Before Trading

There's a ton of free resources out there and the boys in the thinkorswim (ToS) chat pointed out something for my consideration before starting out.

SHADOWTRADER.NET has a 10 part audio series on trading and particularly day trading. I'm just at part 5 but this series of talks are crucial.

Main Lesson of the Day: Learn from your losers, it stings a little but learn from them. Investools has drilled into my head: Keep losers small, stay in the game. Peter, the shadowtrader teacher, claims that the professionals know how to lose and that's what makes them professionals with very long trading careers. Inversely, it is the amateurs who focus on their winners and subsequently blow up their account.

Peter goes even a step further and basically says you're whole job is to lose the first year. Heaven forbid that experience great success in trading right out of the chute. I knew this instinctively and have traded an old IRA for almost two years ... it was money I could afford to lose ... I set my limit ... lost my limit ... got my head straight and now things are headed in the right direction. The point is: I'm still in the game.