Just curious as to what strategies you might be employing for both?

Me and my Quazi-girlfriends swing, but not during the day. Mostly because we work, but yes we trade, full swap

Funny,

Started paper trading my day trading strategies today. it was exciting, As of 1:00 pm today I hit a profit of $387 in about 5 minutes. I got stopped back on my retracement. Still got a lot to work out.

Well....After that first day, the second day I was up another $450 trading the futures market.

Well, the Monday and Tues following, I gave back $300 of it.

I've since switched out from trading the E-mini S&P to the Nasdaq Emini. I've been pretty good staying well in the green each day.

I now plan on switching to the Mini Dow on Monday. It's a lot of fun thus far.

FOREX will come later as I'm picking that up as well.

How much did you have to plop down for that?

Well, it's not quite as simple as 'plopping' down a set amount like when you purchase a stock or buy an option, as I'm not really paying for anything.

I'm using futures soley for speculation purposes.

So what you have to pay for, is what the future is priced at, at any given time. So, today one of my trades, I bought 1 S&P-mini futures contract today @ 3:06 Eastern time. That one futures contract came at a cost to me of $1394.5. That's were I chose to buy it at.

On this on contract, price rallied up $5.5 points, where I sold it at. This contract trades in .25 increments, each .25 is worth $12.50 cash money. So I made $275 on this trade I took. I don't remember but I think I closed this one about 10 minutes after opening it.

But, each broker has different requirements on how much money you have to have in your account for each contract they let you trade. My broker, currently requires $4500 IN your account for each contract you trade I think.

Bueller? Bueller?

Well I'm bored, and figured I'd update. Eventually someone will post their stories.

I've pretty much been day trading everyday, with maybe a few days off. I'm pleased to report that I haven't lost ANY of my money, and the small account I set aside for day-trading has doubled. Supposedly only 11% of people are capable of sustaining profits that would allow them to trade full time. So i suppose only time will tell if that is at all possible.

I also recently found a broker in Chicago, called Infinity. If anyone is interested in day trading, this is an excellent platform!!! I also use 'Think or Swim.' Another Chicago based broker. They have excellent feeds, service, and a charting package that other services charge monthly fees for. I used that one when I first started doing mainly options and spreads. I still use them.

But infinity, www.infinitybrokerage.com (http://www.infinitybrokerage.com) specializes in trading futures, and their execution is crazy!!! You can essentially set up auto-type orders with simple clicks. Simple OCO orders, Multi Bracket orders, multi-trail stops are all easy to place. It also makes it easy to keep to your discipline, cause once you setup and enter the trade, you can just walk away and the platform will execute the entire order the way you set it. It even adjusts your stop for you.

But the best part about it is that you can manipulate your orders after placing them via a simple 'drag-n-drop' type system.

Demo of it in action here from John Carter:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BK9JwGf40NU

Is this your "mad money" account, or are you using this system grow wealth to live on at some point?

Here's a few good mutual funds for you...

First Eagle Global (Just re-opened and only had 2 down years in the last 30 years)
Federated Kaufmann Large Cap (New fund)
John Hancock Large Cap Equity Fund (Up about 16% on the year)

In this market think large cap equities, international equities, and commodities...

Is this your "mad money" account, or are you using this system grow wealth to live on at some point?

I don't think this account will make me rich. Really I was lookign for something to provide more activity than my other brokerage account. Doing Calendar and Credit spreads are boring.

I am hoping that I can eventually make the amount of money day trading as I do with my regular job. But only time will tell if I can do it consistantly.

I've got a pretty high tolerance for pain with this account.

Great site for trading and finances among other topics....

http://www.elitetrader.com/

GL to all!

Great site for trading and finances among other topics....

http://www.elitetrader.com/

GL to all!

Does look like a nice site. Good post.

