wayneb

Tried TWS and TradeStation and bailed on both. Never got the hang of them, too complicated and little support. Found Das to be the best!

Das is great for stocks but not appropriate for futures anyway. I switched to futures and find Ninja to be pretty good and it's free!

You can create a gappers list and setup your pre market strategy then try the one or two stocks you feel were in play. Just don't look at how it did or you will have an unfair bias. Also general market conditions may give you a bias so my experience is it's really tough to do it fairly. You also have to wait a few days for the playback to become available so that can be a problem because Carlos doe's a recap from the previous day. An example would be trading Mondays ITCI on Thurs or Fri, you'll know whats going to happen. I tried trading each day minus a year but you can't tell if the stock was in play. Like I said I used it for a couple of months and did not see any benefit unless you live in a bubble.

If you open a TD Ameritrade account you can use their on demand feature for free very similar to trading sim. I find the biggest problem with this type of practice however is you really don't know if the stock your practicing on was really in play that day. If you cherry pick it from a known in play day you kind of know whats going to happen and trade it with unfair bias. I find trading live in sim is the best experience.

Can anyone confirm CMEG now has free commissions?

Like I said Peter, better teacher than trader. "Those who can't do teach" I am a very technical person and can never make something simple. Maybe I'll try following her on paper for awhile.

Yes, all paper and I could never do what she does. I think Day Trading is more of an art than learned skill. My 7 months of trading has shown me that most strategies fail as often as succeed so in reality are useless. They work great in winning trades and make for a nice YouTube video but fail miserably in the losers and never get a second look. The only consistent reliable strategy is risk / reward. Unfortunately my accuracy is only 30% so I cannot be profitable. My wife averages 70% accuracy and follows one strategy. I tell her not to bother learning others because they are useless and may influence her trading. She is basically following Andrew and doing an opening momentum scalp. It seems simple enough but takes a special mindset to pull it off. This was actually my worse strategy. You are basically jumping on and off a moving train trying to catch the platform at the right times. Then to make things worse you need to do it in several stocks at the same time! Like I said, a true work of art. I tried working the Hot Keys for her but could not keep up. We are now combining this strategy with Robert H's 2:1 all or nothing approach. One day she hit a 30R win by chance but I told her this is so rare and just dumb luck that it's not worth trying for. With her accuracy 2:1 will work just fine and be more consistent. We need a few months in sim to make sure it's not a fluke. I realize early success can become a detriment to long term success. The good thing is I am a better teacher than trader and keep her in line as the outside observer. I am not allowed to talk about the trade itself because I am always wrong but can keep her in line with risk management.

So I have the typical day trading story. Bought Andrew's book, joined BBT, watched all the lessons, spent 7 months in sim full time, read several other books including psychology, watched every You Tube video on Day Trading and now have the wisdom of Solomon. I could get on stage and teach Day Trading. Now the caveat, I can not do it. I have a great passion and love for it but have made no progress in 7 months. Now for the twist: My wife comes in the room one day feeling sorry for me and starts jotting down a few things on paper. She has no knowledge or interest in day trading whatsoever and has actually been against me doing it but supportive nun the less. After watching me loose several hundred dollars she tells me all her trades went well. Just for fun she starts watching the board and literally paper trading next to me. After several days of this it turns out she is green 5 of 5 days. I give her a quick lesson on risk to reward, share sizing and nothing more. We are now 5 weeks into her trading and she is up north of $8000. I have lost 3X that in 7 months sim. Seems like she is a trading Savant. In 25 trading days she has had 3 small red days. She has been using Trading View and now learning DAS. I am thinking of putting her in the challenge but it would not be fair for the rest of the contestants. Our day is very similar to BBT's. I get up early, set up the gappers list, put in levels of support and resistance and prepare the charts. She walks in the room at 9:28, looks over the charts for 30 sec, literally puts tape on my mouth and knocks out 4 or 5 winners in less than 30min. (Remind you of anyone?) (Feel for you Carlos) We have looked into other woman traders and find out they typically make better traders than men. I think it is about multitasking and the right / left brain thing. So I am hoping this is not just beginners luck and favorable market conditions but I have not been able to make a buck trading next to her on the same stocks. My takeaway from all this is some people will never get it and others just have a natural gift.( Hence the huge failure rate) Andrew is obviously gifted in this and uses very few strategies to prove it. My wife uses nothing more than a 2min chart and buy / sell buttons. She also watches 12 stocks and is sometimes in 4 trades at a time. (It is quite amazing to watch.) BTW she only plays longs. I ask her what she is looking for in a setup and her response is "I can just feel it". WHAT? One day I did not have time to put the levels on her charts and she said "Thanks for doing that but I really don't need them anyway" I know it sounds like a crazy reality show but we'll see where it goes and I'll let you know how it turns out. Thanks for all your help BBT community, I gave it one hell of a try! PS: Guys, if your struggling let your significant others give it a try! Gal's, rock on! Just kidding about the book Andrew, I have a weird sense of humor. My wife fished it out of the garbage and reading it now!

