The Truth About Day Trading Stocks: A Cautionary Tale About Hard Challenges and What It Takes To Succeed

CHAPTER 13

Trading Consistently All Day

 

 

 

There’s nothing worse than having a great trading day—all day—and then losing every dime in the last 10 minutes! If there’s anything good to be salvaged from that nightmare, it’s the easiness of figuring out the cause of such a big loss. The probable reason is incredibly simple: You disrupted your consistency.

I know that’s been true for me.

Back in the beginning, it took several losses—end-of-day, so cruelly timed—to jerk me awake and make me face my missteps and learn the importance of constancy. Now go and get a magic marker and poster board. Make a sign, a really big sign:

Put this sign on the wall above your monitor.

When I was beginning to trade like a professional, I routinely purchased 100-share blocks of a few select stocks, like Met Life (MET), PepsiCo (PEP), and Amazon.com (AMZN). I only watched the one-minute chart on each. When they reached a support or resistance level, I would either buy or short. I would only try to get $10 to $20 swings—that’s 10¢ to 20¢ moves.

For the most part the stocks would always retrace at major support /resistance levels, and I would sell/cover at a $10 to $20 profit. I would do this all day long. I would not buy 200 or 500 shares; I stuck with 100 at a time. If the price went against me for more then $20, I would always sell/cover at a stop/loss. The system seemed virtually bulletproof. It really ...