Regards.

Regards.

Thank you for taking the time to respond. That was written at 4am last nite when I was very tired and probably should have been asleep.

I've been giving up on ideas because their success rate isn't much better than 50%. But it has occurred to me that maybe what I need to do is to keep stopping out losers quickly but find a way to stay in winners.

But if that were the case it almost makes entries seem meaningless. I can't get my head around that, it doesn't seem right. Just thinking aloud.

I have come to realize that trading is not a get rich quick scheme, especially if you are trading a small account. I think this is more about money management than anything else. There will be losing streaks that will wipe out all your winnings if you aren't careful. I have heard many stories of people who made large returns for a year or two only to lose it all when the market changed directions. I have a coworker who quit his job to “trade for a living” in 1999 and had to go back to work in 2002 because he had lost all of his winnings. He says that he thought he had the market figured out when in reality he was just buying stocks in a bull market, it wasn't him at all. My cousin's portfolio was up 250% in spring '07 from investing in uranium stocks, and by last year had gone negative after the sector crashed. This trading is an fascinating business, that's for sure.

Also, just curious… why do you choose to day trade? It seems to me that most traders prefer intraday trading. One person told me he does it because it's easier to predict the next 60 minute move in an index than it's next 60 day move. I can see that point. Why do you prefer it?

It's a balancing act betwen the two major types of Edge:

1. Accuracy Edge (you win more than you're stopped out aka greater
than 50%)

2 Monetary Edge (you make two to three times or some larger multiple
of profit per trade vs dollars lost on losing trades.

Balance these two factors and you can be consistently profitable.

Kill losing trades before they become too large and allow yourself to
play for large targets at times.

Is it normal to expect 50% of your trades to be losers?

I have been testing strategies for months now and can't for the life of me come up with anything better than that.

This is immensely frustrating. I just don't understand why this is so difficult for me. I made deans list every semester, never got a C. But I can't get anywhere with this.