Its past time to quit moping around. I need to take what I have experienced, learn from it. Grow and do it better. 

The most important lesson I have learned from the market is risk management. Specifically in cashing out when the getting is good and not even take the risk of a big drawdown. Position sizing is more important than everything else in this game. 

Risk Tolerance is not something you want to be in the position of getting limits tested.

My tolerance for risk is none.

 If you have a profit get out before it shrinks or becomes a loss. Get out for reasonable profits. Do not allow yourself to take a loss on a profitable position. 

Do not fall in love with a stock. These are plays, dice rolls, nothing more. 

I am gambling. I do not know the future. I cannot predict the future. My opinions do not matter. I cannot affect the market.

I can only attempt to ride the waves. When riding waves you must float. You must remain solvent. You must not drown. You cannot afford to take a drawdown. Use a life vest. Have safety precautions in place at all times. Your capital is your raft, you must never allow it to spring a leak or it may start deflating very rapidly. 

Swing trading has consistently ruined me. The overnight gaps in this market have been vicious. Attempting to swing trade as a bear I have been bludgeoned repeatedly, unmercifully.

I got it in my head that a market  collapse was imminent. There is plenty of data to support that thesis. However, I have been proven wrong. The market is at All Time Record Highs as we speak. In attempting to top tick the market I have violated basic technical analysis. Ignoring trends is so dangerous and just look at the moving averages right now. This market has been going up in a 45 degree angle for 7 years and continues to. 

The truth of the matter is, the why is not important. Theory is imagination, conjecture. Making Predictions of the future is perhaps one of the most useless wastes of the mind there is because they are always wrong. 

As a trader you ride a play and hope that you get lucky and it moves your chosen direction. If it does as you anticipate, awesome! GTFO and wait for another setup to emerge. If the play darts the opposite direction or does something unanticipated Immediately GTFO and wait for another setup to emerge.

It all seems so simple and it is in theory. However, once you sit down behind that desk, the numbers start flashing at the speed of light, price starts ticking up, down, up, up, up, up, DOWN, down, down, UP.... 

You have infinite control over your capital, your positions, your fate. We find a setup, get emotional, fantasize in our heads of hitting the home run, leverage, leverage. Leverage is todays game, todays dream. Leverage is what's going to take down the entire financial system, the very same as it did in 2007. Because humans push it to the limit, every time.

The answer is in automated mechanical rules, discipline, proper position sizing. Emotionless. There is a reason why HFT Computer Algorithms dominate todays arena. 

Humans are flawed, every single one of us. It doesn't have to be bad. Hope for the best. Just be aware of our weaknesses and always wear a lifevest when sailing turbulent seas. 

You don't want to drown.

When analyzing the market as a whole there are several important factors to note:
Trend: Getting a feel for trend is very important. Trend differs in all time-frames, meaning that short term trend may be different from long term trend. 
Trend can be quantified as up or down by looking at moving averages. The most Popular and widely watched moving averages are the 50&200day MA.

Macro:  The strength of the economy is important as it effects Investor sentiment as well as the Federal Reserves Interest rate policy. Rising rates are generally seen as Bearish for stocks as it makes fixed income products more attractive. Rising rates are a tool that the federal reserve often uses when it feels that the economy is growing unsustainably fast and needs to 'cool down.' Rising rates also make it harder for companies to borrow money. Perversely negative economic news can lift asset prices because it makes the fed less likely to raise interest rates. There's a weird hyper-focus on rates in the financial media, so as a consequence it greatly affects market movements.

