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In the winter of 1999 I found myself among a group of almost 800 people at a ten-day Silent Mindfulness Meditation course on a serene hillock in Igatpuri, a three hours drive from Mumbai.
These people had gathered to learn the ancient technique of Vipassana, …
Observing thoughts without reacting to them - during each exercise I become aware of the hidden person that keeps trading behind me and he isn't trading for the money and then where do I go from there.....
Broker: Advantage, Trading Technologies, OptionsCity, IQ Feed
Trading: CL, NG
Posts: 1,038 since Jul 2010
Thanks Given: 1,713
Thanks Received: 3,863
Hey Gary,
We all get beat up here and there. The key in every lost "battle" is to learn from the mistakes so that we may win the "war". As any smart general would do is know when to retreat. That would translate into when to say you've had enough on the day. You're just not seeing the day right and rather than continue to spend emotional and financial capital, walk away for the day and come back fresh the next day. "Know when to hold'em, know when to fold'em" by Kenny Rogers comes to mind, lol!
As I've said in the past, I have a hard line that I call it a day which is 3 losses in a row. Yesterday was tricky. I was pretty excited and lured into the frenzy that was occurring right before the open. As soon as the market opened, I immediately wanted in and bought the previous session's low without thinking through my game plan. That resulted in an immediate full stop out. So the way I handle a situation like that is step away for a moment and rethink what I'm doing. The worst thing would have been to either try and buy again and again or worse flip short. The best thing to do is analyze what went wrong and wait until price reaches your predetermined levels. If you're wrong again, you stop wait and learn what went wrong. If wrong a third time after that, clearly something isn't being understood and its best to close down the OE platform and analyze what went wrong.
This may be different for you in the way you trade as I only end up with a few set ups each day and look to get the most out of them. Maybe a higher frequency of trades would require a higher stop amount threshold but its worth drawing a line in the sand on the day in my opinion. This will cut any losing streaks short and I've used this for a long time and its kept me out of trouble.
Thank you for your post and most of all for the honesty you share in your Journal.
I may be way off base in my line of thinking but I still felt compelled to post. So it is with great respect to you and the other senior traders who contribute to your journal, I think you should ask yourself this question.
Did I sabotage myself because things were going so well?
If you always do what you have always done you will always get what you have always gotten.
Celebrate because you executed your edge. Not because you won.
Friday was only a battle lost, I am ok with this emotionally. The reason I put it into words as I did is to learn from it. Many times I do just get up and walk, far more often than days I don't. But, Friday was one where I did not. It has a little to do with a lot of things; being up so well for the week, it was Friday, I had probably the best trade of the day and got fully stopped out, and then saw it race up. Having tenacity is another contributing factor, and it is hard to separate that trait into categories sometimes.
I have max down, and do sometimes just say to myself I am not getting it today. I am betting you and I took a trade in the same area and had similar results. I went long as my first trade and it nailed me before I closed it. That is typically not a big deal for me.
Right, I stayed off the trade to see what it wanted to do. Where I went wrong was then after the burst through ETH value, I looked to sell resistance... I know, I don't neeed to be told what happened there, and I got nailed again, 2 in a row.
I am not defending what I do, but I do keep my trade balance on an even keel by scalping small moves sometimes. I showed some of that on a chart I marked up last weekend, or maybe the week before. But Friday I scalped as if I had been reduced to adrenaline-based, loss-of-balance, frustration, which, (call me crazy) I believe is a higher level than sadness-of-loss, revenge-trading, anger.
It was tenacity combined with loss of fear, that I had little to be afraid of, maybe? "I have handled a lot worse", maybe?
But, the post this morning was something more than even looking for a definition. I am hoping to go deeper into this, because it has other similar related emotions that all come from the same place. Like, I was angry when my mother died, or, I have felt jealousy in regards to my wife in the past. It has something to do with a feeling of, entitlement? Permanence, or ownership? Still, I am not getting it right, yet. But plan to do some meditating this afternoon.
I'll be back Monday, and whatever it was did not do any major damage, and is very rare to occur. I put a spotlight on it today though, because that "state" it is capable of doing a lot of damage. And I want to understand it better so I can deal with it outside of emotion.
I did think about that for a few minutes, but I don't think so. I am not one to want to cause distress, pain, conflict. In business, I am possibly best at resolving conflict, bringing minds and/or personalities together. But I also will cut out what needs to go, and quickly, when the ultimate task (schedule deadline, quality issue) gets endangered.
If I had to find something more on the surface, it would be trying to prove something to myself, or more maybe to my wife. But that I am more aware of than whatever this is I am trying to pinpoint this weekend.
I shovelled a ton of soil by myself today and although they also say 'pain is only in the mind' it still b****y hurts!
Feel for your trading agony though, we have so many ways to catch ourselves out and will always do so, I think rigorous stops and 3 strikes and done for the day has to be the master rule above all others.
I kept drifting in and out of thoughts about what bothered me so much on Friday. Saw a lot of connections to other things, but could not get it into something I could point at. And then I decided, it is because there is no single cause. As humans we function out of so much inner complexity that the best we can hope for is to generalize. And in general terms, similar to how markets react whether in/out out of range/balance, the high dollar winning days that came earlier in the week had pushed my expectations out of balance. Possibly it was ego that took the place of volume...
When markets are out of balance, behavior can be more volatile, risk and/or reward can increase significantly, it is harder to predict how far something might go.
I had a good week, got a little ahead of myself and then refused to accept that I was not making money that day. But it was subtle, and I did not see it clearly until later. I know I was not angry, I was not reckless. I was however, focused on the fact that the day was running out and with it, the week, and somehow that pressured me to find a trade that was not there.
Starting the week in what may be the bull leg that completes this inverted H&S up to test $100+. With price nearly ignoring Thursday's VAL/POC/VAH on Friday, I am expecting to be watching from the buy side tomorrow.