WOW! Thats all I can say guys! YOu really are a bunch of great people and I really, really wish you all the best in this business and I hope we never give up!!! So, keep cool and anyone wanna mail me my adress is : alexander.strbac@zg.hinet.hr TLC, Alex
While we're all baring our stories, here's mine. I got started in Fall of 1999. At the time I didn't know a bid from an ask, much less anything else about the stock market. Being a musician, I happened to be one of the charter artists who signed up with MP3.com. Well, they offered their charter artists shares of their IPO at the offering price. I didn't know what I was doing, but figured it was a good idea to do it. I got 500 shares at the offering price of $28. The stock opened at $96 and I was able to sell at $90 (the MP3.com artists weren't bound by any lockups). Needless to say I realized that there was something to this stock market thing and I needed to learn more. I opened my account with Datek and got a real time feed from Esignal and began trading with techniques I gleaned from the Farrell book Day Trade Online. Like any monkey during that bull market I made good money for the first couple of months. Then I had my wakeup call, which for me was BMCS. They had warned and I tried to apply the NYSE strategy of big down gappers to the NASDAQ, as per Farrell's book. I bought 1000 shares at the open looking for a bounce, but the stock just kept falling, and not being well versed in stop management, I held on until I had lost $10,000. I then read Tony Oz' book "Stock Trading Wizard" and then studied with him at one of his seminars, and turned my trading around completely. Never again did I break a stop loss, and immersed myself in technical analysis. I made back the money I had lost on BMCS and didn't look back. In light of other traders' stories, I consider myself fortunate that I learned my painful lessons about stops without getting wiped out.
Keep the stories coming everyone! This is a great thread. In answer to Qwiktrade's questions: 1) Yes, I have considered trading with Bright or another firm. Echo looks good as well. I'm studying for my series 7 right now. I think a professional firm will help me take it to the next level. Besides being surrounded by other traders,I think just for the fact that you get in your car and actually go to work every day instead of staying in your underwear all day would help. (And my wife would think I actually did something for a living). I'm still working at nights for now. 2) Which brings me to your other question. How in the world did I tell my wife about my dissaster? Let me tell you it wasn't easy! I never should have kept it from her in the first place. Not telling her and my grandma was actually more stressful than losing the money. I felt like such a jerk. Luckily I have a very cool wife and she didn't kill me. Looking back, I think it's kind of funny now. We were laying in bed one night and I was extremely depressed. (Because of the stock market of course). She had noticed a change in me for quite a while and I would always just say I was stressed from work, or was tired or something. She can read me like a book though and she wasn't about to give in this time. She kept prying and prying at me to tell her what was wrong. I wasn't going to tell her no matter what. (She's such a tight wad with money. It took her forever just to let me balance the checkbook. This would surely kill her). I told her I couldn't tell her what was wrong. This made her want to know even more. After going back and forth like this she got this aweful look on her face. Now I was asking her what was wrong......She was thinking that I must have cheated on her! Ok, I couldn't have her thinking that, so that is what finally motivated me to tell her. Pretty crazy huh? Husbands, don't ever do what I did. It's not worth it. See ya in the trenches.
