Wes

I think the book is lame for current markets, but I read it a long time ago, so maybe I'd have a different opinion on a fresh reading. It's the kind of book I'd expect someone to write about Forex nowadays. "Look at all these bucket shops cheating me!" :o

My favorite is when the same person who says "volume precedes price" then turns around on a holiday week and warns me "Be careful, it's a low-volume holiday week, so price could really move fast."

I've generally heard the stat includes pretty much everybody, no matter how unprepared they were or for how long they did it. I know people who got a "hot tip" from a coworker, put x amount of thousands into it, and lost, all the while not really having any idea what they are doing. Using data via that method, 95% of people would probably fail at being car mechanics or poker pros or whatever, too. One amusing thing is that probably anyone with any experience in the markets will likely think at least some of the financial "experts" on TV, or maybe their own financial advisors who have steered them wrong and who are a big reason why they now want to look after things themselves, are idiots. So then they ask themselves, "Can I do much worse than these idiots?" If those idiots have cost them a lot of money over the years, the answer is probably "no," and they at least then avoid the middle-man.

Good to hear some numbers. I think that's the same/similar as IB's standard price. There's also MB which is $4.20 RT standard price for YM.

How low are the "low fees"? I hear "low fees" all the time for different places, but few people actually say the fee. (Yes, yes, the fee can be different depending on how many RTs you do.)

There are so many aspects that could be either pro or con depending on point of view. You're (generally) alone other than a chatroom or Skype or something. You are "chained" to your computer a bit. Not too different from many regular jobs, really. :missy: The money potential is quite high, yet uncertain. Of course, look around right now during The Great Recession and see how many people feel certain about their jobs. My friend went to a job fair recently after being downsized. It took two hours to get in the door. Suddenly a "not a real job" like trading or exotic dancer or whatever else may look more reliable than being a manager at a Fortune 500 company. Social standing. Unless you're making the big bucks, and maybe even if you are, people may tend to look down their noses at you. Same with an "average" musician or pro gambler or other atypical job. People don't understand, and you will eventually realize it's not worth trying to get to them to understand. The ironic part, of course, is that many of those people looking down their nose at your job hate their job. In general, less "costs to work." Sometime you might read an article titled something like "Can you afford to work?" If you work from home, there are likely savings. Gas, newer car which also means higher car insurance for it, more car maintenance, clothes, perhaps daycare, office-related dinners, gifts for coworkers you don't even like... whatever you can think of that costs you money to do your job. If your job gives you a company car and the like, great, but not everyone gets that, and remember it's probably priced-in to your wage anyway. Yeah, there are certain extra costs with trading, too, but they pale in comparison, imo. I mean, heck, people were selling their vehicles to get smaller ones when gas was sky-high because *they couldn't afford to drive to work*. (Wait till the ridiculous Cap and Trade kicks in.) If you work at home and don't drive much, things like this are almost a non-issue. Things like that, or even the recession itself, can basically not affect you. You are invincible! :thumbs up: A big pro/con, if not part of a person's "real" job, is potential for travelling. You can pretty much live anywhere you want that has internet. A 15+ year trader veteran I talk to every day says his main regret is not travelling more and trading from other countries. And he's even talking about before the technology advances we have now, before low commissions and fast internet. The tools and commissions we have now were a pipe dream back in the day. Along with being at home a lot without much real outside social contact during the day, (which could be either a pro or con depending on the person), and along with not having to make sure you have work/office clothes/car at the ready, there's small things like the freedom to wear what you want, to have the hairstyle you want, to wear a big, giant nose ring if you want, paint your face green if you want, whatever. I read the following once, and it sums up that part well. It went something like: "There are not many other jobs where you could literally tell every single person you meet during the entire year to F off, and it wouldn't affect your bottom line."

Is that $4.99 per trade on their site correct? If so, that sounds like a rip unless the person really, really likes the software or something else.

I thought Don made about one million in 2008 with a goal of 1.2 in 2009. ? Regardless, 1 or 1.2 or 1.7 are all impressive. I've read elsewhere that Don trades size and that his average gain per contract is like $4. But he trades a crap-ton of them. I haven't read his blog long enough to know for sure, either, but just tossing that out there. He made a how-to video around six years ago. I don't know if it's good or not.

I wonder if Congress is going to make him give that back. Corruption, fraud, and death by a million taxes. Pretty much the only things government is good at. Well, and delivering mail. I wouldn't be surprised if some states secede from the union within the next 10 years, perhaps much sooner.

Quoting for emphasis. This movie/documentary isn't about Obama so much as about pretty much any President being a pawn for the real power guys. Alex Jones criticized Bush a lot, too. A big thing to me about this is it's pretty much all government people in their words and own video clips. Sure, one could argue they are taken out of context, but I don't think that's the case. And while I've had a tinfoil hat for awhile now, some of the video clips and sound bites in this were new to me and quite surprising.

That misses the point. A trade is good or bad depending on the decision process involved. A trade that makes money is still a bad trade if the reason for doing it was bad. "I'm going to take a shot here and see what happens." Or, "I'm going to risk way more than I should here because I feel lucky." Whether it makes money or not, it's a bad trade due to bad decisions. "Good" and "bad" basically comes down to discipline. You are disciplined with your risk or not. You are disciplined with your patience or not. You are disciplined with your setups or not. The goal isn't necessarily to make winning trades. Winning trades are a by-product/result of having the discipline to make good decisions.

