The Ultimate Work-From-Home Job? Day Trading

By Frank Miller


It seems every day some new and upcoming superstar day trader (ok wannabe superstar day trader) asks me the same questions. It always strikes me as funny that everybody always seems to have the same questions when to me the answers just seem so obvious. I will admit I've been trading for a while now and I've seen and read all the doom and gloom numbers about how 90% of all day traders bust their accounts in the first year. Why? I mean seriously why does this keep happening over and over again? I think it boils down to a couple of really simple but important rules that too many new traders either don't learn soon enough in order to save some of their trading capital. Or they don't really understand the concepts. Let's look at a couple of the major ones that you have to understand and have mastered before you can really hope to earn a living at this day trading game.

Well, it's time to stop believing the lie. Stop paying for "sure thing" entry methods. I write a market newsletter each day, giving my "game plan" for the next trading day. I'm as specific as possible including Support and Resistance levels that I will be buying and selling against, which provides you with great trade set ups nearly everyday. I've been day trading futures for 27 years and I've developed a strategy that makes money consistently. I don't promise overnight success, anyone who is really serious about wanting to learn day trading realizes that it's not a get rich quick profession. Yes, my method does include great entries, but most losing traders have decent entry strategies. My experienced day trading advice doesn't focus as much on entries as it does on exits...Offense doesn't win this ballgame, defense does!

If you're going to make it day trading the stock market, and actually be successful at it, you must understand why this is, and then you'll program your reflexes to follow your knowledge. Think of it this way...large corporations spend millions of dollars inventing boatloads of products that are worthless. But in the early stages of research and development, the company can't tell which products will make money. If they take all their new products to market, and only a few sell, the few won't offset the losers, and the company will go under.

Most new companies (about 95% by some estimates) fail. The same is true of traders, they want to be successful, but just don't know how to go about it, which day trading advice should they believe, and who's just trying to take their money. But there is an upside to all of this, successful companies know a secret. They find a way to identify their losers in the early stages... and close the projects down quickly before losing a lot of money in the marketing process.As James Surowiecki puts it in his book, "The Wisdom of Crowds"

"...companies place huge bets on losers all the time. What makes a system successful is its ability to recognize losers and kill them quickly." The same is true of stock trading strategies. Experienced professional traders place bets on losers all the time, but they know how to identify losers and kill them quickly before much (if any) money is lost.

I close bad trades well before my hard stops are hit, but anyone can do that. But, you also have to recognize your losers early. Otherwise you'll be killing your good trades along with the bad ones. Every successful trader I've met has a way of getting out early on bad trades. If you are day trading support and resistance, I can teach you how I do it. You may be able to find a way to do it on your own, but it will probably take years. I've been trading for more than 27 years, and publishing my day trading advice on the internet since 1996.




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