Well here is my story... I hope some of you find it interesting. I started my interest in stock trading at about the age of 12, I donât really remember why I became interested, but I remember going to the library and looking for stuff to read about the market. My family doesnât have much money, so even though my parents went with me to Charles Schwab to look into opening an account, they were not willing to put up the 500 dollar minimum balance. My interest basically stayed on the back burner until I got my first job. It might also be worth noting that I dropped out of high school Junior year... I wasnât a "bad" kid, but I really hated high school. I got my equivalency diploma, and went to a local junior college at the age if 17. I eventually dropped out of there too. Not that I hate to learn... I always did a lot of reading. I just wasnât made for school. So at about the age of 18 I had saved up $2,500 and opened an account with Quick&Reilly. This was the summer of 1997. Before I ever placed a trade I had read William O'neilâs "How to Make Money in Stocks", so I was completely aware of how important it was to cut losses. My first trade earned me $175 bucks, followed by about 3 or 4 losses of $75 to $200... I then made about $700 shorting rallies after the mini-crash of October '97. I was really gaining confidence... But then, of course, it all fell apart. I had a few losses, I then added about $1300 to my account. When it was all said and done, by May 1998 I had lost $2700. I didnât follow the golden rule of trading... Even though I read "cut your losses short and let your profits run" I guess I had to touch the stove for myself to prove that it indeed was hot! This was a lot of money for me to loose, and I was very upset, but I donât remember feeling "devastated". I knew I would make a comeback. But at this point I had to stop trading. During the time that I was not trading, I evaluated every trade I placed, very carefully. I printed out a chart for each trade, and printed up a detailed evaluation of each entry, and each exit. I listed "lessons learned" for each trade, and then printed out the $loss and labeled it "market tuition". (I tried not to look at them as "losses") I also realized many of my trades were not good Risk to Reward plays. I tried to calculate the risk:reward on all my past trades, and I found that many of them were actually negative. I regained confidence and was ready to give it another go. I started again in August 1999... (now at datek) I was 100% set to always cut losses, and since that point I actually have never let a loss "get away from me" to this day. But making money still eluded me. I was now looking for good risk:reward trades, but I found that they were hard to take advantage of, because my loss would be too big. I ended up using tight stops even though the chart called for a wider stop... I took a lot of small losses. I stopped trading again, this time without loosing too much money. I thought about this new set of losses, and I came to the conclusion that I could decide how much I was going to risk percentage-wise, and then size my position accordingly... This way I could use wider stops and still take a small loss. I had discovered position sizing! I thought I was a genius... I wondered "Why in the world do all the books I've read not mention this???". Of course I later found out that there were a few books that do mentioned it, "Trading Your Way to Financial Freedom" by Van Tharp for one. It was time to try again. It was early 2000. I opened an account with MyTrack ($3500)... I was so impressed by this direct access thing, that I paid more attention to the bells and whistles than to my trading. The direct access platform induced me to overtrade... BIG TIME. Mytrack offered the first week of trading free, so I "took advantage of it"... I bought options, daytraded, etc. In about 3 weeks my account was at 2400. It wasnât too great of a loss, but I learned the KISS lesson. (Keep It Simple Stupid!) I kept trading, and made it back to about $3700. I knew I was getting close to profitability, so I stopped trading to get my mind in order and develop a more defined plan. By late 2000, I had done all the exercises in Van Tharp's book, and I had developed a written trading plan. I had a bumpy start when I had some nasdaq stop-orders that my broker did not execute, and did not honor for me at a fair price... So I was fed-up and decided to trade only Listed securities. In early 2001, I was so confident I added about $2500 to my account in credit card debt. (Disclaimer: NOT RECOMMENDED.) I am now 23 years old, it July 12th 2001 and my account is at about $21,000, a 250% return in 7 months. (I did withdraw about $2000, so the return would be bigger) I am no longer so controlled by my emotions. I donât feel I "HAVE TO" trade, I just check things out, and if an opportunity looks good I just put on a trade. This is after 4 years! I hope I didnât bore anyone. Good day, and good trading. (And I point you all to reread the quote by Calvin Coolidge posted by Babak on page 2 of this thread!) John A. McGraw
I forgot to mention that I really liked that quote, as well. Thanks to Babak for it and to jmcgraw for reminding us.
