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I am from the Boston area. I have been trading stocks for about a year with a cash account. I am going to trade options with a margin account soon. I hope this journal will benefit myself and others. I am thinking of doing this...
In the evening:
Run scans at the end of the day
Select entry methods such as calls, puts, spreads, condors, calendar, spread, etc
Define primary and secondary exits
Back test and select the highest probability trade
In the morning:
Read the news, the tape, macro, etc to see if I should still go through with the evening's plans
Execute or do nothing
Update Journal
So what do you think of the routine? Should I join chat rooms during trading hours?
What's a good program or website for backtesting? It seems people here use NinjaTrader but sinisa says it's crap.
I want to begin with a few basic indicator such as MACD, stochastic, and ADX before going into more advance indicators. I can probably program Excel to get daily OHLC historical data from yahoo and run the test but I imagine that would take months to build. What program do you guys use? I plan to paper trade on ThinkOrSwim for a couple of weeks before diving in with real money.
Also, what's a good(or free) program where I can record my screen and microphone to upload onto youTube? Screenshot of charts can be hard to understand so I want to do screencasts instead.
As for money management, I used 1/10 for stocks but I will probably use something like 1/40 for options. This is for cases where I may need to create a second or third legs. Let me know what you think.
Thank you everyone in advance.
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
For screeners, I use stockcharts.com and finviz.com the thread for screeners is here:
bigmiketrading.com/stocks-etfs-trading/10876-stock-screeners-scanners.html
For back testing, I will use NinjaTrader instead of MultiCharts because I know C#
it seems that the ranking is MultiCharts > NinjaTrader > TradeStation > Excel
bigmiketrading.com/multicharts/9222-backtesting-identical-strategy-tradestation-multicharts-different-results.html
As for screen recording software, I will use Jing and CamStudio
bigmiketrading.com/tech-support/15398-good-simple-light-screen-capture-program-videos.html
Chat rooms seem useless. But then how would you prevent yourself from trading out of boredom or falling asleep? Have anyone tried stocktwits?
Can someone with premium membership to Big Mike's Trading Forum please PM me a review of the forum? I mostly want to know if premium membership actually helped you make money or have you been on the forum for months without improvements in your PnL?
I considered $50 for the Elite membership rather cheap and it supports the rest of the free forum. To me this entire forum is worth more than a once-off $50.
Whether it helps you make money or not is not important imo. It's only $50 and worth it just to support the forum. That being said the amount of information that can be gleaned is very helpful to traders of all levels. I can't say being here directly helped me make money. But I can say the info I have received here has been worth well more than $50.
"The day I became a winning trader was the day it became boring. Daily losses no longer bother me and daily wins no longer excited me. Took years of pain and busting a few accounts before finally got my mind right. I survived the darkness within and now just chillax and let my black box do the work."
Something else to consider... if it has helped me make money, what makes you assume that it would help you make money? There are some good ideas and threads there, but whether or not you make money will be in how you implement the ideas.
I didn't pay the $50 to make money, I paid it to learn something new and I most definitely did.
Have anyone tried stocktwits?