It was pretty exciting to open a trading account because it meant my time and money could finally really start paying off. My first trade was a small one, but was a gain of .3, or 6%, so I was excited. The next day I made one trade for a gain of .5, or 10%. The third day I made 1.4 points, or 28%! I was really excited at this point. I had made almost 50% in three days! I never thought anything like that would be possible.
Unfortunately, I found out the next day that overconfidence is never good in trading. I decided to trade with 2 contracts, or $1000, when I only had $2000 total in my account. My first trade was a loss. It was a hard cookie to swallow. Not only was it a loss, but it was double the loss since I was trading with two contracts! I recognized why the trade I made was a bad one and decided I needed to quickly make that money back. I looked for any signal I could to make a trade. Once I found the smallest indicator to make a trade, I traded. In hindsight, I am not surprised at all that I lost on this second trade. There was low volume and I made a largely emotionally based trade, which is always a recipe for failure.
On the simulator, I had some days where I was down a few points and made several trades to come back into the positive, and I thought, "Why should it be any different live?" I made more trades, all emotionally based, gaining on some, but losing on most. When all was said and done I had lost $900 in one day! I felt devastated and shaken up.
My next week or so was filled with mixed results. I gained some days but lost other days, losing more than I gained. After some time of this, I decided I needed some more time on the simulator and that I needed to take the KISS classes and methods a little more seriously.
Looking back, I was not even close to being ready to trade live when I decided to, but learning to trade is a process, and it helped me get closer to gaining consistency in trading. I learned lessons I wouldn't have been able to learn any other way.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Monday, August 25, 2008
Starting Up
I started trading in December, which I learned quickly, is not a good month to trade. Many traders take December off, which creates low volume, which equals low volatility, which is bad for the types of trades I do. I traded for a couple weeks and took the rest of December off.
When I started again in January, I learned that the KISS methods definitely work, but my mind wasn't in the right place. I would have several successful trades, followed by several unsuccessful trades. This created a lot of stress for me even though I was on a simulator not risking any real money. As a newbie, I made a lot of mistakes reading the indicators, but some trades would work still, which caused me to make further trades where the KISS indicators didn't match up. After several weeks of doing this, I came to the obvious conclusion that I needed to stay with the KISS methods. As I tried to exclusively trade using the KISSystem methods, I noticed I was making a lot more good trades and the ratio of good to bad trades was heavily in my favor.
At the end of February I commenced opening a trader's account with a brokerage to start making trades with real money.
When I started again in January, I learned that the KISS methods definitely work, but my mind wasn't in the right place. I would have several successful trades, followed by several unsuccessful trades. This created a lot of stress for me even though I was on a simulator not risking any real money. As a newbie, I made a lot of mistakes reading the indicators, but some trades would work still, which caused me to make further trades where the KISS indicators didn't match up. After several weeks of doing this, I came to the obvious conclusion that I needed to stay with the KISS methods. As I tried to exclusively trade using the KISSystem methods, I noticed I was making a lot more good trades and the ratio of good to bad trades was heavily in my favor.
At the end of February I commenced opening a trader's account with a brokerage to start making trades with real money.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
I started up with KISSystem back in December of 2007. I'm going to start my blog by going through what has happened between then and now and then I will continue with what is happening now with trading.
When my friend came to me telling me I could make 10% or more per day, as you can imagine, I thought he was crazy and was getting himself into something dishonest that was too good to be true. However, when I looked at the numbers, I quickly realized all he was talking about was trading futures-something that has been practiced for a long time and all KISS proposed to do was teach how to profitably trade. I began my adventure into KISS by having a conference call with a person affiliated with it. He gave me a brief overview of how to recognize one of the staple KISS trades, then we reviewed the day and he had me identified the different places where certain indicators matched up indicating when it was a good time to enter a trade. I was amazed how easy it was and how every trade I identified was a good, profitable trade. In less than an hour I was personally recognizing successful trades. I don't remember, but I think there were five of those types of trades, each of which would have made me 10% of my money. I was very intrigued. Shortly thereafter, my friend paid the tuition of $5000 (it is now $3000 for the same course, by the way) and I saw him making successful trades easily on the simulator. I was hooked. Within a couple of weeks I managed to scrounge together the money for tuition and I was in. There was no looking back.
When my friend came to me telling me I could make 10% or more per day, as you can imagine, I thought he was crazy and was getting himself into something dishonest that was too good to be true. However, when I looked at the numbers, I quickly realized all he was talking about was trading futures-something that has been practiced for a long time and all KISS proposed to do was teach how to profitably trade. I began my adventure into KISS by having a conference call with a person affiliated with it. He gave me a brief overview of how to recognize one of the staple KISS trades, then we reviewed the day and he had me identified the different places where certain indicators matched up indicating when it was a good time to enter a trade. I was amazed how easy it was and how every trade I identified was a good, profitable trade. In less than an hour I was personally recognizing successful trades. I don't remember, but I think there were five of those types of trades, each of which would have made me 10% of my money. I was very intrigued. Shortly thereafter, my friend paid the tuition of $5000 (it is now $3000 for the same course, by the way) and I saw him making successful trades easily on the simulator. I was hooked. Within a couple of weeks I managed to scrounge together the money for tuition and I was in. There was no looking back.
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