Louis,
Gee you are a good sport.
> Brian is right when he says I am sipping the
soup on a
> lot of tables but never stay for the meal.
I
was mulling over your situation last evening (my time) and came to
a
conclusion.
I wasn't going to say anything but since you brought it
up again.
You have had a bad exeperience in the markets before - BAD
EXPERIENCES make strong lasting impressions on us.
Basically you
have 'fear of failure' - you don't sit down to the meal
because you
don't want the experience of a bad meal - you just cant
face up to
that.
Possibly temperament or other life experiences are amplifying
this.
The anTidote is quite simple - PREPARATION (practise, paper
trading
etc).
Pick something, anything, and go all the way with
it - right up to
paper trading at your brokers.
If it fails pick
something else, and repeat, until you get a good one.
Then when you are
sure keep practising a bit more, then practise some
more again until you
are so over prepared that it is a joke - then if
it is still a good
'system' go ahead and trade with small amounts of
money only (if it has
a bad turn it will only be a small negative
experience and you can cope
with that).
Grit your teeth and learn to eat a lot of bad meals
gracefully (in
trading over 90% of what we do never pays a
dime).
For example, when I started trading I read books like "The
Market
Wizards" that recounted the anecdotal trading stories of super
succesful traders and I noticed that a lot of the 'famous' traders
went boom and bust early in their careers - some of them more than
once - before they learnt not to do that anymore (pretty dumb
huh).
I promised myself I would NEVER have a strong negative market
experience, as in 'get smashed' (I accpet my share of controlled
losses, yes, but getting smashed, no).
Why?
... because I
don't need NEGATIVE experiences to learn to trade.
POSITIVE experience is
a much better teacher.
MAKE YOUR NEGATIVE EXPERIENCES VIRTUAL
EXPERIENCES UNTIL YOU DON'T
HAVE THEM ANY MORE - THEN START
TRADING.
Impulsiveness is your weakness - if you don't control it, it
will
control you.
I still think you should consider buying a
system or getting a mentor
to help you get started but then you want if
for free, right?
brian_z
--- In
amibroker@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Louis P."
<rockprog80@xxx> wrote:
>
> Hi group,
>
> The
last thread which I started really helped me to realize a lot
of
things,
> one of them is that Brian is right when he says I am sipping
the
soup on a
> lot of tables but never stay for the meal.
>
> I'd like change that.
>
> I would like to concentrate
on a particular kind of market (actions
or
> futures) and a
particular timeframe (1-minute, 5-minute, 15-minute,
1-hour,
>
daily,etc).
>
> I know I may get zillions of different
responses, but what do you
consider
> to be the more
promising?
>
> I've read that more and more people consider
futures are the future
(haha!)
> because of the high volatility
and trading opportunities. Is this
true? If
> yes, how much money
do I need to trade them? I've heard you need a
lot!
> And do I
need to be there watching for 24 hours a day? And what
about
>
stocks and ETF? I'd like to read some people opinion about what
they
> consider to be the most promising way...
>
>
Of course, I won't start threads like this every two days! ;-)
I'm
just
> really thinking about this all and am tired to switch markets,
timeframe,
> strategies, plans, all the time. I'd like to choose
something and
stay with
> it. But I want to choose what's most
promising!
>
> Thanks!
>
>
Louis
>