Wouldn't you know it, I had a lot typed up, and then my computer crashed. Here's the quick and less-articulate version: What you wrote is great, but I don't think your use of daily goals is the same definition used by many in this thread. You are writing daily goals as part of a bigger picture, a longer timeframe. As part of a monthly, quarterly, yearly, maybe even merely weekly goal. That's a lot different imo than what some talk about with stopping for the day when you hit your daily goal. "I made x for the day, so now I will stop even though the market is great for me/my method today and I could probably easily double what I have already made." Or having a daily goal where if they fall behind they feel bad and then perhaps will feel the need to play catch up and risk making poor decisions. Businesses do have daily goals, but they don't dwell on them. They are part of a bigger timeframe. I don't know about others, but I've been mainly talking about strict daily goals. A shop doesn't stop selling things if it makes its daily goal at 10a.m.. It doesn't put the "closed" sign on the door. Retailers have daily goals, but their main outlook is yearly since they make most of their money during Christmas. For retailers, the market doesn't really fit their system/method nine months of the year, but those other three months it's perfect and that's when they pour it on and make sure they are open as many hours as they can be. Similar to what you said, they have a longer plan, and daily results are a guide but not the destination.

That wasn't really my point. Nearly any "consistent method" will in probability have days where it or the user just isn't in-sync with the market for that day. The market's too choppy, the market's too flat, the market's too trendy, the person is tired or has things on his mind, whatever. For the most part, some days always have more opportunities than other days, regardless of how consistent a method is. So on low-opportunity days, or if non-method factors such as being tired or things on the mind come into play, what's the person with a set-target goal to do if they are behind? Do they push more to make their goal and risk not being as consistent and risk making more mistakes? On higher-opportunity days where they hit their target early, do they quit for the day at 10a.m.? A person's trading method may be as clear as crystal, but stuff happens. Markets happen, bad news happens, being tired happens, the power goes out happens, a kid emergency happens, the cat jumping on your keyboard happens, having "just one of those days" happens. Sure, someone could have low goals and hit them consistently every day. That's fine, I guess. "I will make $10 today, and anything above that is gravy." But what happens when they hit the goal? Do they quit for the day? If they do, they are limiting their potential not only monetarily, but also mentally and emotionally. Instead of monetary goals for the day, have good-trade goals for the day. "I will make a trade if the setup is good." Or maybe, "If I make three bad trades, I will quit for the day and evaluate what I am doing." Neither of these have the person staring at their P/L all day. Yes, curiosity may get the best of them, but, again, that's an emotional behavior holding them back. If a person needs a crutch of set goals to limit their bad mental/emotional behavior by limiting how much they can make in a day so they don't get greedy, so be it, but that band-aid is holding back their potential and always will. If a person is just starting out and has little or no concept of what good or bad trading behavior entails, I would at least try setting them down the path of no daily monetary goals because that is where they ultimately would want to end up anyway -- not having a set goal holding back the real goal of simply making good decisions. Starting with a clean slate can be a huge blessing because there are no already-learned bad habits. And if someone is making bad decisions or being greedy because their trading method is not clear, then the real problem is with their trading method. Sticking a band-aid of low, daily, monetary goals over an unclear trading method isn't doing them any favors because that's not the real problem. As always, YMMV.

Trade with a buddy. Be it a live buddy in-person or on the phone or on internet messenger or video chat, or a trader chat room of some kind. It's an extra set of eyes on the market, and even when you're distracted, that distraction will hopefully be related to the market in some way. Or, if you get distracted, you have someone to smack you into shape again. Hedge funds have teams of people trading against you, so you may as well have a team, too. Some people work better without others around, of course. ymmv. Most everyone needs a break now and then. Nothing wrong with taking a decent lunch break, or any other short break, really. That's kind of the point of not having a boss. The only thing with breaks is it's up to you whether to take one while you're in a trade or not. Confidence in your position is great until taking a 20-minute lunch costs you thousand of dollars. :bang head: If you're distracted and not really paying attention, there's a higher chance of making a mistake, so you may as well take a complete break until you can focus again. And if you miss an opportunity during that break, oh well. Staying out of it beats half-assing it. And maybe missing some good opportunities will give you incentive to stay more focused. If none of that works, think about what it would be like to have a "real" job you completely hate like 95% of everyone in the world does. That might be good motivation.

Daily profit goals are generally a bad idea. As has been said, the market doesn't care about your goals. If the market is flat for the day, or, even worse, you are out of sync and are losing, what are you going to do to meet your daily goal, start forcing things and make it worse? And let's say you are doing well and are in sync today and hit your goal for the day after an hour. Now what are you going to do, be lazy and take the rest of the day off? And limiting your potential and never chance the possibility that you could make even more every day? Or, something I hear from some people, is they stop so as to protect their profit. If they can't mentally handle a losing day, so be it, that shows they need to work on that, but to stop trading for the day simply because they have a profit and don't want to "risk" losing it is rather ridiculous. There's a difference there, of course. Stopping, say, 30 minutes before normal because you've had a good day and feel good and want to make sure you continue to feel good, alrighty. That's a mental thing that is holding you back, but alrighty. But stopping early simply out of fear of losing is something else. If you have an advantage, you put that advantage to work. If you don't have an advantage, then you're just gambling anyway. "Protecting your profit" by stopping trading implies you don't think you have an advantage. Your daily goal should be to make good decisions.