So you only look at charts? You dont take into account financial data or company news or even the market conditions?
All that matters is price action. I made over $1100 in winning trades today. Mostly UVXY. Even charts are secondary. Using time/sales and OTO orders with tight stops and exiting at first sign of stalling or pivoting price action is what trading is all about. Daytrading that is.
It depends on what strategy I'm using, for example in my swing trading journal here on ET I'm mostly focused on stock price technicals, I do look at the fundamentals in regards to the company's financial stability, valuation, time to earnings, recent earnings beat/miss, and current market/sector news. Lot's of the time I'll buy a stock and it'll drop right away, just the way it is, you'll never always buy the bottom tick and sell the top tick. You need a trading plan based on a empirical evidence then it's a matter of following it and not getting caught up with individual trade results. Try to think like a casino, they have losing streaks too but they never accept one bet that could significantly impact them.
There is too much disinformation out there and retail traders believe a lot of the falsehoods. Hedge funds and other institutional players do not need to mess with retail traders because retail traders are slashing their own throats each time they trade against the trend. They are their own worst enemies but, like little kids do not take responsibility for their bad trading decisions. Nobody forces the retail trader to lose 50% of their monies. Chances are good, they had a 10% loss, then, a 20% loss but, you kept wishing and hoping to just break even. These are just some of the most common ones but, retail traders continue to commit the same trading mistakes and not doing anything to minimize their mistakes, yet expect to make monies?
You have given the ET message board, a lot of nuggets to learn from. However, a lot of retail traders believe they know better and will ignore your advise. Then, they continue to wonder why they continue to lose their monies?
Thank you, I think the biggest problem most retail traders have is they only open a few trades and focus on them too much, but no matter how good your analysis or edge is, you can't ever predict with 100% success the outcome of a trade, as all trade results are based on future events and nobody can ever predict the future with 100% success, so it all comes down to risk management by making lot's of small trades with an edge. Just because a trade resulted in a loss doesn't mean you did something wrong, but that's goes against our natural instincts and how we were raised which is hard to overcome. Having realistic expectations is key too, not expecting to beat the market every month is one of them.
retail traders should always blame themselves if they can't make it. Institution traders, bankers ... are not out to slaughter the retail traders. They work very hard so as to earn as much $$$$ as possible. They are good people because they move the market, and they provide trading opportunities for retail traders. Be thankful to them. CEOs are not out to slaughter the retail traders. They work very hard so that the stock price can go higher. manipulators (legit or not) work very very hard so that they can earn tons of money. In fact, manipulators are very 'good' people as they provide excellent trading opportunities for retail traders. It is up to retail traders to seize the opportunities. Be thankful to the manipulators. So lazy retail traders should work very very very hard instead of blaming others. Instead of complaining, learn to be grateful for the trading opportunities created by those people.
If I walk into a grocery store to buy a 1/2 gallon of milk do I care what dairy farm the milk came from? Where the dairy is located? Who owns it? How much they make selling milk? Whether the CEO has a hot wife or not? I only care if the milk is fresh, and most importantly, the price I want to buy it at. Price. Fack PE's and all the rest of that useless noise.
You'll have to define "a few" and "lots of" . I agree that risk management is the most important part of managing a portfolio but depending on what "lots" means, you can be over diversified and have so many irons in the fire that you can't manage them in a timely manner. I only have a few positions open at a time and I hope I focus on them too much. The number of open positions has little to do with risk control.