You can’t win if you’re just trying to break even.
When day trading, have you ever taken profits sooner than you should because it made up for your losses the previous day? Have you ever increased your position size or the amount of risk you take on “temporarily” just to get back to zero? Yeah? Me too.
What is Break Even Mentality?
Break Even mentality is that itch in the back of your brain that tells you “If you can just break even on this trade, then you’re back at zero. It’s a fresh start.” It could cause you to exit a trade [...]
From the monthly archives:
June 2009
Day trading can present some great opportunities. I posted yesterday about day trading a down market. Some days just have the potential to be very profitable for day traders. Here’s a brief overview of some specific day trades that could have been grabbed.
Research in Motion (RIMM)
RIMM opened well below yesterdays low. It made a very weak attempt to close the gap down from yesterday. When that failed, it was all down hill.
1. Arrow 1 shows where RIMM broke through its low of the day (LOD) here. It was a pretty easy short trade down to the whole number at 70.00
2. [...]
When they talk about “making money whether the stock market is going up or down,” this is the type of down day they’re talking about. I guess it’s unfortunate that this signals some weakness in the stock market (at least short-term), but we might as well profit off of the stock market’s failure.
When my stock charts showed the huge gap down from Fridays close, it became fairly obvious which way the stock market was headed. The fact that the market didn’t even attempt to close the gap confirmed it. We were headed down. I figured at the very least we’d [...]
“You can become a millionaire
by trading just two hours a day!”
You’ve heard this sales pitch before and it sounds pretty awesome, doesn’t it? You could just roll out of bed right before the market opens, pick a couple of popular stocks, make one or two easy trades, and get on with your day well before noon.
Well, the good news is that it is possible to live the life of a leisurely day trader. However, here’s the part most new traders don’t want to hear; it takes hours a day and years of hard work to become trader of that caliber.
If [...]
