This is what I do for a living. I've found it to be fairly rewarding but at the same time an emotional roller coaster. The understanding of the psychology and emotions involved in and resulting from the wins and losses that occur daily is without question the most important element in the arsenal of the daytrader. Despite all of the research and testing I did in the years that I was what I will call an enthusiastic paper trader (practicing the game without risking your money) there was nothing that could have prepared me for the emotions involved when my money was actually on the line. In my first week I managed to lose a considerable sum (would have been a good down payment on a new Porsche). In the weeks that followed, I just sat at my desk, watching the charts, completely frozen. I couldn't take a single trade ! This was mainly due to the fact that, in the heat of battle, I had completely thrown aside everything I had learned in the previous years. Of course I didn't realise that I was actually ignoring my own rules. It took another month of paper trading a new methodology which blended my money management rules with something called the Alpha Trading System. before I was actually able to start trading again. I had been chatting with a group of traders in Futures Magazines traders chat and found that a few had been using this methodology in their own trading. The method used is actually not a system at all, rather it is a clever manipulation and application of the old standby technical analysis tools with a twist. Of course this is a proprietary method and is copyrighted so I cannot disclose much more about it.There are however, a couple of links on this page to Alpha Financial. I have listed below some of the elements I use in my daily trading with links to the appropriate sights for more info.
I found that using two computers was the way to go if your going to be successful in daytrading the S&P. Both machines are more or less built up from this and that, mostly newer stuff in an older box. The first computer is a Pentium 233 with 64 megs of SIMM ram, a 2 gig drive, a 2meg video card, and a 17 inch monitor. This is the machine that receives the real time qoutes via satellite and charts the data as it is received. Although it is only a 233 mhz machine, it is more than adequate since I'm only running the charting software on it. The satellite feed comes in on a standard com port from a down converter and after aligning the dish, it's a no brainer. The charting and analysis package I use is Omega Research Tradestation 2000. This turned out to be a little less intuitive in actual use than I would have hoped for, but there is a lot of bang for the buck here. There are just too many third party vendors supporting Tradestation to use anything else. The second computer is a AMD K6-2 300 with 96 megs of PC100 Sync Dram, a 6.4 gig drive, a 56k 3Com modem, an 8 meg AGP video card, and a 15 inch monitor. This machine is used strickly as an internet interface for the actual execution of my trades. This allows me to transmit orders directly to the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in as little as three seconds ! If your going to daytrade, you've got to have an online broker. My broker supplies the online trading client known as LEOWEB. Originally designed for LFG,LLC which is a huge futures brokerage, it is now distributed free to clients of LFG introducing brokers, of which mine, NetFutures, is one.
email me with any comments or suggestions tnestor@cyberportal.net