hi =) ive enjoyed reading the stories here, and thought i would post mine.. no laughing!! =) i first became interested in the stock market through my uncle.. he was telling me about some stocks that he owned and it interested me.. so i went to the book store looking for investing books.. i happened to pick up a day trading book and the guy standing next to me asked if i was a daytrader.. i told him i didnt even know what it was, and asked if he was one.. that began a long excited conversation where he told me everything he knew on the subject, which wasnt much.. he recommended some books, and it seemed interesting so i bought them.. i have always organized my life in a way that provides the most freedom.. i dont like the idea of having my time and money controlled by someone else.. naturally, trading appealed to my sense of independence.. at the time, i didnt have much cash and was saving money for a trip to Africa.. but i deposited 2500 dollars in an Ameritrade account.. about that time i found the silicon investor message board.. the thread "Trader J" was just buzzing about this great company, Perfumania.. they were going to launch a web site, and the stock price was sure to go up at least a zillion points.. maybe more.. so, i bought 400 shares one afternoon.. my first stock trade =).. by the end of the day, i was up about 400 dollars.. i couldnt believe how easy it was.. for sure, i would be banking some serious money the next day.. when the next morning came.. i remember logging on and to my horror, i had lost over 1000 dollars.. and as i looked in disbelief, the price was still falling.. quickly, i did what every good stock trader does.. i logged on to silicon investor to find out what had happened.. thats when two things dawned on me all at once.. first, the people hyping that stock were crazy.. and second, i better sell that thing before i lose all of my money.. i was disappointed over the loss, but decided to continue reading everything i could about trading.. of course, everyone told me that trading is gambling and would try to talk me out of becoming a trader.. i just told them that since they didnt know any more about trading than i did, we really couldnt even carry on an intelligent conversation about it.. when i returned from Zimbabwe that summer, i scraped together a little money and decided to take the plunge.. i became a daytrader in November of 1999.. i started with just 8,000 dollars in my Ameritrade account.. initially I was using a strategy that i found in Chris Farrells book "Day Trade Online".. i was buying 2000 shares of a cheap stock on the bid and then selling those shares on the ask.. as i became more experienced, i found a way to exploit an inefficiency in the way certain third market parties were executing my listed orders.. i became more of a momentum player, holding on for a small move of 3/16 or 1/4.. i never held any positions overnight and i cant remember ever having a profit of more than about 1/4 point.. between November of 1999 and August of 2000 (subtract February and March, I was in China teaching english) i turned my small 8,000 dollar account into over 230,000 dollars.. about this time I decided to move my account to a direct access broker because i knew decimals would kill the form of trading that i was doing.. i knew that learning to trade Nasdaq stocks would involve a learning curve both in time and money.. and if i was going to have to lose money i wanted to lose it before i paid taxes on the money.. frankly, i was totally unprepared for what i would experience.. at first I was trying to trade CSCO for 1/16ths.. that was torture and i was losing money very fast.. i decided to join a chat room that offers "education" to aspiring daytraders and try to learn their methods.. i chose Mtrader.com, mostly because i had read about it in thestreet.com.. while the ideas that were taught there might have worked for some, they were not working for me.. since the chat room thing really wasn't helpful, i started reading and re-reading every book i could get my hands on.. unfortunately, most of the books were written in the context of a bull market.. many people think that bear markets can be traded in the same manner as Bull markets if you just turn the charts upside down, but that really isn't the case at all.. greed and fear are very different emotions.. well, i continued trying to learn for months, steadily losing money.. a few months ago i decided to join the RealityTrader.com chat room for a month.. the guys there use a very simple method of tape reading mixed with basic technical analysis.. the most beneficial thing for me has been their emphasis on the psychology of trading.. most of my problems were due to overtrading, revenge trading, or some other form of self sabotage.. the guys at RT recommended that i read "Trading in the Zone" by Mark Douglas.. the ideas in that book made an amazing difference in my trading.. i've had to change many of my