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)
The one main point that struck me in relation to my own trading is that perhaps I'm trying to do too much. I don't know which way to lean concerning Lance Beggs's YTC - sometimes I think it's a really great, well-presented package that tells you all you need to know, and sometimes I think it's too much, there are too many setup types, too many parameters to consider, too much going on.
I've already dropped the scaling out of trades so I'm all-in, all-out. I think I can safely say that my trading won't change if I don't use YTC's complex pull-backs, either (even though Lance Beggs says they're his favourites).
I did actually add channel and triangle / wedge setups so I've actually expanded what I do.
Maybe the problem is not that I am trying to apply too much theory, rather I think what I do is I just try to apply the theory too much, in situations where I'm bending the rules to make the theory fit the market. I'll have to watch out for that this week and see whether I should be cutting down on the number of setups I find every session - or whether I am trying to use too much theory.
There's always the 2 simplest steps I can take - just trade with the trend, and trade a higher timeframe - but I need to work out whether I'm doing what I'm doing right first, before I go changing it like that. There won't be much point in working on a higher timeframe if I'm still going to try applying the theory in places where it doesn't apply
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
Do you need to compile a continuous contract with the consecutive futures contracts to get a long term chart, or to get it to work just after roll-over? I mean, how much time do you have to put into maintaining it?
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
Didn't trade yesterday. Spent the day reviewing last week's trading in an effort to work out why it went wrong on Friday despite the apparent effort.
That's where I got the time to write up stuff about stops and exits. Technically, that's what was causing me the most problems on Friday. Fundamentally though it was a different problem. I'm not applying myself properly to the job at hand. I know about exit management and the need to choose the correct approach depending on what the market's doing - I have been over the problem in sim trading before.
Considering that it's wasting my time and bringing me closer to the point where I'll have to work for my rent money again, my subconcious seems to be pretty unconcerned about it (i.e. repeating the same errors).
I also had real problems trading this morning. I made about 5 trades and they were all affected by basic errors. I had to stop to figure out what I was doing wrong. It was just focus. I managed to get my focus back on track for the afternoon session but that was not a good session, I just broke even roughly, certainly didn't make good any of the stupid losses I booked earlier. I'm not going to write up today's trades, it'd be a waste of time considering the deeper issues. I figure it could be one or more of these that's the problem:
- I'm trying to do too much stuff in my trading plan, I need KISS
- I need to make the mistakes X number of times - maybe 2, 3 or 5 times before I really assimilate it
- I'm still allowing myself to be lazy and I don't concentrate, pysch myself up, run over my checklist every time, take enough breaks, clear my mind, focus etc etc. and I still haven't put the time in to do the pysch training to help this
What I'm going to do is put myself through a really basic sports psychology programme tomorrow and see if I can really nail the pysch issue. I need to integrate the psych stuff into my trading process - just having "focus!" at the end of the checklist isn't working. No doubt it'll include more thorough pre-trading session preparation work.
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
Had a great read through Jason Selk's 10 Minute Toughness. Good programme, really to the point, no messing around, short, readable, useable. So I've got myself a "performance statement", a personal highlights newsreel, and an "identity statement". The key thing that I took away from it is why positive thinking is important.
Previously I've always thought that I'm pretty positive anyway, but I discovered recently through trading badly that I'm not positive enough. I'm happy to admit I was wrong about positive thinking. A person will have around 60,000 thoughts per day, and they all deeply impact our decision making process. Having a performance statement to recall, and training my thought process to follow certain paths through visualisation techniques should be really helpful, if the claims he makes about the athletes he's helped are anything to go by.
I didn't finish it all but I got a long way, and I will complete it, but I've covered the parts that were what I really wanted. I've got extra actions for my pre-trading session preparation and my "regroup" breaks. I hope it will increase my attention, focus and performance dramatically over the next couple of weeks as I drill it home.
I'm not going to outline the setups all here as I have done before, I was duplicating my notes and it made it confusing sometimes if I got the numbering wrong.
There were 9 setups available during my trading session, and I had a crack at 6 of them.
There were 42 points from those 9 setups. I lost 7.
The worst problem mainly missing the good trades, and a couple of instances of putting my stops too close, and 2 terrible trade selections and consequent double whammy bad exits.
More focus problems but not as bad as earlier this week. I've also got to practice the mental stuff too, it doesn't just click into place.
Technical faults:
- missed 2 good trades
- stops tighter than warranted
- need to change stops according to my idea of what's going to happen, still not doing that. Getting in late on a low probability trade is no good, I should try to get in earlier or I might have to defend a big retrace to stay in a trade which isn't going to work anyway.
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
In the spirit of our March Trading Journal contest, I am asking everyone to spend a few minutes and share their journaling experience.
A) What are the top five benefits you have seen as a result of regularly posting in this journal?
B) What are the top five problem areas you have identified as a result of regularly posting in this journal?
C) Were you initially reluctant to start this trading journal? If yes, why?
D) How do you feel, overall, about your journaling experience?
E) Would you recommend to others that they should also start a trading journal?
Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. I appreciate your posts, and I hope you have benefited from your journal. I also know that others will benefit as well, just by reading about your own experiences.
Hardly had time over the weekend so I'm posting this now, although there's not much to see. Friday was a small ragne sideways day and because I started late, I missed the most promising setups. In fact I only traded once. Here's my mark-up anyway, for the record.
Had a good discussion about volume profile with a trader colleague. I'm struggling to get Interactive Brokers to provide the futures data though, there seems to be a problem getting in my sim account.
Also today had 2 S/R level 'zones' where the S/R lines I drew were closer than 10 pips so I joined them. Seemed to work OK. I hope I'll be able to get volume profile working to make these make even more sense.
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.