Futures Trading Levels and Reports for August 30, 2012

One Way to Eliminate Fear and Greed While Day Trading

Disclaimer

The methods described in this article are for educational purposes only. Past results are not necessarily indicative of future results. The author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your trading results. Trading involves a high degree of risk. No recommendation is being made to buy any stock, commodity, option or other financial instrument. Consult your financial advisor before starting any investment system.

It is a known fact that fear and greed can be a trader’s worst enemies.

I’ve found one way that has helped some clients deal with fear and greed and their cousin, “getting out of winners too soon and staying in losers too long.”

What is it? Entering Multiple Contracts: Philosophy

In order to enter multiple contracts while day trading, one has to have the appropriate risk capital and margin requirements. But the advantage of trading more than one “unit” or splitting your trading size into two or more parts is as such:

If you enter a trade with one contract (or if you are treating your trading size as one unit, meaning you enter a trade with 4 contracts and exit the trade with 4 contracts), you can face a very quick dilemma, especially when day-trading. Consider the two following scenarios:

1. You get in and very quickly you are up 2 mini SP points…what do you do? Do you take profit? Bring your stop loss closer? How do you avoid getting out too early or too late?
2. You enter a trade and it goes against you rather quickly…if you get out then it is a loser…but the little voice in your head says “what if the market goes back up?”

In the first case scenario, when market decided to be nice to us and moved in our direction, I like to exit half of my positions relatively quickly. In the case of the mini SP, this would be around 7 ticks profit.

What I’ve found is that this will allow me to manage the rest of the trade in a much more relaxed manner. Since I’ve already locked profits in, now I can look for a proper stop close to my break-even level. I can analyze my next target more realistically and, if the market provides room for additional gains, be there to participate.

In the second case scenario, I can choose to risk a smaller amount or use a tight stop on the first half of my position and a bit wider stop on the other half of the position. This can help prevent the scenario when one does not get out of a trade because mentally one does not want to accept the loss.

Of course, there is much more to trading and day trading. Entry signals, exit techniques, why and when to get in a trade, and so on — all of these are key.

But I hope that this tip will assist you while trading and will prevent some of the instances where you get out of a trade too late or too early.

More on the subject to come in future blogs……