limiting beliefs about the market.. also, I've learned to think in probabilities.. the learning curve for trading cost me almost a year and over 100,000 dollars of my profits.. i have just now started making money again.. in hindsight, i chose the worst possible time to try and learn to daytrade Nasdaq stocks.. i've seen alot of guys get totally blown out of the markets during the crash.. for those of us who survived, the future is extremely bright.. becoming a trader is the hardest thing ive ever done in my life.. i remember all those days when i would end the day down, and i was so discouraged.. i studied harder, and continued to lose.. i tried new methods, and i continued to lose.. i became frusterated and depressed, and my losses increased.. then, after reading "Trading in the Zone" and talking to some people who had overcome the same problems i was having.. something changed in my logic.. i gave up trying to control the market.. and i gave up trying to control my account balance.. and i began to focus on controlling myself.. i became more concerned about my mental state, than the state of the market.. i began to work on eliminating bad habits instead of finding new setups.. and its amazing to me how fast my trading turned around.. trading is a profession where the price of success is different for everyone.. and you dont know the price, until you have already paid it.. for me, it was so worth it.. "If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours" -Henry David Thoreau (1854) -qwik
Wow, what a great thread! I can see some common issues that we have dealt with, and would like to add my short, but painful history. I started investing in the late summer of 1999, with an account at Schwab (approx $9000). My only knowledge was based on a couple of Motley Fools books, and beat the Dow strategies. I pretty much bought the strong companies at the time, and actually did well that first year. I was up 80%- not bad for not knowing anything. As with many of you, I felt that making money in stocks was easy, and that I was really smart. Then came 2000. I was subscribing to 2 advisors, Michael Murphys tech letter, and the Cabot Market letter. All they told me was to buy these great stocks on dips, and I was creamed. The problem was that I was not thinking for myself, or trying to learn what I needed to know. My turning point was when I started reading the posts, etc, on Clearstation, and learned of Van Tharp and Elder's material. That has made all of the difference, as I now have the tools that I needed, to develop my own system (swing and position trades), and how to work on my own psychology. Like you, I have not given up, and am determined to succeed! Thanks for all of your posts, they have provided some additional inspiration. Kevin
WOW...This is truly an amazing thread. The stories bring me back to my story and how it relates to trading.... I started back in 97 when my brother introduced me to trading..he was trading the futures markets and wanted to "bring me into the business" and share the success he was having. Well I was terified about the markets. I couldnt even spell SEC (I love that line!) but he showed me the ropes and I thought I read enough to get me going. My father passed so put 15K of my inheritance into the account and off we went. We daytraded the S&P and all I could see were the winnings! My brother and I had no system so we traded from a slew of indicators and plenty of emotion! Well after 8 months of trading, we got taken out by telling our broker to sell instead of buy!!! So while we thought we were "flat" we were actually in..and our broker didnt notify us until margin call, 3 days later. I was devestated!!!!! We stopped trading, I was ANGRY that I lost my fathers money and not speaking to my brother, went back to a "responsible" job in computers... Well time heals..and my brother and I are talking again and ,from my username, I am "reborn" trading the S&P EMini. After more than a year of making sure I wouldnt repeat those mistakes again and developing a system I feel very comfortable with, I have learned to take alot of my emotion out of it. I am still fine tuning and learning MUCH more but I believe I am on the right track this time, and am making a CAREER out of it, because I am truly fascinated with the markets, and realizing one of my biggest mistakes was the two years that I had walked away from them. I realized that I will never know all there is about the markets, from the financial, to equity, to the debt markets. But im VERY hungry to learn, even though they may have nothing to do with what im trading now, im sure it will come in somehow someday. Im still making mistakes but they are getting less costly!! So my lesson to you is beware of EVERYTHING in trading..not just the trades themselves, but everything from the brokers tickets to where "they say" you got filled at. (yes, I once got filled at a price that wasnt even on the tick data!). Good luck, good preparation and good trading! Fienyxtrader