Forrestang, I never really looked at finance threads on a gixxer site, but I used to just track things. Been about a 7 months since I last did as new baby and what not have tied up time. I am in debt and don't have the money to play with but I tracked, (and had fun doing it), with TC2000 (google it). It's a software program that costs like 20 a month or something, can't remember, but enables you to break down stocks after you "update" the system, which is done manually whenever you want. I updated at close and filtered stocks to something like "under 10 bucks a share, over 1.5 million volume, volume doubled in 24 hours", it takes the 1000's of stocks and filters to your criteria, then I just did technical analysis with bollinger and stoch and volume mainly. Found a couple that you could consistently make money if you watched it everyday, but if ya wanna know more just ask.

I've traded forex, its interesting stuff, and can be very rewarding if you are good at it. I traded a practice account for a couple of months and was able to keep it in the positive, so i decided to open a live account with $500, i turned that $500 into over $1300 in about two weeks, but i was inexperienced and overleveraged and a string of bad trades took out my account. I've still been researching the markets, and have come up with a few strategies of my own based upon technical analysis, but i havent been live trading with any of them. I'm definitely waiting this time around to make sure i have something before trying again.

Best of luck to you when you go live, its definitely a kill or be killed world...

Best of luck to you when you go live, its definitely a kill or be killed world...

Yea same here, I lost 2K when I opened up, I made 800 within a month but lost it quick also, kinda like poker, don't get married to your hand, same principle goes for stocks, take a little bit of a loss but never hope for it to come back up. I haven't tracked in awhile but I came up with a determination on SIRI. If you track it real time, you'll see it's volume so insane and during the lunch hours you can make a few trades just in and out, if played right of course. What kind of stuff do you play with forrest?

Sofa,

I'm only doing futures. Mainly the ES emini contract, sometimes the mini Dow. I'm trading mainly in trends, a few deviations of that and some of my own little parameters.

Today I'm two for two on the trades I've taken. First trade was @ 10:30, only got $100 out of that one. Second @ 1pm EST., I got $237.50 out of that one.

A few days ago, I got greedy and tried to take a gap play at market open, think I lost like $512 or something on two contracts. I was being stubborn, and let the market bang out my stop. So......All days aren't good like today.

I added up all my trades since I started keeping a journal about a month ago, and I'm sitting at about 30 for 39 on my trades.

You all better not be voting for obame he want to raise the capital gains taxes. I origionally hear that he wants to take it to 28% but I just read somewhere yesterday that he wants to make it 40%. Friggin ludacris!!!

This will be the first tax return I will file with futures contracts on it. So I'm not sure how they are taxed?

Cap gains on futures are taxed at the 60/40 rate of a stock. i.e., 60% taxed as a stock @ the rate you're taxed on a stock you've owned for a year, and 40% at a stock owned for less?

So I'm not sure how cap gains will effect future traders? Hope it's not terrible?

So you're saying that futures are taxed at 60% long term cap gains and 40% short term cap gains?

If so currently long term cap gains are taxed at 15% regardless of your income tax bracket and short terms cap gains are taxed like ordinary income (basically your federal income tax bracket).

Long term cap gains apply to securities sold that were held for longer than 1 year and short term cap gains apply to securities sold that were held for less then 1 year.

So you're saying that futures are taxed at 60% long term cap gains and 40% short term cap gains?

If so currently long term cap gains are taxed at 15% regardless of your income tax bracket and short terms cap gains are taxed like ordinary income (basically your federal income tax bracket).

Long term cap gains apply to securities sold that were held for longer than 1 year and short term cap gains apply to securities sold that were held for less then 1 year.

I'm not sure about futures, but it is that way with Forex trading. Any gains are taxed at the 60/40 split, losses can be deducted as well, but that is getting pretty complicated, get a tax dude...I have a degree in Accounting and a lot of this shit gets pretty deep pretty quick.

Glow I'm not day trading anything I do this stuff for a living and I'm not into individual stocks, bonds, futures, or anything like that. I like mutual funds. I was just trying to explain for those not as up on it as you and I. :cheers

Glow I'm not day trading anything I do this stuff for a living and I'm not into individual stocks, bonds, futures, or anything like that. I like mutual funds. I was just trying to explain for those not as up on it as you and I. :cheers

No worries dude :cheers

I kind of work with mutual funds as well, I just hate how slow the market gets sometimes, thats why i like Forex :biggrin something is always happening that you can take advantage of (or lose your shirt to!!)

