Trading part-time (successfully), with a full-time job is looking like a pipe dream. Even with proper analysis and market reads, the execution aspect suffers due to being at work. I'd like to continue watching the market and take trades, but only IF they present themselves and I'm in the proper state (emotionally and otherwise) that would allow for effective trade management. At this point, I see my full-time job and other obligations as major road-blocks to trading success, so it may be necessary to clear up the road-blocks before I can make some positive headway in trading. I also have a business (IT consulting), and have to deliver a project this month which will require 50 hours during the evenings/weekends so I'm not sure if I'll be able to dedicate much time to trading education this month.
In other news, I'm looking into moving my account to
Velocity Futures, since they're offering the X Trader platform for free, $4.73 all-inclusive round-turn commission and
$500 intraday margin on the ES, all with no minimum volume requirements. I don't ever plan on using max leverage (45-lot) with them, but it's just nice to have those low margin requirements.
Took a long scalp at 902.75 late in the day. I quickly realized I was "bottom picking", and one of my goals is to
avoid bottom picking so I quickly moved my stop to break-even. Ended up exiting at 903.25 for
+2 ticks. I wasn't around my PC long enough to manage any other trade setup throughout the day.
IB Trades Screenshot
Market Structure/Balance (5-min)
Trading and working full time is a tough challenge. But don't give up, there's bound to be something you can do to stay in the game. If nothing else you could try to master trading the time slot during the train ride in, if your in the right mental frame of mind that day. Otherwise you may want to think about swing trading instead, most of the work is done after hours, and it's not nearly as demanding time wise during the day.
ReplyDeleteI do know what your up against, for 5 years I tried balancing trading and running a business. It does make trading far more stressful.
The train ride in to Chicago is during the opening range, which presents good opportunities, but is also the riskiest time to trade. And then you have the added risk of trading from a train on a mobile broadband card.
ReplyDeleteI've thought about swing trading, and might try it on Sim for the month of January and see how it goes. Stops would probably have to be pretty wide for swing trading though. I'm thinking just trade the 60 min chart on 1 contract with 20 pt stops.
One thing you may want to consider is trading the SSO (ETF), you could take much smaller risks that way, 20 pts is an expensive stop, at least until you build a track record.
ReplyDeleteJust a thought.