FrankFrankie 

What you said, "trying to make myself feel more certain before making a decision" describes it perfectly. I have come to find I am the type of trader that wants to put probability on my sidd

Hi @FrankFrankie

I don't believe there's anything inherently wrong about being "more certain", i.e. wanting to put probability on your side, as long as you don't want to put absolute certainty on your side, which would not be appropriate for one of the most risky endeavors in the world. I hope it makes sense.

About confidence, I struggled too with it years ago.

Because I am an analytical person, I decided the way to boost my confidence was to dissect, segment and track my trades, and confidence hasn't been a problem since.

I described that approach in this thread:

The rabbit hole and the process I'd like to start a thread so that I have a place to collect material and share thoughts about the trading process. I'm not going to write too frequently or extensively - I don't want this thread to absorb too much time from trading and …

Trade analysis may or may not be something for you to consider, it all depends on how your mind works (by that I mean everyone is different and no approach will work for everyone), but if it is helpful, I am happy to expand should you have any questions.

Hi There
I don't have much to say about last week. My small cap strategy has not had the right market since the beginning of August. It seems like the market as a whole is gearing up for a terrible September and October. This is what I wanted since the start of this year and I cannot even remember why any more. Something about being sick of seeing the government printing money. I am willing to bet that if I had been running my small cap strategy successfully earlier this year, I would give two shits about printing money. I must admit that I was upset only because I failed to make any substantial money from it. So what now. I am trying all sorts of different combinations with stocks until I find my sweet spot. I still have tremendous faith in my small cap strategy but the markets are not aligned for a long only strategy at the moment. And of course I will continue with trying to day trade the ES. Thanks for listening.


P&L (SIM)-Commissions included(1$ per micro round trip) Sep 6 to sep 12

Win rate of 100%

1. SimAccount=+75.25 with 4 trades (TOTAL=4483)
-I have not done terribly. I just have a hard time thinking this win streak is nothing but luck. And my goal was 5000 before moving back to cash. IT will take me another year at this rate. Perhaps ill just move to cash now and have faith in my battle scars.

Hi There,
Feeling terrible this morning for no good reason. I cannot seem to make my brain work and I am just going through the motions. These things tend to happen and it almost always ends in me working like a madman for the next couple months. It conjures up the mentality of, "I may not be as good as everyone else, but at least I can out work them". But is it "real work"? My brother always makes snide little comments about it being fake work, and I will love the day when I make more than him so I can spend the rest of my life rubbing it in his face. This is terrible. I've got every demon floating in my head and it is giving me a headache and making me be mean for no reason. I am not a cruel person, all I want is a chance but the problem is that nobody is entitled to anything. Well I wouldn't call that a problem, just reality.
I find it hard to believe this recent recovery in the markets but I will follow the charts and shut up. I have been working on another stock trading strategy for the past 3 weeks. It follows the best performing industries and then filters from there. My first intention was for a day trading method where I just buy on open and sell on close but I have found that swing trading them until the industry starts lagging might be best. The buy on open thing has potential too but will require much more careful evaluation. I am only collecting data now as I determine the exclusionary characteristics I need to narrow the selection. And for once I am not trying to create mountains of work for the fun of it. There are no unfinished projects, if they have merit then they will be done. The rest can go to the scrap heap.

P&L (SIM)-Commissions included(1$ per micro round trip) Sep 13 to sep 18

I barely traded with FOMC and other stuff. Smart call I guess...

1. SimAccount=+8.25 with 1 trades (TOTAL=4491.25)

Hi There
I am late for my weekly journal. I just put it off because I did not want to talk about this. Anyway, I am now switching to cash again for my futures trading account. Sometimes I dont risk enough. I spend far too much time making sure that something is profitable or not too risky when this entire profession is about taking risks. Unlike many traders, I don't gamble and have never been into gambling. I see what a hardcore addiction can do to people and I just don't get it. I have never looked at trading as a gamble and I don't get excited by winning. I get excited by beating the game. Maybe this is a slight disadvantage for me because I don't feel the raw emotions of it all. i just continue to evaluate and try another strategy. I am not sure where I am going with this but I am done with paper trading for futures. It can only take me so far and I need to quit playing around.

I would like to discuss the macro situation. I cannot help but feel like God is taking a giant crap on my head. For the past 18 months I have watched this market rocket again and again. It has been relentless and I have had the hardest time beating it into my own head that logic does not matter for markets. Every powerful entity in the world has been behind this bubble and I still thought that I better stay out of it instead of partaking. How wise I have been. So I finally capitulated and developed several swing strategies only to have the entire market move towards risk-off. I mean within days of starting these strategies the entire landscape changed and now I have benched them and am scrambling to find out where to make money now. I am mostly upset with myself for sitting on the sidelines for so long and just waiting for the bubble to pop. i understand that things could change overnight but I cannot help but think that the largest party in the history of the markets is ending and I just went and bought my party hat yesterday. Enough shame and pity, I learned some very valuable lessons and am now ready for anything that could happen. I am already trying to find out what will work if we continue to move towards a risk-off environment. I am working with a self-directed IRA account for my larger investments so I cannot short and that is a good thing. I cannot time this type of short. Heck some of the smartest traders are broke now because they thought they could time a bear market. Alright enough of this. My time will now be focused on two areas.

1. My cash futures account which I will scalp only an update here every week(see below)
2. My IRA which is split into two sections.
1. My long term automated strategy(the only successful strategy I ever built but it is SLOW)
2. Attempting to build an exponential swing strategy.

Cash Account P&L-Sep 20-26(I include commissions which are 1.02$ round trip)
-14.41 with 5 trades(3786.92)