This thread is great reading! Here's my rather lengthy story: I started investing way back in '88 or '89. Even before this I had worked at an investment management firm (minimum account size was $1 million) as a file clerk/coffee maker/gofer. I would file all manners of research reports, annual reports, advisories, etc. Of course, I'd be reading these as I filed them. They seemed very interesting, and sometimes I would check the newspaper a few months after I had read a stock recommendation, find out that that stock had went up and wished I had bought. But investing was very foreign to me and I knew nothing about how to buy a stock or even how to open an account at a broker, so I didn't do anything. Finally I saw an IPO announcement in the paper for Broderbund, a PC games maker. I thought, "Hey, I know Broderbund. I should buy some of their shares!" By that time I had heard about Charles Schwab and called them up to open an account. They sent me their new account form and I filled it out and mailed it off with a check for $5K. At the time, Broderbund had just opened and its price was around $15. By the time my account was opened it had shot up to $24. I was very innocent back then and called them up to ask, "Hey! I saw it at $15 when I first called to open an account. Can I still get it at that price?!" Thankfully, they didn't laugh at me and just gently told me no, the current price is $24. I was slightly peeved and asked them what was the fastest way I could've opened an account, and they said I could've went to their offices with a check and bought the stock right there. Well, shucks! So I bit the bullet and bought $4K of Broderbund at $24 (I'd never heard of risk management then and for the next 10 years). Commissions back then were based on dollar amount, not shares, so I probably paid over a hundred bucks for that trade. After a couple of weeks or so, I sold all (never heard of scaling out either) at $28 and thought that was fun. Of course, it kept going up and I regretted selling, but I had my first profits. For the next 5 years, I probably broke even on all of my trades. I invested/traded on tips from my coworkers and boss and followed the Motley Fool for a lot of my trades, although with the latter I seemed to always pass up the winners and pick the losers. But it was with the Fool's help that I played out a rags to riches to rags story... One of the Fool's picks was good ol' Iomega, the Zip drive maker. I'm sure some of you remember the Iomega rollercoaster of '95-'96. The Fool picked it for their portfolio when it was at about $17 prepresplit (they've had maybe 3 splits). I mulled it over for a few days and finally jumped in at $22 with 1000 shares. As IOMG kept going up, I bought more using margin. I even bought some for my IRA. The Fool's IOMG message boards filled up with 200-300 messages per day, and of course I read them all. Sure, there were negative messages about bad Zip drives, CD-Rs being cheaper and faster, manias, etc., but I conveniently tuned them out because I absolutely -loved- Iomega! They were going to take over the world and nothing was going to stop them! I eventually ended up with 10K shares after a split or 2. The crowning glory was the day IOMG shot up 10 points on news. I had made $100K in a single day! It was absolutely mind-blowing! But alas, as I know now, that was very near the blowoff top. A few days later, IOMG hit its all-time high of about $56. I was sitting on about $560K! That would've set me up good for a long time. Of course, greed got the best of me: I wanted to go for the million. As IOMG started coming down, I held on. One of the Fool's mantras was buy and hold for the long term. Sell only when the fundamentals change. I was completely brainwashed by this. I also reasoned that if the Fool didn't sell IOMG, I wasn't going to either. They said IOMG was good and I totally believed them. They weren't going to let me down. As IOMG approached $40, a friend suggested that maybe I should sell some. I was totally pissed and strongly refused; couldn't he see that I was looking to the future, when IOMG would dominate portable storage? No way was I going to sell. I was going to fully participate in IOMG's future glory. Soon the margin calls started coming. On the first few calls, I shoved in more money, but I finally realized that I couldn't keep doing that, so I had to sell some. It was very painful, but I still believed in the future and knew that IOMG would come back. I was on pins and needles every day, constantly checking stock prices. I calculated the exact price where a margin call would come and prayed that IOMG's price wouldn't fall below it. Well fall below it did, and when the Schwab guy called and said I had to sell such and such number of shares before the end of the day, I did some quick calculations and only sold half because I believed that's all I needed to sell to maintain margin. The guy