I had something else planned for today, but this email came my way, and there is so much good stuff for traders-with-issues I thought I would print it and respond lightly.
Happy New Year! May 2011 be the best year for you yet! Thank you for following me. I am glad you did because I would like to follow you. I like what you wrote on your profile. How is your writing going? What do you write? Can you share with me your experience with Vantage Point?
And to you as well! My writing is going well. Aside from this column, I am working on two more books. I have used VantagePoint since 2006, and I will continue using VantagePoint as far as my eye can see.
A little about me: I have traded the markets on & off for years with some success overall. I would like to trade for a living and I tried to do that last 3 months (Oct-Dec 2010). I found that while I had some success before, trading for a living added another dimension – the need for consistency. My trading results were not consistent, so I cannot rely on it to live on.
Consistency is good in trading, as it is in all things. Repetition is Nature’s finest tool.
I also made a big mistake in not putting in a stop loss; I was watching the market and thought that I could get out at my stop, if the market got there. But I learned that I should never do that because when the market went to my stop loss I did not take the loss but moved it down!!!! I will NEVER, NEVER do that again.
Thank you for putting emphasis on this “issue.” Every trader should read this and learn.
I was always dubious of placing the stop loss on the platform because I heard about brokers chasing stop losses and I have seen charts on the broker platform spike while my charting software did not and when I refresh the broker platform the spike disappeared. So, I have to find a broker that does not chase stops. Due to not placing the stop and then moving it down cost me a large loss (it was the day of Korea bombing) so I stopped trading to review and re-gather my thoughts, retest my methods, and get my confidence back.
It’s not your platform; it is the market makers. It happens, and it is not going away. Work around it. Kudos to you for taking a breath and realizing how important your confidence is in this game.
I don’t have a mentor, I wish I did and I have tried to find someone but no one who is trading successfully wants to share what he or she is doing or want to spend his or her time mentoring someone else. I read in the book, Trading in the Zone how much a trader can learn from a mentor and how much quicker a trader can be more successful just by having a mentor. Who was your mentor and how did you find him/her?
Excellent book to reference. Anyone who reads this column regularly knows I have recommended it many times. My mentor was (is) a former trader who evolved into a Certified Financial Planner (CFP). At the end of 2004, I sold my real estate holdings. In exchange for me investing some dough with him, he agreed to teach me all he knew about trading, and so here we are today, investing and trading our way back from the collapse of 2008 and into 2011, a good year to make some money.
Trade in the day; invest in your life …
