Trading Questions

I often get asked when I tell people I am a trader is wow how exciting so you are a daytrader? Daytrading and/or day trader got known variety back in the 1999 internet timelime. Daytrading was something done back then just like in recent years people would acclaimed themselves professional flippers/ investors in the housing market. I am not a day trader I always reply I am an active trader. None of my fellow trading colleagues would consider themselves day traders no matter which instrument they trade but we will all admit be are active traders and very often yes we are in and out of a trade in a couple seconds to minutes but we dont only trade intraday.
Market conditions usually stipulates what we do in terms of trade duration, size and profit targets. We as trader often have knowledge of trading multiple instruments but usually focus only on our individual strengths when markets are in our ideal environment.
Most of the time I trade stocks ranging from intra day trades to multi day swing trades. When the market is not stock friendly I switch over to Futures intra day trading. Right now I am studying forex which is very very dangerous territory for most trades. Forex is highly leveraged so a high leverage of risk reward should be taken.
I will tell readers this, actively trading most of the times is not about how much money you can make but preserving capital and over the years I have implemented a risk reward system which has worked great for me and I will share it will you.

Here it goes.

I based all my trades on risk and reward but no trade should cost me more than 1-2% of my portfolio. Therefore if you are 200k trading you should not lose more than 1-2k on that single trade. I will show an example: Say I am looking at RIMM chart and I see it is forming a bull flag, so I want to jump on this is what I do. I analyze the bull flag and note where the stop should be on a failure of the flag. Analysis tells me entry on the bull flag is 105 and bottom of the flag is $102, so I therefore need a $3 stop. If I am using a $3 stop I therefore can only trade maximum up to 660 shares based on a 200k portfolio with maximum 1-2% loss per trade. Playing like this will ensure you will not get blown out on any one trade. I must never never lose more than 2% on a trade.
I hear many traders losing 30% of their port in a day because they go all in on one trade and then they are wrong. It is very sad but it happens every single day.
Human beings are naturally driven by greed but we must learn how to control it. If you are a active trader set a target whether it be daily, weekly or monthly on your portfolio. Since I do this professional as an career I personally have daily target and weekly targets. Many times I achieve my daily target in the first 5 minutes of trading and then I go into profit protection mode (this is where I scale my loss parameter to .05% instead of the 1-2% per trade). If I have 3 straight losses for the day I call it quits for the day.
I am just sharing some of the things which are beneficial to my trading and want to share them with all.