The script worked well except I believe they are limit orders. Any way to make the low a Stop Market order? Lost about .10 in slippage on the low stop.

I am in a DEMO account but it's the Trading Challenge. Tried both ver but no go. I'll have to wait for the non beta upgrade. Thanks

Tried to get it to work but would not accept my user and pass. How did you login?

Thanks SpoTT Trader, hopefully it still works. I have been trying some stuff on my own but could not get them to work but did not try during market conditions. I'm glad you said it will not work in Pre Market because my plan was to try it tomorrow before market open. Thanks again.

Hi, can anyone share a hotkey script that can get me in a trade, place a fixed stop and profit target with one click? I should be able to adjust share and target size myself in the script. Looked at KyleK29's work but it's way over my head. Thanks

I guess you could call it a trend trade but a lot of stocks rally up or sell off at the close. Often I hold many trades till 5 sec before the close. Usually the opposition gives up in the last min. SPY lately has been selling off and I do very well in TVIX. When the SPY rallies up at the close I'll trade that. Spy can give a nice .30 or .40 cent move in the last 5 min. Today I made up a $1000 loss in the last hour after being down from the am. I feel it's not good trading however and will con't to work on the open sitting on my hands. I would be very profitable if I went into the power hour with a $0.00 P&L instead of down $800 to $1000.

So I'm starting my 4th month in sim and seem to always be down most of the day and then make it up in the power hour. Does anyone just trade the close? Everyone tells me the open is the way to go but I cant seem to master it. Any thoughts? Thanks.

I have had my best and worst days on Fridays so I would guess it's like all aspects of Day trading, everyday is random and equally unique.

In sim now but I'll try it. Who knows maybe I'll be a better trader! Thanks again.

Thanks RTrader. I wonder if you can have a split account for shorting. I don't think you can DT without being able to short.

Thanks Brian, that is around the number I come up with. I do almost all limit orders so ECN fees should not be as bad as commissions. In my example it was a tough day so this is probably the extreme. Some days I'm sure I'll only have 10 or 20 tickets. I'll also tweak my style a little and slow down on the doubling down and scaling out. Although I do like adding to a position because it limits my risk if a trade goes the wrong way. Once I realize my strategy is sound and working I'll add to my position in two or three stages. It also gives you a better entry point. If I go heavy right away and the trade has a big pullback It's hard to ride it out with big losses. I tried talking to IB but they would not give me pricing. They just refer you to the web page that is clear as mud. Now I know why 90+% of day traders fail! The commissions and fees eat you up! I guess I just found out one of the dirty little secrets of day trading.

OK, so now I'm really confused. Just started filling out my application with IB. In the disclaimers it says this "Day trading will generate substantial commissions, even if the per trade cost is low. Day trading involves aggressive trading, and generally you will pay commission on each trade. The total daily commissions that you pay on your trades will add to your losses or significantly reduce your earnings. For instance, assuming that a trade costs $16 and an average of 29 transactions are conducted per day, an investor would need to generate an annual profit of $111,360 just to cover commission expenses." Does everyone make $200,000 a year day trading?

Maybe were comparing apples and oranges. Today I traded only 4 stocks and ended up with 45 trades. This includes buying and selling. I like to average in and partial out. I traded a total of 8,020 shares 4,010 in and 4,010 out. It did not seem like over trading, very slow and boring at times. My profit target is usually .30 cents a trade. I ended up +$440.73 for the day with a $3.92 loose. I figure commissions would be about $35.00 based off of the Account Report in Das. Does anyone know if you put in a limit order and cancel it does that count as a trade? I do mostly limit orders. Does this sound excessive? Should I not partial in and out so much? Thanks guys.

Thanks Peter, I was thinking the same thing last night. I need to make my trades count. I am now 8 weeks in sim and taking about 30 trades a day many at break even or + a few bucks. If your making $400+ a day you won't mind paying $50 in commissions but at break even or red for the day $50 bucks will hurt.

So I'm gearing up to go live in a few weeks and looking into brokers. (Now I know why they are called Brokers.) After analyzing my current trading style it looks like commission + fees will be around $50.00 a day! Now if all your trades go well and you are up $500 bucks that seems doable but if you have a bad day and lets say you break even your still out $50.00 in commissions! If your down a couple hundred tack on another -50.00. I don't hear a lot of talk about commissions but it seems like they could become a deal breaker for day trading. I heard Andrew mention in chat the other day he would have about $500 in commissions for the day. Am I missing something? $1000 a month for a new trader seems out of line. Any input would be appreciated. Thanks

Does anyone use an IRA account for day trading? I think I read IB has one but you cannot use it for shorts.