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Pit Stops:
Notes From an At-Home Day-Trader |
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Earl is a cyberspace pal I met on a newsgroup list. |
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Neal: Tell me about your day-trading in the Chicago markets. |
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Earl: I spend six and a half hours a day, four days a week trading an average of two to three times per day, although some days I'll go without any trades at all. For prep, I spend an hour before markets open, a couple of hours in the evening, and six hours or so on weekends, in total, about 45 hours per week. My trades are generally of short duration, 5 to 10 minutes or less for losers and under 60 minutes for winners. There are periods during the day, particularly from 10 to 12 o'clock (mountain time), when I set alarms on my charts and do other things, including e-mail, reading, and systems development. Sometimes I just walk out on my deck and take a break. I have no compulsion for action, and I never, ever take a trade I don't like. |
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My trading is performed entirely on-line in small lots using relatively light leverage, i.e., nowhere near exchange minimums. |
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Looking over October, 60 percent of my trades have been losers, the majority at 0 to 0.5 points, none more than 2 points. However, the other 40 percent allowed me to exceed my monthly day-trade point budget by the middle of last week. Throw in a couple of good position trades and it's already been a very nice month. It took many years of failure, study, and preparation to get here, and I've still got a lot to learn. Most would-be traders don't make it because they run out of trading capital for lack of sound money management; they run out of living capital for lack of time to learn to trade; or they never acquire the required psychological capital. |
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