Marketgeometry

Tuesday, January 1, 2008

2008 Goals 1/1/2008

Bottom line - trade more, trade bigger, risk more. I need to grow bigger balls - period.
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I believe I know what I am doing but my results are not showing it. I cut off way too many trade too soon with out allowing the trade to work. More times than not, the trade would have worked. I have the account size to trade bigger. I am not talking at lot bigger but most of my trades are 50-200 shares when I think it should be more like 200-300 shares per trade. Most of my YM trades are 1 contract and they should be 2 or 3.
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So here go my daily goals -
To trade at least 1 Big Mouth play per day.
To risk at least $100 (more likely $200 or more) per stock trade.
To trade at least 5 of my YM signals per day.
To risk a $100 per contract per YM trade.
To allow myself to lose $1000 in a day before I quit trading.
To only continue to trade one trade at a time after making $1000 in a day and only make those trades if I continue to profit.
To quit trading if I have 3 loses of more than $200 in a row.
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My monthly goals-
To make $1000 per month in the first quarter.
To make $2000 per month in the second quarter.
To make $3000 per month in the third quarter.
To make $4000 per month in the fourth quarter.
To have a trade win/loss ratio above 60/40.
To have an average win/loss above 2.
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My yearly goals-
To keep my trading capital above XXXk with removing 3k per month for living expenses. (Starting capital is 40k bigger than XXXk and if I fail this, I need to find a real job again)
To begin to cover my living expenses by the end of the third quarter.
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This is a work in process and I may update these over the next couple of days. I am also taking the time to write a detail trading plan on the only trades I will make with the targets and stop losses for each trade just as Corey wrote about on his blog. I want my actions to be more planned than just reacting to the market on a daily basis.

2 comments:

Bluedog said...

Good luck, man. I think the real key is limiting risk. Get that wired and the rest will come. I limit my daytrades with a $200 SL. Ideally, you should be making money immediately once your order is placed.

If it were only that easy... ;)

-BD

Richard Todd said...

I wish you luck, but I disagree with your monthly goals. Maybe having the $$ goalposts isn't so bad, but you didn't say anything about how you expect to reach them. For instance, what will you be doing in April that will allow you to expect to make twice your goal from March? I must say I am not a fan of $$ goals even if there is some underlying plan to take you from A to B. What will you do 3/4 through January if you haven't made anywhere near $1k? There's really no correction you can make, and your goal will just add pressure, which in my experience will only make your odds of succeeding smaller.

It's also not clear to me that it's a good idea to allow yourself to lose $1k in a day, if that's the amount you plan to make in a whole month. Maybe all these $$ amounts should be scaled up in unison over the course of the year?

In any case, once again, good luck, and don't let my comments discourage you. Only you know what's best for you.