Learn To Take Losses

Have you considered hard stops? If not why not?
In demo you get filled every time.

 

I take only "calculated risks" Ie. limited/capped risks.
As I already said in an other thread: when diversification is applied, together with that, then one can forget about any possible headaches, b/c such a loss is acceptable, since "calculated & expected"
Info: I mean options trading with the intent to keep the options till expiration.

Don't worry, be happy

 

Best feeling is when you even can do some better than the plan
For example plan says to sell at price x.
Sometimes one can sell even for more, by first trying higher prices...

 

No because when I traded live, hard stops often got taken out.

TOS sim is actually quite realistic. When market opens, if I place a market order it actually doesn't get fill right away, only until the market "settled down" usually takes a couple of minutes. When I place a limit order, it doesn't get fill until the market hit that price.

 

That is how I trade options, risk is always capped so I can sleep well.

Day trading is different, hard to cap risks.

 

I would think day trading equities is fairly easy to cap

 

Trading with a hard stop you notice the ones that get taken out and reverse.
Trading without a hard stop and you notice the ones that just kept moving against you.
Could it be that your stops are too tight?

It's been years since I traded futures but at that time with IB at least my market orders were filled instantly. That was the objective of a market order, to get an instant fill, What recourse do you have if you don't get filled and the market runs away from you?
All my brokers and I trade with several, (All Canadian) give me instant fills on market orders.

 

Dude, no, you don't second guess or outwit your own plan. Otherwise, what's the point of having a plan? You stick to the plan, always.

 

I am too new to day trading. Still trying to figure out how to be consistently profitable. That is priority #1.

There are a zillion things on my to do list and it is one of them.

And trading 1 min charts manually, at the same time watching tick by tick and every trade has a different mental stop... I need to write an algo.

 

Here's a tip for daytrading LongStock say at $100 with an HV or ATM IV = 50, with a capped risk at say about 5.5%:
Buy a LongPut with strike 95 and a small DTE (say 5d), as "protector" (protective put). The premium is about $0.50. Then you can daytrade the LongStock without any fear for 5 days long, as the loss would be capped at about max 5.5%.
This construct is the synthetic for a LongCall, but IMO in such a situation one should stick with the LongPut + LongStock, instead of the LongCall, b/c options usually have big B/A spreads and so therefore are not well suited for daytrading. The stock is better suited, therefore the suggested solution...
Of course you can make it even cheaper/better with a shorter DTE...