Louis, This could be the longest AB thread ever.
Some wonderful people gave you some wonderful answers. To help you get some lasting value from it, here is my close. When you started in AB you asked me "can we really make money trading and how much" I told you >50% but that you should aim for >30% to start with, as a benchmark. Others said that was not possible. Since then I have gone on to say 100% PA is good and 1000%PA is possible. Now you are asking the same question again! (others have now confirmed they ARE doing over 50% but no one else is talking about 1000% yet). You asked me where you should start and which approach was better. I told you that you should learn in US EOD stocks because it has all of the basic elements of trading right there etc I said that RT data was a lot harder to handle and not worth the trouble to newcomers. You went to RT and had trouble. I told you that almost no one trades using 1000's of symbols in RT (most long term traders narrow down to the indexes, a filtered watchlist of stocks, a small semi-permanent list of stocks, Forex or Commodities. You tried to use 100's or 1000's of RT stocks for your first system. You had trouble with that. I told you it would take years. Now after only 7 months you are struggling with it. In this thread I have laid it all out for you (roughly) although I am only saying what others have said in different ways, but to close out I will briefly summarise/explain what I have said. Method: a) isolate the key skills required to trade b) practice them repetitively until they become second nature c) positively reinforce your trading alter ego by focus, simplicity, positive thinking, repetition etc a) is the reason that so few succeed. b) and c) are a piece of cake. It takes so long to isolate the key skills of trading because the subject is so vast and there are so many conflicting opinions AND very few, if any, traders who make it will lay it all out for anyone. All in all it is like going through a library full of books and distilling the info down to a single Readers Digest. The super traders distill it all down to a tablespoon of gold. This takes a lot of time and many don't have what it takes to see the wood for the trees. After years I have got it down to the last pile of books (you can easily successfully trade at that level, in fact you can trade reasonably well if you only make it half way through). I only managed that because I was lucky enough to be an intuitive and this helped me find the shortcuts (I didn't have to read all of the books). So once again, here is my practical advice to you. Don't take on the whole library - it is overwhelming. Take on one section. Start with US EOD trading, no leverage. After you learn to get >30% there you can then start to learn leveraging stocks (via options OR Single Stock Futures). After you learn that then you can quickly and easily learn Commodities/Futures etc or whatever you want - the trading world is your oyster. All of the core elements of trading are right there in EOD stocks. If you can't find them there then you are not going to make it anywhere. Re AutoTrading. This is like having your car on auto-pilot. First you have to have a car. Then you have to learn to drive it. Then you can say "now I will automate it and put my feet up while it drives down the road". You don't just decide to learn autodriving before you fulfil the first two steps. Why not start with commodities? because you will be trying to learn trading and leveraging both at the same time plus all of the elements of trading are not exposed the way they are in stocks (you have the complication of seasonality plus you are limited to 20-30 instruments). In stocks you get a much better feel for trading with the different cap levels, different volatilities, sectors and global relationships etc - things you don't see so clearly in other instruments. Why not start in RT? because so much of your time will be taken up with software/hardware issues when you should be focusing on learning to trade (plenty of time for RT once you can trade). Also - once you can trade then trading RT bars is barely any different - you can go straight on with it (tick trading is something else again - only suitable for people who are right at home with IT skills) Wheh should I learn Money Management? First you have to get a system that can do >=30% when paper trading i.e. it does that live, for a reasonable period (on data you have never seen before). IF YOU CANT DO THAT FIRST YOU CAN FORGET THE REST AND GIVE UP. Then, if you get that far, you need to learn the basisc of MM before you start to trade with real money (you can improve your MM based on your trading experience but you must now the basics before you start. Realistically, only those with above average aptitude are going to be able to do that while they are holding down a job (the magnitude of the task is pretty big unless you have a mentor, a friend or you have the right stuff to skip through it). All the best with your endeavours, brian_z please excuse me if I don't answer any further questions on the subject. --- In [email protected], "Louis P." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Hi, > > I was only wondering... Anyone actually making money or making a living > with AB and trading? > > I've been working on ideas and plans for over 7 months now and didn't find > anything convincing yet. I've been searching daily data, then hourly, > 15-minute and now I am into 1-minute data and nothing seems satisfying. > Been searching RSI, MFI, ADX, MA, HHV, LLV... nothing seems to work. > > So... Anyone is making consistent money with this, and if so, at which > timeframe and how do you do it? > > I'm beginning to think about switching to tick database; it seems even > 1-minute is too slow for intraday trading. Anyone making money with > 1-minute? > > Thanks, > > Louis >
