This page is an archive page for several of Trader Mike’s (TraderMike.net) most widely read blog posts from 2004 and 2005 on day trading. TraderMike.net was originally launched in 2003 by Michael Seneadza. In January of 2011 the site was acquired by StockTrader.com. Growing TraderMike.net With Mike being a Stanford University graduate and full time trader, he quickly grew tradermike.net into one of the most premier resources for independent traders. His stock market recaps and in depth analysis of the market was easy to understand, fresh, and spot on.

Just wondering if anyone may have a copy of this book ( Van Tharp's Definitive Guide To Position Sizing ) that they would like to sell for a discounted. Log in or Sign up ET News & Sponsor Info. I recently found the articles writed by the Dr. Does anyone read his books? Are they as good as I heard? I specially interested in his book 'The definitive guide to position sizing', I tried to download but I couldn't do it. If someone has the book in pdf, please let me know where you found it Thanks.

By mid 2006 the site was attracting tens of thousands of visitors and upwards of 200,000 pageviews each month. By mid 2007 though Mike was becoming busy in other facets and was not able to post as often. As the market crashed in 2008 and 2009 posting continued to decline. By 2010 posting was at a stand still. In the fall of 2010 Blain Reinkensmeyer, a fellow blogger and original fan of the site, began discussions with Mike about transitioning the site to re-spark its original flames.

By mid January 2011 a deal was struck and the site was sold to StockTrader.com. Day Trading Thoughts I’ve been exclusively day trading for almost three months now. The switch from swing trading has been quite an experience and I’ve had a few ‘light bulb’ moments along the way as you’ll see below. The switch was definitely the right move for me to make. I think most people will probably be surprised to hear me say that day trading is much less stressful than holding stocks overnight.

Mind you, I never ‘lost sleep’ because of my overnight holds but it’s a nice feeling to be able to start the morning in cash and not care what the market’s doing at the open. One of the things that sucked the most about swing trading was walking into a morning move against my positions.

I’ve also taken advantage of being able to just shut things down for the day if the market’s not acting well. When I was swing trading I’d typically just sit there watching all day on days like that because I had some positions on. One of the biggest changes for me was switching my commission structure to a ‘per share’ basis vs. The ‘per trade’ structure I was on previously.

Now I’m paying $0.006/share instead of my old $9.95 per trade. That change impacts my trading in a couple of ways. Mitsubishi s4s engine manual full version free software download software. First, it’s just much easier to break even (or even to make money). I could easily do $100 to $200/day in commissions with the $9.95/trade structure (that’s basically $20 round-trip on a stock) With my new commission structure those same trades could cost me well under $40 depending on the number of shares.

The per share structure also allows me to scale in or out of positions without racking up even more commissions. So that’s made it even easier for me to take partial profits or to just cut & run if I see danger on the horizon. One thing I’d like to note here is that I should have switched my commission structure back when I was still swing trading. My broker (CyberTrader) announced the per share structure last fall but I never looked into it because I knew that I didn’t trade enough shares to qualify for that plan.

They require you to trade 40,000 shares per month or you have to pay a $250 fee. Back in April I did the math on my commissions for 2004 and I was shocked and appalled to learn that I would have come out far ahead on the other plan even if I’d paid the $250 penalty each month.

So the lesson here is do the math and keep those costs down! The main ‘light bulb’ moment(s) had to do with position sizing, risk management and buying power. I’ve already told you that I’m now using the percent risk model to size my positions. It made perfect sense to me when I read about it and even when I started using it in real live trading.

But it wasn’t until a Google day trade that the light bulb really lit up for me. I remember when the SEC changed the margin requirements & rules for day traders several years ago. Part of the change was that day traders could have 4 times their equity as intraday buying power.

I never understood why they gave people so much margin but even more than that, I couldn’t imagine who’d be foolish enough to use that much margin. Well now I try to be that fool as often as possible. The thing that the Google trade taught me was that if I go after high-priced stocks I can put a lot of money to work. As long as I have a tight stop I can still risk X percent of my equity per trade. Here’s an example: Let say there are two stocks that are setting up entries for me.