Louis, Gee you are a good sport.
> Brian is right when he says I am sipping the soup on a > lot of tables but never stay for the meal. I was mulling over your situation last evening (my time) and came to a conclusion. I wasn't going to say anything but since you brought it up again. You have had a bad exeperience in the markets before - BAD EXPERIENCES make strong lasting impressions on us. Basically you have 'fear of failure' - you don't sit down to the meal because you don't want the experience of a bad meal - you just cant face up to that. Possibly temperament or other life experiences are amplifying this. The anTidote is quite simple - PREPARATION (practise, paper trading etc). Pick something, anything, and go all the way with it - right up to paper trading at your brokers. If it fails pick something else, and repeat, until you get a good one. Then when you are sure keep practising a bit more, then practise some more again until you are so over prepared that it is a joke - then if it is still a good 'system' go ahead and trade with small amounts of money only (if it has a bad turn it will only be a small negative experience and you can cope with that). Grit your teeth and learn to eat a lot of bad meals gracefully (in trading over 90% of what we do never pays a dime). For example, when I started trading I read books like "The Market Wizards" that recounted the anecdotal trading stories of super succesful traders and I noticed that a lot of the 'famous' traders went boom and bust early in their careers - some of them more than once - before they learnt not to do that anymore (pretty dumb huh). I promised myself I would NEVER have a strong negative market experience, as in 'get smashed' (I accpet my share of controlled losses, yes, but getting smashed, no). Why? ... because I don't need NEGATIVE experiences to learn to trade. POSITIVE experience is a much better teacher. MAKE YOUR NEGATIVE EXPERIENCES VIRTUAL EXPERIENCES UNTIL YOU DON'T HAVE THEM ANY MORE - THEN START TRADING. Impulsiveness is your weakness - if you don't control it, it will control you. I still think you should consider buying a system or getting a mentor to help you get started but then you want if for free, right? brian_z --- In [email protected], "Louis P." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Hi group, > > The last thread which I started really helped me to realize a lot of things, > one of them is that Brian is right when he says I am sipping the soup on a > lot of tables but never stay for the meal. > > I'd like change that. > > I would like to concentrate on a particular kind of market (actions or > futures) and a particular timeframe (1-minute, 5-minute, 15-minute, 1-hour, > daily,etc). > > I know I may get zillions of different responses, but what do you consider > to be the more promising? > > I've read that more and more people consider futures are the future (haha!) > because of the high volatility and trading opportunities. Is this true? If > yes, how much money do I need to trade them? I've heard you need a lot! > And do I need to be there watching for 24 hours a day? And what about > stocks and ETF? I'd like to read some people opinion about what they > consider to be the most promising way... > > Of course, I won't start threads like this every two days! ;-) I'm just > really thinking about this all and am tired to switch markets, timeframe, > strategies, plans, all the time. I'd like to choose something and stay with > it. But I want to choose what's most promising! > > Thanks! > > Louis >
