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If you can program a bit or learn how you should try to figure out how to program your strategy. I found for myself that if I coded some simple things on the chart I couldn't trade without them showing up. For example I have a trigger that puts something on he chart when it's ok for me to trade. Do that on each chart and then you can trade unless that thing or whatever it is shows up on all three charts.
Without that I would think I would see things that weren't there. With this it's obvious. The flag shows up and you can see it or you dont. On mine it says bullish in green and bearish and red. Has to be red on all three charts to enable me to trade bearish. All green to be bullish.
I am the opposite of you I think - I don't seriously think I'll have a big issue going live with real money - although I'm basing that statement on the fact that I traded real money for a couple of years already, but with a mechanical system not discretionary - room for a big over-assumption there
One other factor in my favour is that I find it so difficult to stick to the rules while sim trading the 3min EUR/USD, I can't see how it can be more difficult on my real account. I'm waiting for a new dawn in the way I approach this stuff mentally - and I don't think it has to be with real money - I suspect it will be a kind of zen thing.
Another theory - against my assumptions - is that trading live money will throw extra thoughts into your decision making process, effectively slowing it down. That leads me to think, maybe you should switch from 5min to 3min for a session - do you think you'll have the same reaction that you did switching from sim to real money?
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
I guess that seemed a bit of dumb suggestion - I don't think you should swap timeframes either really. My thoughts behind the idea though were about how frequently your thoughts go through your head. If you have too many thoughts, you have less time to judge how good each thought is. It's a kind of stream of conciousness thing. It could go:
it's hit resistance now, if it pauses here for a long time, it's more likely to jump further
if it was going to fail at R badly, it would have fallen back by now
it came screaming up here from the last resistance so fast, there's no natural place to put a stop
this is real money
where can i put that stop
it just dipped and came back again
there's more resistance just above
this is actual money here
the R:R on this would be poor
it really looks like moving up strong
maybe i should reduce my position size
etc
etc
etc
so take any timeframe and throw in more thoughts - the more experience we have, the better the stream of conciousness going into the decision, the more inexperienced, the worse it'll be, polluted with rubbish we shouldn't be bothering with
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
I stumbled across this perfect trending day in my replay studies and wanted to document to myself
the entries I used.
I studied the pre- open and placed three blind entries to cover several different scenarios.
order 1 - Sell Limit 2 ticks above immediate high of day
order 2 - Sell Limit 2 ticks above overall high of day. both trades with my runner ATM - thinking that if price
moved, this would be the top - I needed to get short here. thus 2 catch levels
order 3 - Buy limit at the best hourly support confluence I could find as an ultimate target.
Trade 1
Price almost bounces here.
SL
-3
Trade 2
High of day is tested and rebounds hard, as expected.
the first bar completely leaves the current channel. It's obvious this thing is running.
add second car at first hesitation. I knew there is rarely time for a PB entry on the first tiny PB.
Sell Stop order placed 1 tick below second bar down wick
Third car enters at first normal PB. Sell limit placed at top of bullish hammer, expecting a slight
overshoot test, Price tests by 1 tick
car 4 enters at first major PB - Price sets up a classic edge, making it very easy to enter and keep
a tight stop. When you have this much cash locked up already, there is no reason not to add to
position on every PB that occurs on your way to your major hourly target.
All targets hit
Reversal---------------------
Trade 3
I knew there would be a big bounce in this area. So I left my trending strategy in place.
Order filled, almost to the tick. Price overshoots by 4, almost taking me out.
************** I should move blind orders to 3 ticks above / below SR... both orders were almost taken out*********************************************************
I scaled in, perhaps a bit too quickly, ****wait for some opposite colored bars and look for confluence PB area***********
I set up fib retracements on the hourly chart and put target one at 38% and target two at 50%
both targets hit while still leaving ticks on the table.
This price action was perfect. every order and trade came easily and read like a book.
Once again, I need to be able to study the full context of the market, just like this, under the gun.
How to think clearly in the heat of battle? The only way, is time in the field
I'll be starting up again soon.
The business is picking up and I will have some spare time coming up, with a little less personal stress.
I have to keep pulling the trigger live
so that I can overcome that cloudy reasoning under pressure.
The marker will lay it all out for you, if you can simply SEE