Using this information we can see that the trend of the S&P 500 is up. This is Bullish
Sentiment is mostly neutral, however there was recently an unusually large spike in call options buying indicating that many people are expecting short term higher prices. Sentiment is mixed so I am personally considering this Neutral
Although still below most moving averages, recently Yield on t-bills has recently been heading higher. Some of the short term moving averages have crossed longer term moving averages indicating that rates are rising. Rising rates in bonds generally for equities is Bearish

I have illustrated the three majorly important factors one must pay attention to when analyzing the general conditions of the marketplace. Each area has produced conflicting results. Perhaps this is why sentiment is predominately neutral indicating overwhelming uncertainty of future market direction. 'Fear' as indicated by the VIX is off the all time lows of September 2014 but is still very suppressed.
Market analysis can be subjective but  in attempting to remove as many human/emotional factors as possible we discover a market giving mixed signals. If you ever find yourself uncertain remember that cash is a valid position. Wealth preservation and keeping your losses small is the cornerstone of this business. 
When analysing the market, always keep your eyes on the core: Trend, Sentiment, Macro

Since the financial crisis of 2008 the federal reserve and government of the united states of America has implemented a plunge protection team, whose open market operations/manipulations insure that the markets never again experience a sharp drop and violent unwinding of a fragile ecosystem.

Many times in this bull market just when it looked as if price was about to fall. Bears would be greeted with a seemingly magical gap up of massive proportions. Just today, friday from 'goldilocks' jobs numbers or whatever 'reason' the dow industrial average gapped up 200pts!

The real reason was that the market was starting to test important technical support levels. A breakdown was looking possible and the way the credit expansion system is set up right now, prices cannot ever drop, or else certain disaster awaits!

The stock market, the headline dominating arena where speculators commune in droves has its place but is a spec of dust compared to the much bigger stadiums of capital flow: the Bond and Currency Markets.

The interplay between markets complicated and long winded if you want it to be but just know that each directly and inderectly effects the other.

Western governments have been using the bond market to create currency from debt to finance operations. This credit creation system has been abused to excess. With diminishing returns.

What has happened is bond prices have been bid up in a 30yr Bull Market, resulting in the dropping of yields to such a low level that in most of Europe yields on bonds are actually negative. So in other words if you are buying a bind with a negative yield, you are paying for the priviledge of lending money. This is an unatural bastardization of the bond market that is the direct result of extensive central bank intervention into capital markets.

The derivatives that depend on this bond bubble to keep inflating are mind boggling. You get into shadow banking, carry trades and the repo market and you are dealing with figures so large my mind can barely comprehend.

It was derivatives that took down the market in 2008. Nothing has been done to adress derivative use. In fact the opposite phenomena has occured where there is now more leverage in the system than ever before.

The stock market is imortant for me as a speculator. It is an arena that is easily accessable to me but it is not the main arena. When the tide turns red in the bond market, look out! That means that the powers that be have lost control and a financial armageddon many times more levered than 2008 is unfolding...

Making a living from the markets is not an easy feat. Timing this beast, is almost impossible. Just when you think that everything is going to collapse, price gaps up 150pts overnight. Just when you think something is going to the moon, it sharply reverses and collapses. If I've learned anything from my experiences in the market, it's that you have to keep your confidence in check at all times. Never stray anywhere from focused and disciplined. Patience is a virtue but too much of anything can be a bad thing.
Never give up. Your fortune can swing any day. 
The market looked like it was breaking out last week, now it look as if it's breaking down. 
When you make a plan, stick to it.

Put those defeatist thoughts of an office job on hold. Give me a few more days of this and I'm back in business! 
Trading is not an easy feat, but as everyone reading this knows: it's the only thing worth doing.
Fortunes are made in these markets and I plan on making mine in the true spirit of capitalism!

Imagine trading in and out of the market millions of times a day and never losing!
HFT giant Virtu Financial does just that. Their track record suggests that they have somehow cracked the code and are in possession of a little something we in the industry like to call: The Holy Grail.

Virtu has only had 1 losing trading day in 6 years!
These guys just reported their first earnings as a publicly traded company and boy do they ever rake in the dough!

This is still a very fresh IPO. There is a lot of controversy surrounding HFT role in the marketplace and whether it is beneficial or detrimental to the average investor. Regardless, the facts speak for themselves. VIRT is doing something right and I want in on a piece of the action. Virtu Financial is a company to own!