bit disappointed that you have stolen my term SuicideTrading to describe your sessions on the Eurostoxx site - I hadn't registered it as a trademark yet, but ....

John.
 
Hi John,

Please feel free to use it as a book title :)

I hope you understand about the advertising thing. If we weren't careful the site could quickly get unusable with people selling things. And it is primarily a mutual help site.

Regards
 
John,

In order to maintain the high standards that we've set on these boards, we simply don't permit posts of a unsolicited commercial nature- even when it appears within the context of an apparently genuine thread.

Clearly you mention your own course and put a price on it, and this must constitute a post of a commercial nature.

The respose you've had hardly is good marketing like you say and rather than pull this thread I will keep on here to hopefully increase awareness about the boundaries we set regarding commercial posts.

We're going to be adding clear guidelines as to what is and is not permitted on the boards, and this should prevent any misgivings about what people belive they can and can't say.

I do ask all members - particularly new ones - please do not breach this simple rule. If there is a flagrant breach like there was yesterday when one particular member tried to mass mail an advert for Tenfore/Quotespeed subscription - there membership will be revoked and all efforts may made to ban them from the site.

Now let's get back to talking about trading.

Sharky.
 
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