brooklyn

Hi,

first of all, great page, David, I'm shaking your right hand for this.

I don't know if somebody can help me but I've got this problem - every stock/index chart I analyze I have trendlines all over them - M, W, Daily, 1hr, 15min horizontal and vertical and i just get confused where to enter a position. For instance at one point it's touching support but then theres some EMA above it or any other resistance area, or it's a triangle, but if I draw another line it's a wedge and so on, I mean I just can't figure out where to enter and exit... And I'm just skipping from stock charts to indexes charts for validation, but it's the same.

I started trading 6 months ago, down 25% since then, which is my limit and now I haven't traded for 2 months, just watching everything, reading, learning but as I'm ready to go back this confusion strikes me. I really need that first good trade to get my confidence back so I want to day trade just to get back on track but I don't know which time frame is best for it. Is it the 15min, 5min, or intraday 1-2min?

Thanks

StockJake

Welcome!

Please learn about Risk Management and Money Management. You will never feel comfortable entering or exiting until you have a complete grasp of these concepts and know how to implement them. I'm not kidding, the charts and indicators are not the problem.

Open a Demo account with someone like Think or Swim. Do not trade 'real' money!

Go through ALL the material here at InformedTrades.

start with these:

Go through all of David's materials

InformedTrades University - InformedTrades

start with the beginner course but go through them all.


Then go through these:

Airelon's Informed Trades Journal

Airelon has a ton of stuff on youtube. watch it all.

YouTube - AirelonTrading's Channel


Ektrader Trading Journal

Brendan's Trading Journal and Videos

Shoot's Trading vids.


i would also watch all of these videos
YouTube - sgomez858's Channel


This is going to take some time and a real commitment on your part. Open your mind to learning and you will come through a better trader.

If all this seems hard, well... trading ain't easy. I will say that your are lucky because this site has a ton of info, all you have to do is absorb it. The information wasn't always so easy to find AND there were not always so many talented folks willing to share it.

Good Luck and don't forget to post questions onto this site. There are lots of folks here that can help.


-jake

Shootanappleoffmyhead

Hi Brooklyn,

Welcome to the community and thanks for posting this excellent question! I think many, many new traders very often run into this problem. In my experience the best way to deal with this problem is through experience, but there are some ways this can be dealt with apart from just spending time with price. What you are suffering is commonly referred to as analysis paralysis, or option anxiety. It happens when someone learns all types of different things to look for in markets, but learns very little about priority or preference. The best way to deal with this is to just start with and stick to the very basics of what you see. What is the most prominent? What do you assume everyone else sees very clearly? This is the best way to go. Check out my videos on daytrading to help answer these questions as well. I think you will find these specific answers and much more. Thanks, and I hope this hleps, Shoot.

BrendanEgan88

Hey and welcome to the site

I think coming here is a good start to improving your trading. I have experienced a similar path although I am not down nearly that much. Like Jake said I would check out all of those resources he posted and then see if you look at trading through a new light.

And like Shoot said, experience can help cure this issue greatly. I would suggest trading very small share size so you do not do too much harm to your account and keep your stops tight. I also use a 5 min intraday chart for my trading that goes back a few days to look at trends, support, resistance, price, and volume. Also it might help to start up a video journal on InformedTrades to document your trades and some of us other traders can give you feedback and help you along the way.

-Brendan

brooklyn

Thanks guys for replying to my post, I really hoped that someone who's been active on these forums reply to me, which you are
Well it might be my first thread, but I've been on this page for a few months and watched most of the material already. I'm definitely going to check those that StockJake has posted.
It might sound odd but I have to say I don't have risk/money management problem at this point. The reason I lost money is that I was a newbie, made my decisions based on some forums, but now after all those months of studying my eyes are wide open. The problem right now is that I've reached my limit of -25% so now I need a good trade to put me back on track. And now when I have some theoretical knowledge I find it a bit difficult applying it in practice, maybe I have too many support/resistance lines, I don't know, but when I look at the chart with all those lines, looks like there's no room for the stock to breath. I have to admit I have a bit of fear of going lower than -25% that's why I'm writing here because if I was even at this point, I'd trade with tight stops and experience myself.
Day trading probably isn't the best solution but right now when the market can gap up or down every day I don't want to hold my positions overnight then wake up and see I'm -27%. Once I get back on my feet I'm gonna swing trade again.

noob_trader

Hi Brooklyn,

If it is a question of confidence. I would suggest you try a demo such as thinkorswim paper trading. Few trades and experiments on the demo will give you some confidence back.

-Noob

coronajazz

Hi brooklyn!
From what I know I think you are just complicating things, which in trading is not working. I really like the answer that shoot gave you on this one. The answer is in experience, many hours of screen time and you will know what is important and what is not. I think every trader has gone trough what you are experiencing.
What helped me a lot in answering a lot of doubts concerning with this actual problem is the book "Trading in the zone", by Mark Douglas. I think this book is exactly what you need at this point, as the ideas shown there are ones that you will eventually find out for yourself anyway, but only after longer period of time, and many loses.

brooklyn

Hi,

yea I'm starting to think that I'll overcome this with time, with experience. I'm a med student here in Europe and I want to use these 3 months of summer to the fullest so time is an issue to me
I have to say I never liked demos because there's no psychology in them which trading is all about and at this point I think I'll just look at the chart and visualize my trade and later see if I was right which if I did the same on the demo I think those fictual profits or losses could frustrate me. I don't know if the problem is my confidence, well yea I've reached my limits and I need confidence, but if I was even I'd still be asking these questions, because it's those trendlines that confuse me.

coronajazz, I'm going to check that book, indeed I've just finished "The Disciplined Trader" byt the same author but I have to say only the intro and the last ~30 pages with guided steps were useful to me

Tekmnd

Hi Brooklyn

Welcome to the community

My advice would be to consider the 25% loss a learning price. Do not try to "make it back"; instead try and think of it as starting all over now.

Also, perhaps you will take some comfort in that almost everyone losses money at first. Some consider it the cost of learning to trade; that they are paying for their education. The trick is to keep it down to as close to a Jr College costing education as you can, and not make it a Harvard costing one.
let's share our stories of our first time trading

Cheers
Tek

Demolition Man

I think it was Dr. Elder in one of his trading books who compared the three elements of trading to the three legs of a three-legged chair. Each one needs to be solid in order for the chair to be functional. Those three elements are mind, method and money management.

While it is true that demo accounts cannot perfectly prepare you from the standpoint of psychology for trading with real money, it can certainly help you master the two other key elements.

Do you have a comprehensive solid trading plan which you have properly backtested? Do you have a proper money management plan? Do you have a system for analyzing your past trades and evaluating your performance as well as the functionality of your trading plan? Once you have all this in order it is much easier to deal with the psychology.

Military combat training doesn't perfectly prepare anyone psychologically for an actual live firefight either, but it does still improve your chance of survival and helps deal with the psychology as you have a routine to fall back to once you get disoriented and start to panic.

Moreover, if you can't make profitable paper trades, you sure can't expect to succeed in trading with actual money.

So, demo accounts can be useful, as long as you acknowledge the fact that they do not 100% reflect the psychology of trading.

-Demolition Man

__________________
"Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem." -Krishnamurti