Good luck to you Reap, and ride safe :cheers

Man you guys are talking foreign to me, the only thing I know is stocks and mutual funds, probably b/c they're easy to track and follow without worrying too much about losing ... if you're smart, I wasn't. So how can I learn these things like futures, Forex, ES mini? Is there a college class maybe that focuses more on trading and not just the economy? May be a dumb question but IDK, and I'd like to know b/c when I get some debt paid off I want to trade again.

There are a ton of websites and publications that you can read up on these things. Manyof them are industry or product specific so you can pick what you like and read all about it.

No college classes that I know of. There are classes that focus on preparing you to sit for your CFA or CFP exams though...

Man you guys are talking foreign to me, the only thing I know is stocks and mutual funds, probably b/c they're easy to track and follow without worrying too much about losing ... if you're smart, I wasn't. So how can I learn these things like futures, Forex, ES mini? Is there a college class maybe that focuses more on trading and not just the economy? May be a dumb question but IDK, and I'd like to know b/c when I get some debt paid off I want to trade again.

To be honest man, a good grasp of macro economics would help with Forex stuff for as far as getting to understand the markets. You can find a number of platforms that offer free general tutorials about common forex principles and how to trade using their platform, some are good, others are shit. Try some of these if you are interested in forex.

www.fxcm.com
www.gftforex.com
www.cmsforex.com

I've used each of these with trial accounts (which you can open for free).

Its interesting stuff, hit me up if you ever have any questions and i'll help as much as i can.

Awesome guys, thanks for the info, I probably won't be actively trading again for a good 4 yrs, or until I can put $30K in an account and just play. I'll be sure to go to those sites, I need to learn before I commit again. Thanks again.

Awesome guys, thanks for the info, I probably won't be actively trading again for a good 4 yrs, or until I can put $30K in an account and just play. I'll be sure to go to those sites, I need to learn before I commit again. Thanks again.

One of the good things about forex is the ability to leverage your trades, which can both help you or hurt you...I opened up my first forex account with only $500, most of them you can open for as little as $250...you would need to know what you are doing though, as those amounts are pretty small and can blow up your account pretty quickly.

Good luck.

anyone on here want to take my $2000 and try to make me some money?

anyone on here want to take my $2000 and try to make me some money?
:lol

seriously.....I give you $2000. You double and we split the profits

Or can someone give me a job that I can do from home in the evenings and on weekends. I need to support my habbit of dumping money into my bike.

Or can someone give me a job that I can do from home in the evenings and on weekends. I need to support my habbit of dumping money into my bike.

Yea, read my post #26, you can study this stuff and become sucessful at it too... or try this site, its got a good "school" like program to understanding the basics www.babypips.com

Forex is open all day/night from 3pm Denver time sunday afternoon til 3pm denver time friday afternoon...so you can do it at night.

Yeah, remember that EVERY trade must be recorded and reported. It makes tax time horrible.

Here's a few good mutual funds for you...
First Eagle Global (Just re-opened and only had 2 down years in the last 30 years)...many of us are watching how it does when the long time manager leaves after this year:dunno

Yeah, remember that EVERY trade must be recorded and reported. It makes tax time horrible.

Umm, i have yet to see a broker that does not keep this reporting information for you...but you should keep track yourself...I guess i'm biased because i work with spreadsheets all day long, but how hard is it for the average person to enter your information on there a couple times a day??:dunno Hell, i could build a database in no time that would make it insane easy to keep track of your stuff.

I of intraday trade, pips 30-50 in day it is quite enough

I of intraday trade, pips 30-50 in day it is quite enough

What type of strategy do you incorporate?? You dont have to be too specific, just basic guidelines...I just started a auto trading strategy using a Moving average on an RSI indicator, when indicator's going up, long, when its going down, short. Pretty simple and through backtesting is looking good.