RTrader

Peter has some good suggestions. I really agree with the loss limits. Although DAS risk controls are platform only. A really pissed off emotional trader simply logs into TWS and trades more That is what I used to do when I traded stocks. Some brokers have risk controls on their side that you cannot change (at least not without annoying them with emails or calls to remove it). I have my futures contract size reduced so I can only enter so many contracts. I had one of my biggest losses last Wednesday that could have been prevented if I had this set up at my broker. I keep good records in Excel of every days result, gross and net so I know my PnL, %, and fees. Plus I track it weekly and monthly. I look back through history a lot and see that I can make money. So when I have a losing day I know I just need to reset the mind, and I normally bounce back quick. It took me 5 years to get profitable.

Since I am a futures trader, I watch the depth of market (DOM) window. I only trade the NQ (Nasdaq) so with experience I've been able to identify the volume and how price moves, who is in control and how powerful and committed the buyers or sellers are. I can also tell when it's just running stops, and when algos are running the market vs. actual hand traders. With stocks you can see this with level 2, but it's very hard if you trade different stocks all the time, because every stock has it's own way of trading.

I agree with Peter B. When you are starting out, you really are not going to know how you will trade and what your edge will be (or your specialty). It took me years of trying things to figure out what works for me and I also stopped trying to correct and change my style. I just created something that works around it. Focus on probability, and at least for me I don't use a daily goal. I use a weekly goal instead. I do this because I never know when the good days will be. On good trading days I can make my whole weekly goal in a day or even in minutes. I always push it and trade bigger on good days where there are lots of setups in the Nasdaq futures market. It's really important to not turn trading into a 9-5. The fact is you can make in a month what some do in a whole year. To better understand why a stock or commodity trends while others chop around, it is all about order flow and price action. Watch it and learn about it. You will get it over time but it takes a lot of screen time to read price action well. It's especially hard with stocks because all stocks trade differently.

If you scalp like this you should be trading futures anyway, not stocks. I used to have DAS with IB, and IB's API on other platforms. The API, whether FIXAPI or anything else, all the same! Total piece of junk. My fun issue with DAS and IB was that I would end up in a short position randomly, from an order that I cancelled in DAS minutes or hours earlier, but it ended up not being cancelled in IB's system. I would find out later on, when I would be short some amount of shares in a stock I traded earlier in the day! It certainly made me lose all confidence in the situation so I moved on and never looked back.

FrontageFlyer: For futures... the exchange and clearing fees and those are fixed and not part of broker commissions. Commissions are normally low, but TS has the highest around. I pay .09cents with AMP. That is .41cents lower than TS. It costs too much to use TS, so I would avoid them. NT will get you faster data, and better execution as well. Are you scalping, or swing trading? For swing most of this will not matter. But if you are active scalping which is what I do, then fees and execution is really important. Jason

FrontageFlyer: For futures... the exchange and clearing fees and those are fixed and not part of broker commissions. Commissions are normally low, but TS has the highest around. I pay .09cents with AMP. That is .41cents lower than TS. It costs too much to use TS, so I would avoid them. NT will get you faster data, and better execution as well. Are you scalping, or swing trading? For swing most of this will not matter. But if you are active scalping which is what I do, then fees and execution is really important. Jason

Hey Dutch, I am in Bend, Oregon USA. 100's of miles or many km's of singletrack here right out my door basically. It's awesome and a great way to relieve stress and get exercise after work and trading. Even during lunch!

Good insights. As far as the employment picture. It is so unprecedented that we have no way to predict what will happen with the economy in the US, and other countries as well. There is a very high chance it will be a recession so bad and deep that everyone will wish this was just 2008. Employment and people's confidence in things drives everything in the economy. Stocks are massively overvalued for the lack of growth right now. Good article on the employment, before the actual number came out last week. This coming week will probably be even worse for unemployment claims. As it turns out being a trader is one of the best jobs for times like this. https://www.vox.com/2020/3/21/21188529/initial-unemployment-claims-goldman-sachs

Can anyone prove that ORB's have an edge over time (long or short with specific setup criteria)? I'd love to see the data on it. Jason

Hell yha, I mountain bike all the time. It's been my thing for years. Jason

This is probably because of the volatility. Brokers have the right to change margin requirements at any time, and they will do that in markets like this with very high ranges. My futures broker has recently raised margins about 6x-10x what they used to be. It's fine, just trade smaller and stick with cash only positions ideally. Otherwise you are under capitalized in this kind of environment.

Trading is about probability. You could have 10 losses in a row, and it really doesn't mean anything or have anything to do with you. Most of the time it is just a crap market or low volume chop that does me in for the day. The best thing is to work on how to identify a high probability trade, and also a market that isn't good to trade in. If you can do this and execute properly you will be able to make money by avoiding the bad days. I think stopping at X stop outs just prolongs your learning time. Who knows, the next trade could have been your big winner.

Advice: Get rid of daily goals and dollar related goals completely. Focus on routine, and process. Focus on keeping your mindset as clear and patient as possible. None the monetary goals matter when you are all screwed in the head when trading. Also when it comes to how much % do I make a day... I have no clue! It depends on what the market gives me. I trade futures, not stocks, but I can tell you if the market is good and it's easy to trade, I stay all day because you need to push it when it's good. You have to have big days in order to make up for the draw-downs, which are going to happen. Trading is not a normal job and it's not a linear path. It's a journey for sure. Jason

Another option is to use TradeStation. The platform is excellent, and I’ve always had great execution with them. They are now commission free as well, so you don’t need to worry about that. You just pay the finra/exchange fees which are very low. They got rid of their platform fee as well. So with that including the commission savings, your business costs will be at least 500$ less each month. If you trade big size then you might save thousands per month in fees, lowering your break even.

This happens all the time, but you might not really notice it on a large cap stock. Basically if you watch the tape and you see lots of orders/shares being filled at a certain price or range, but the L2 says there are very few shares at those prices than you have a hidden seller or buyer accumulating or unloading a position. I'm not sure if you could develop much of an edge looking for this, but it is interesting to see it happen.