called back 2 minutes before the close and asked me why I didn't sell the correct amount. I tried to reason with him but he wouldn't have any of it and quickly sold the other half using his terminal. I felt helpless as the order went through. As IOMG fell lower and lower, I still felt it had a chance as long as I could hold some shares. But eventually I had to dump it all. Immediately after that, the full weight of what I had done and what a fool I had been came crashing down on me like a ton of stock certificates. I was totally devastated. I was all set for life (at the age of 30) and I threw it all away because of greed and hope. As I write this, I can still clearly remember what happened next. My heart seemed to seize up as if I was in shock or in a permanently frightened state. My heart rate and breathing seemed to permanently speed up. I had a very hard time falling asleep, and when I woke up my heart would instantly seize up again. This lasted for 3 solid days! It really felt like the end of the world. After that most awful of experiences, I took a 2-year hiatus from investing and trading. I couldn't look at stocks anymore; they scared the hell out of me. In '98 I converted my small IRA into a Roth and started looking around. This Internet thing was getting very interesting, but I was scared to buy Internet stocks because they always seemed to be so high. The Motley Fool had bought AMZN in '97, but I had read reports that they wouldn't be profitable until 2000 (hmmm...and they were still wrong!), so I thought I'd be crazy to buy that. But I finally broke down and on the backs of AOL, ELNK, INKT and others I boosted my IRA by 500%. By April '99 I had discovered daytrading. I don't remember how I learned about it, but I started with a $10K account at Datek and one of the free daytrading chat rooms. I had watched the room for awhile and noticed that the room leader called some really nice trades, so after awhile I plunged in; it looked so easy. After a week of trying to follow the leader, I was down $2K. I was always trying to chase his calls and usually ended up buying the tops and selling the bottoms. I figured out that daytrading wasn't as easy as it looked and proceeded to trade more carefully with smaller shares. Through the summer my account hovered around $15K or so. I wasn't losing, but I wasn't getting anywhere either. Gee, this post is long... In Fall '99 I discovered Pristine.com and read about the 30 minute Gap Play Long - if a stock gaps up more than 50 cents, buy over the 30 minute high with a stop under the low of the day. There was a Gap Play Short also, but I was scared of shorting and ignored that. I thought the play sounded reasonable and adopted it. I finally had a method, however simple it was. Previously, I was just following chatrooms without knowing the reasoning behind calls. I used my IRA to trade this method because I thought of the money in it as not real, since I can't touch it until I'm 59 1/2. It was easier to use this "unreal" money instead of the "real" money in my regular account. With this new method and careful selection of chatroom calls (I remember LNCR being called at about $1 right at the end of the day and took a flyer on it - if you can call 1000 shares a flyer. I sold it at $6 the next morning! That was so sweet!), almost doubled my IRA by the end of '99. The gap breakouts worked really well most of the time. I wasn't setting stop points back then, but I would just jump out if I sensed a stock was going the wrong way. I was using TD Waterhouse as my broker. I had heard about direct access, but I had also read on Silicon Investor that market makers usually leave their Auto-Ex switched on in most stocks. I tested this out with Waterhouse and found lightning fills most of the time. I couldn't understand why anyone would use direct access when I could get fills like I was getting at Waterhouse. Why sell into the buying and guess the top? I would observe when the top was forming and send in a market order (horrors!) and would get out in a flash right at the top, even when everyone else was panicking and hitting the bids! That was just heaven! Of course, good things don't last forever, and one day I bought a stock and wanted to sell it when I saw it was moving down. But I couldn't find it in my Positions list. I kept refreshing the page but the stock didn't show up. It finally showed up after a few minutes and I sold it for a bigger loss than I had intended. I called Waterhouse and asked them what had happened. They said they had just put in a policy that restricted people from selling their stocks until after they've held it for 2 minutes. They didn't want daytraders flooding their systems with orders. Outrageous! I knew I had to find a new broker. With my experience with the Gap Play, I decided to open a regular account at Preferred Trade at the beginning of 2000 with $14K. Preferred had a $15 Auto-Trade (that only used SNET and INCA) and a $7.95 payment-for-order-flow trade. I expected the $7.95 trade to be lightning fast, just like at Waterhouse. This didn't happen in the first couple of days, but I lucked out after that because Preferred had just signed an Auto-Ex deal with NITE. I took advantage and turned my $14K into about $52K in about 3 months. I was averaging about $1200 per day by the second month, with my best day over $4K. I had a winning streak of 38 days in a row at one point. I also had a stretch of 30 winning trades in a row. The Gap Play was working beautifully during the go-go Internet days. I was a nervous trader (still so now) and would sell at the first signs of weakness, but I'd still sometimes get 4-point breakouts with hardly any selling in sight. I would also look for rapidly falling stocks on heavy volume and would buy them at the first signs of strength. Those picks worked very well back then, too. Soon, NITE found out that Preferred had some good traders and was losing good money to them, so they pulled the plug on the Auto-Ex. I found that out when one day I was sitting on a $3800 day and a stock that I had already pulled good money from started falling. My mouth salivated at the thought of a $5K day. I bought a false bottom and tried to sell it when the bottom didn't hold. But I wouldn't get filled until it fell 6 points, with me screaming at the screen all the way down. After a week or two of subterfuge from Preferred about why the Auto-Ex didn't work anymore, I saw them at a daytrading conference and they admitted that NITE had cancelled the deal. I tried out their Auto-Trade for awhile after that, but it was very slow. Time for another broker! In May 2000 I went half-time on my programming job so that I could trade the markets full-time (I'm on the West Coast). This was ill-advised because I was just learning direct access using RealTick at MB Trading, but it seemed like I was missing a lot of good trades by only trading the first 1 1/2 hours, so I went for it. With the Gap Play not working well anymore, my frustrations with direct access and RealTick (no more instant fills at the inside) and pressure from having to at least replace half of my income, I got my head handed to me after 2 months. The loss wasn't that bad ($5K), but it was humbling after my previous success. I traded small (100 to 200 shares) while learning RealTick, so the huge commissions ($50 round trips) assured that I wouldn't get anywhere. I begged (well, not really) for my full-time position back and got it in July. Next broker? I went with Tradescape next mostly because of the low commissions and ok software. I started making money again with a pay chatroom (I'm still with them now), but Tradescape would always be only semi-reliable. It was frustrating, but I could always call them to get out of a trade fast if the software failed, so that was good. Today I'm with Hold Brothers, and they seem to be the best broker to date, notwithstanding the instant executions from Preferred and Waterhouse. The pay chatroom calls stocks in up- or downtrends that have pulled back for 3 to 5 days, intraday flags, breakouts, stocks that have downside expansion bars to support, etc. They call the same types of plays over and over, with reasonable stops, so I understand the setups well. They espouse risk management, position sizing and small numbers of trades. They do fairly well every day; I just have to work on my emotions and psychology. I tend to jump out of plays before the stop hits because I don't really want to lose the entire stop (and watch them reverse without ever stopping out) and jump out of winners too early because I get very nervous if I sit on profits. I pick my own plays sometimes but I seem to trust them less than chatroom calls, so I mess them up. For example, today I bought RSAS (which gapped down on bad news) over it's 5 minute high, but I didn't really have a defined stop (I thought the low of the day was too far away), so when it reversed immediately I panicked out for a 0.18 loss. Of course, it went back up immediately and eventually busted loose for almost 2.50 as I stared at another failure. I've read "Trading in the Zone" by Mark Douglas and am trying to put his teachings to practice, but I still find it very hard to control my emotions. If anyone's read this far, thanks and congratulations! It was fun writing it and made me reflect on my entire trading career. I feel like I'm on the cusp of breaking out to new highs as a trader, as long as I can control those emotions. Good trading to you all!
Well done Klaorman!!! Guys, It looks like this thread is one of the biggest on this forum. Looks like everyone actually WANTS to speak of their career... Thats way cool, because we can all learn and profit from others' mistakes and not make 'em ourselves. Especially us newbies, just starting out. Thank you guys all for being so honest and keep up the good work! Alex_The_Croat P.S. Anyone wanna come to Croatia for a holiday