hey nodrog - many thanks for your comment. i'm trucking along, studying harder than ever and staying vigilent. wish you good luck in your journey too.

Thank you...know you are not alone...I have a bag now and all its trappings as we speak and I know better. I told myself when I cut it I will become transparent and post all my 6 negative trades! Growth during the journey has many twists that we say "I won't do that" as the examples dance in front of our eyes! Tuition! Thanks for your post.

Just wanted to give you props for sharing your losses, it's a great deal & I think it will help you overcome them. You also learned from them so that's good. Good luck on your journey, you can make it!

@Noble1222 Thank you!

With such a large fee, you might try a different broker until you grow your account to where fees don't matter

I agree with @jungem05. Try to find a broker with a more suitable fee structure. I started last year with a broker that charged me about 30 USD for a round-trip trade (1 entry + 1 exit). Due to the high fees, many trades ended up as loss or break-even, when they could have been profits. Had I been with Interactive Brokers from the start, I actually would have made net profit last year, instead of net loss. Also, try to find setups/patterns (and maybe higher priced stocks) that can give you more

Also, try to find setups/patterns (and maybe higher priced stocks) that can give you more profit per share. It's hard to grow the account (in the beginning) when you are relying on pennies per share to make money. I'm currently trading stocks that have 1-3 dollars of profit potential. I find this better to manage (they are a bit slower than penny-stocks) and it helps me to avoid the habit of scalping.

@Nodrog I agree that IB fees is nice. But most people starting out with small accounts do not have the $10,000 required to open an account with IB.

Great post, I just purchased Trading In The Zone audio version and will listen to it on my daily commute and at home at my work station. I was also thinking of trading larger cap stocks and it sounds like it's working out for you.

@kobayashimaru The audio version seems to be a smart choice in this case! I hope it will transform your trading, too. Larger cap stocks work out for me currently. I'm still at the beginning. So let's see what happens.

Great strategy - Time for a good read too, thank you for your post.

Thanks, just bought the book in the audio version.

Will give it a try - thank you.

Don't give up! And if you find the time to read it, I highly recommend the book "Trading In The Zone". It's game-changing!

Thanks, I'll look into it

IB is very strict about this. If you use all available day trades you are pretty much restricted from taking any sort of position even if your intentions are to overnight/swing. I ran into the same issue and the solution is open as cash account with IB as there is no PDT you just have to manage your buying power

@BASSxMASTER thanks for the reply. I try to do more overnight trades until I'm out of PDT.

@Kody Thanks. Cash account is not an option for me. I want to be able to short-sell and to use more buying power to wnter higher priced stocks. I will study up on overnight holds and short-term swings.

You can also open up a sub account and transfer some of your funds over to that. So you have two trading accounts, allows you to get around the PDT but buying power limited but the amount you split up.

Just say whatever is necessary to pass the application. The system tells when you don't qualify and then just change your answer to make it work. All that application is doing is trying to make sure you arent a professional trader that trades other peoples money for a living and you are trying to pay non-professional fees and rates and slide by all of the rest of the stuff that the professional traders have to go through. It isn't meant to weed out novice traders.

Thanks all for sharing your experiences. I'm a little bit OCD so was probably over thinking things too much.

Postscript: Looks like my concerns were 100% accurate. IB have only given me a 'Trading' (cash) account I can't short and I can't change the account type in the configuration. There was NOTHING in the application where I could choose this. Waiting to hear if they will change the account type for me. Seem like they randomly fuck people over.

Post Postscript: So IB customer support tell me I CAN short. .......'We can see that you have a trading account with IB-AU entity. In trading account, shorting is allowed. You can place an order to short on any of our trading platforms'.......how confusing

Yeah you described part of my mental battle before getting myself to hit the buy button. Fear of being wrong and failure is what gets me. Like you said keep your position size small. Personally I'm more mad at myself for psyching myself out of a trade vs making a plan, entering the trade and sticking to it regardless of the outcome.

@alexg0930 This is the way to go. The thing is that I know this. That's why I made the plan to reduce my size in the first place. And yet, I let the potential of bigger profits spoil that plan by thinking about bigger size. Great to see that others are making great progress with this strategy! Thanks!

@Kody Exactly! That's how I feel, too! So, small size it is. Sounds so simple.

@alexg0930 I totally agree! BTW, I like your video about using 60min charts. This also helps to take some of the emotion out of the trade (I guess).