Daytrading $$

[Jeff Caplan <jeffwcbs@xxxxxxxxx>]

And another post to share.. in which the author chooses to remain
annonymous...
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I've been profitable as a daytrader (mostly day, rarely I hold overnight or
2-3 days) for four years. Mostly S&P futures, also sometimes individual
stocks. My main tool is a price/time pattern I picked up from months of
realtime market watching. When the setup is there, I screen the trade with
judgement on the prevailing market news and sentiment. My typical trade
lasts about fifteen minutes.

I've been unable to make it mechanical (EL coded), though I have a written
set of conditions that each trade must at least pass. I'd have more
confidence and would use higher leverage if I could figure out how to
backtest it, but I'm pessimistic that I'll ever be able to do that, since
the discretionary aspect involves too many variables.

I think the most important lesson for me, after learning to always take
small losses, was learning not to trade too often. I wait until everything I
know lines up, including whatever intuition I may occasionally have. This
means my yearly returns have not been spectacular, but they have been
consistent, with low drawdowns.

I definitely feel that I couldn't teach what I do, it is idiosyncratic to my
personality, capital, time put in, etc.. In fact, I became consistently
profitable only from the time I adopted a do-it-yourself approach, and
stopped relying on advisory opinions.

I take great pains to try to minimize every risk I can see, always trying to
avoid the one large loss that could wreck my many small (and occasional
large) gains. For example, I never leave the screen for even a moment unless
I have stop loss order placed.

I hope my experience is a little helpful. Feel free to discuss or post any
of this if you like, but please do not attach my name to it. One thing that
works for me is to not discuss the specifics of what I'm doing much. I find
my ego gets involved and that negatively affects my performance.


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   |X|	               Jeff Caplan           WCBS Newsradio 88, New York 
   |X|                http://www.newsradio88.com/behindmic/jeffpat.html