ok. so it has been one year of on and off trading. i am down 5k and had to send some more money to the man. that is never fun.
what i have wanted to do from the beginning was trade in 25 or 50 shares increments to enter a position. this way i can get a feeler out there, and if the trade doesn't work out, then i get out with a small loss. if the trade starts to work, i will see that on my screens and in the P/L and then start adding in with size. Unfortunately, my current broker will not allow me to do this with the day trading platform. i can however, trade from their web trader platform, at the same cost (.40 per 100) but i will not have access to the level II, time and sales, and i will not be able to have hotkeys. currently, i hit alt-F4 to sell or alt-F9 to buy. this is immediate orders. of course, i have other orders i can do, such as hitting bids, taking offers, but a majority is with those two keys.
with the webtrader platform, everything will be slowed down. i will not be able to hit bids or take offers. i will not have access to that immediate momentum play. obviously, this is not a good thing.
another option is to go over to tradestation. they will allow me to place opening odd lot orders, but there commission structure is $1 per 100 shares. they have some awesome trade management software as well, including a trading matrix. i can also hit bids, take offeres, play all the momo strategies while at the same time, do my odd lot trading.
check this out http://www.tradestation.com/automated_trading/advanced_stocks.shtm#matrix
you basically click to buy, set stops, sells. then you can drag your stop up to change the price. one thing i especially like is seeing the volume at each price level in the matrix. this may help seeing where some support or resistance is at instead of thinking at the .50 or whole dollar level there will be support or resistance.
the problem is, who wants to learn new software. or pay $1 per 100. not me. i have to figure it out soon though. i don't know if the ability to trade smaller will help or not. i will basically be tripling my commissions though. i wondered how many of my winning days would be losing days if the commission were 3x as much.
i missed the chance to short that 11;20 doji, so i shorted it when it retraced back. set my stop. no pain. but boy, did the market rip.
my fault on this trade. see explanation on the beige fdx chart.
stopped out on a trade that doesn't even exist on the chart. strange things.
first was a short as market was heading down. but gold was holding up strong so, i got my self out prematurely. stock dropped. then it ripped up later. i tried shorting the pop later on, but no, that bad boy only wanted up. it was chopping around all over the place.
this one is pretty funny. i drew that trendline alert, and literally, the stock came within a penny or so of setting off the alert but never triggered it. i should have had another line drawn along the top of the bars as well. i would have still had chance to get in before the rocket ship. what a sweet trade that would have been. i need to start mapping out all possiblities on the chart and setting the alerts.
i don't know if you readers know this, but with quotetracker, i can draw a trendline and then set an alert that will go off if the stock trades through the trendline. pretty cool.
another great trade. nice hammer on the 50% retracement. i wanted in at .53, stop at .33. now that i think about it, i was allowing the stop size to influence my trade. i wanted a better price. this time, it didn't work out. i never got in. and boom. i think it was good for a dollar. not in my pocket though. there have been some solid trades lately that i have missed.
yesterdays trade in FCX that i couldn't trade because i didn't clear the 25k minimum, really stunk. it was picture perfect. i think i was $12 shy of the 25k minimum. what a rip. i quite possibly have made back all my loses from friday in that one trade. teaches me to save my money for the next day, instead of trying to grind my way higher the same day.
there is always a chance to make it back.
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