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FTSE / DOW YTD

Good morinng all!

Good morning again.

I've spent the last 10 weeks day-trading to see if I can make a living off as I used to do approx 10 years ago.

After much time and energy I've drawn the conclusion that whilst I've made some money I'm stuck in that area that I'm not making enough to pay for the occasional disaster or when I'm on the wrong side of some external big news. In other words I'd be the trader who would win most days but would see 1 years profits lost overnight when I'm short and a takeover bid occurs. Because my trades tend to fight the trend I'm not likely to get lucky the other way.

My real challenge has not been knowing what to do but executing it 100% of the time. I'm afraid it seems I'm much more of a gambler than I used to be and am unable to stick to my plan. I get greedy and then don't wait for my pre-defined entry but go in sooner. This is particularly apparent when I'm adding to an already losing trade.

More worryingly day-trading has also detracted from my decision making on my long term investments, somewhere I don't want to be.

So, with regret apart from the first 10 minutes and the last hour no more day-trading for me as these are the only two set-ups that work with any reliability.

In the first 10 minutes sometimes it's clear from the news a stock should be going up and you can see it deliberately being pushed down on high volume at the open as they are going to spend the rest of the day buying

For the last hour the MM games are largely over and people are getting on with business and then trend is more consistent.

Going to largely spend the next month looking at my portfolio as I'm at that age where I need to start turning my portfolio into a high yield one with a steady income stream. Also a bit of range trading when the setups occur.
Bond yields look really poor to me, so it looks like I'll be concentrating on high dividend paying stocks.

CC.

Very interesting and honest appraisal.

I know the moment I feel comfortable with my holdings there seems to be a kick in the teeth on the way.

Do you use any particular software packages for management of "portfolios"?

I use a spreadsheet Fred. I have all my open positions in it in a list and then I use a pivot table to consolidate them into a summary. The spreadsheet also works out how much "income" I will get from dividends.

If I want to look at a particular stock I use a filter.

It also does my capital gains calculation as part of my portfolio is in a trust to mitigate inheritance tax. Not one of those off-shore ones I hasten to add - just a standard on-shore discretionary trust where sadly the rate of tax is rather frustrating.

Thanks.

.

Afternoon all.

CC

We've all been there to a certain extent. I too did "OK" at day trading, but the effort, stress and time was consuming the rest of life. I then found I was better "trading" longer term, but still making a life of it full time was not within my grasp. Have done far better just getting into companies on a medium-longer term basis. Retirement beckons for me as well, but not looking for the income route yet. Got a bit more damage to do. :)

Did you ever read Mark Douglas, Trading in the Zone? I found it very enlightening back in the day.

Cheers,
Al

Never read any of them Al. For me day-trading was and is always about psychology and the level of conviction I have over a trade.

Maybe I should