Welcome to NexusFi: the best trading community on the planet, with over 150,000 members Sign Up Now for Free
Genuine reviews from real traders, not fake reviews from stealth vendors
Quality education from leading professional traders
We are a friendly, helpful, and positive community
We do not tolerate rude behavior, trolling, or vendors advertising in posts
We are here to help, just let us know what you need
You'll need to register in order to view the content of the threads and start contributing to our community. It's free for basic access, or support us by becoming an Elite Member -- see if you qualify for a discount below.
-- Big Mike, Site Administrator
(If you already have an account, login at the top of the page)
Blue, you appear to be fairly emotionally involved in your trading. Might I suggest being a observer for a day. What I mean is once you place the trade, just watch it as if you were watching tv. This will allow you to disconnect yourself emotionally from the trade. Write down what you see. Be your own critic. Takes practice, but well worth the effort.
I got this idea one day when my son was learning to walk. I could always tell when he was going fall. How did I know? because I was sitting back and just watching...
ok... have you ever looked over someones shoulder while they are doing something and knew just by looking what they should do next? Thats where you need to be. You are in observing objectively without emotional involvement.
Applied to trading: If you were looking over someones shoulder and watching a trade play out where you had no emotional or financial ties, the entries / exits would become very obvious.... You would know what to do because you have nothing to lose or gain.
Yes, I guess that is the big drama. I have a hard time making that detachment.... Good point and obviously something I waver back and forth on and being successful with. You are right, I was very emotional today for some reason.
I woke up late today due to alarm not going off and still adjusting to the 4am and I was probably feeling a bit 'rushed'. It shouldn't matter though as I could have remained 'detached' and calm.
Another thing I noticed about my trading was that I had 'fundamental leanings' as I think the market is getting ready for either a big move up or a dump dump dump. Probably leaning to a DUMP, so... I think that is why I was thinking so short... I was right on the mid/long term!
Considered a short on the CL last night at the peak, but couldn't stay up to watch so I just decided not to do a long term trade. Haven't seen anything in a couple days....
I remember a similar statement from Dr. Steenbarger in one of his books. He said to be an observer, some people call it the mind's eye, etc etc. But the point is to use your brain power something like this:
a) You are standing in your office. Maybe back against the wall. Several feet away from your desk chair.
b) You see yourself sitting in your chair. Remember, you are observing yourself.
c) You see you getting ready to trade.
d) You see you entering a trade.
e) You see you managing a trade.
f) You see you exiting a trade.
g) You see you after the trade is over.
etc. etc.
The point being, you can try to focus and see if you are calm, if you are making smart decisions, if you are following your plan, if you are being impulsive, if you are excited or angry, if you are leaning forward in your chair, if your feet are not touching the ground, if your back is not touching the back of the chair, if you are hesitating in your trades, if you are getting overly emotional during a trade, if you are exiting a trade without good cause, etc etc.
If you haven't read Dr. Brett's books, they are a must read IMO. My favorite was the Daily Trading Coach, but all three are excellent.
Ok, so it worked out for me today to stay in the game. I almost closed down after +1.3 points and my emotional state of exiting the short early, and getting knocked out on the tick. Boy, what a victim I am becoming (again!)....
Easy to justify and blame, but difficult to just trade and do business with the market.
I have to be honest in that reading how much of a criminal Henry Roche is has led me to challenge my own emotional state lately. I love HONESTY but it seems like a dying value among human beings in favor of something that provides self-preservation.
Of course we all think WE are right and THEY are wrong.
Anyways, took some nice trades today but didn't hold my PT's which cost me about 2.5 points and didn't hold my stops which cost me about .9 points.... So, tack on another 3.4 points for today had I actually traded the way I hope to choose to do real soon!
I have found it is extremely difficult to be truly honest and accurate at the same time.
We often fool ourselves or come up with a variety of reasons or excuses. There are two issues at work here: 1) Our memory, and 2) Our knowledge.
It has been proven time and again that memory fails us. We can be 1000000% certain that we "know" how something happened, we can recall it vividly. And we will be wrong. Dead. Wrong.
That is why I stress the importance of recording events as they occur. You are doing a great job with the video journaling.
The second issue is our knowledge, or lack of knowledge. You can lump experience in here too. We often over reach for validation or to place blame or importance on certain events which really truthfully have nothing to do with each other. We are grasping. This is because we don't know everything. We don't know if the ES just dropped 10 points in 10 seconds because someone at Goldman fat-fingered a 100k lot sell market order, or if there is a news event, or if there was a trendline resistance, or a fib confluence area, or a pivot, or a weekly high tested, or Europe just imploded.
But that doesn't stop us from coming up with a variety of reasons. Once we assign a reason to something we tend to give it importance which it really does not posses. Then later we tend to build on this, and we now have a house of cards built on a foundation of wrong assumptions.
To be completely honest and accurate at the same time, you very often must use the words "I don't know why....." (something happened). The real trick is to be a profitable trader even without understanding why something happens, but simply being prepared for it to happen.