Hello and thank you for stopping by my journal. This first post will be a bit long because I have about a year`s worth of thoughts to get across, but other posts after this should be considerably shorter.
I`m in my infant stages of learning to trade, so while you might not find this journal particularly helpful if you`re a developing or successful trader, you will be able to see trading from the perspective of a person just beginning, and maybe even progressing into a successful trader.
My purposes of this journal (subject to change) are to:
1. Keep myself accountable for making progress.
2. Invite others to comment and perhaps guide me in my trading journey (if they feel so generous).
3. Try and figure out how I`m going to go about this whole trading business.
4. See if my thoughts, when written down, are anywhere close to coherent.
5. Force myself to interact more with members of futures.io (formerly BMT).
So here`s my story:
I’ve been lurking around futures.io (formerly BMT) for over a year now. I’ve got the basics of NinjaTrader down and somehow I’ve come to the conclusion that I currently want to scalp CL. I say currently because I’ve tried other methods in the past. So far the only education I7ve paid for in regards to trading is an Elite membership on futures.io (formerly BMT). No seminars, no books, no miracle programs, etc. and I don`t plan on paying for any of those either.
I think the psychology aspect of trading is the easy part. I have a B.A. in psychology, and almost everything I`ve read or watched about beginning to trade constantly spews how important it is to not be tilted by winners and losers. I’m a good poker player. This should be no problem for me. Recently I was watching an old webinar from kevinkdog where he exclaims that if you are still feeling emotion from winning and losing trades then you aren`t even close to being ready to trade professionally. I completely understand this, and while I hate to admit that I still feel excitement when I`m on the sim and I see what I perceive to be my strategy working, I’m working to eliminate this as quickly as possible.
Recently I’ve come across two “trading heroes” on futures.io (formerly BMT) that stand out to me in particular, kevinkdog and Mack (with PAT). These two traders are completely opposite. Kevinkdog swears by backtesting and data analysis. He claims that everything can be backtested, and if you say your strategy can’t be backtested then you’re really just scared of your results or you don’t know how to backtest. On the other hand we have Mack, who is an equally successful trader that purely looks at price action in order to determine his trades. He says his strategy is too complex to be backtested, period.
Both of these traders are wildly successful and yet they’re complete opposites of each other.
At the moment this is my dilemma. I’m trying to figure out which of these paths is the right one for me (or if both aren’t). Clearly both can work, but I don’t know if there is a way to find out if one works for me without throwing away months or years. I’m strongly considering buying Mack’s manual for PAT to see if I can get anything out of that. There is clearly a lot of snake oil out there, but from testimonials on futures.io (formerly BMT) is seems like he is one of the rare ones that is sincere about helping people learn to trade. I’m mostly considering that at this point because learning to do data analysis seems daunting. Unlike most traders (from what I’ve seen anecdotally anyways), I have no background whatsoever in computer programming. I feel like Mack’s PAT is a way to avoid programming and still be a successful trader.
I invite anyone to jump in and post advice or words or wisdom you have. Anything at all. Please, feel free.