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Thanks Mike for the best wishes. I just made a promise to UKNOWHO that all my meals will not be taken in the trading station! I need to get away from the monitors (back to my former "bad" habit almost 24/7 for the last two weeks) .. relax and rejuvenate lol!
I tried to take things easy .. .. so that my face will not be as red as a delicious apple ..
Did accomplish the following:
~ All meals were taken outside the trading station, ie not in front of monitors .. haha ..
~ I completed our 2010 tax return paperwork and it's now on its way to our Accountant
~ I prepared a revised trading plan (incl income projection) after capturing what I learned from a Money Management webinar. Really inspiring as making $375/week consistently has huge impact on one's account (even starts with $4,000). I've used a very conservative win rate @60% to tabulate + moderate No of trades. Will I trade 20-contract size? Probably not and stay with 10-contract ones when I get there. Rather prefer to trade a second instrument and not having all eggs in one basket.
Important Lesson Learned: Need to accept losses in order to get the rewards (quote from my trading pal Pam). Also consistency is the key!
Room for improvement:
~ I woke up around 4:00 am and chose to watch the market for an hour .. not resuming zozozo after my sleep-walking .. sigh ..
~ I missed helping UKNOWHO doing his physio exercise .. even it would only take 10-15 minutes .. I feel really bad now that he's out there working (freezing rain and snowing) .. It's my "workaholic" character .. I will make up for it .. paying him more attention - promise!
Still have a few webinars to watch. Will do so tomorrow. Now finally take a break.
Beth, this is the ideal situation in your plan when the winners and losers are distributed evenly. Sometimes, you will have a cluster of winners or a cluster of losers. For example, just after you increase the contract size from 1 to 2, you hit a losing streak. Are you going to keep trading 2 contracts or fall back to 1 contract?
It's a plan in black&white and not one in its full wing/action yet. Will have to wait and see what may happen in a few weeks. Actually a few months before making the required $4,000 funds for an additional contract. Now I will stay with 1-contract trades ..
That is an excellent observation and shows that you are a real "PRO" at trading. I am running across this phenomenon as we speak in my own trading. I have noticed that hindsight is "20/20" and is very easy to see where the trigger is. However, in real life and sim trading....the edge is difficult to see and has to be an anticipated trigger. It does take time to hone this skill. I agree that SIM TRADING is the way to go since it will be as close to real time trading as you can get. In fact, its a little easier since there is no emotion involved with trading play money as oppossed to real money. Wait till the rush of emotions flow with real trading. I have combatted this emotion by predefining my stop and my targets. I enter the trade with my edge....and....it either stops out or hits my targets. I have it predefined with one click of the mouse in the Ninjatrader dome/strategies. It even helps to literally walk away and let ninja take over so that you don't intervene when the emotion comes in. It has made my trading much much better!
I am very emotional when it comes to trading. I think by nature I should never have been a trader. So, I do exactly the same thing when in a trade. If I am in a trade that lasts for more then 30 seconds, I physically get up from my chair and walk away and go do something else, and I don't come back until I hear NT say 'Target Filled' or 'Stop Filled'. Otherwise, I will want to pick up that Stop or Target and futz with it, or I'll get totally frustrated every time a bar turns red.
Walking away while in a trade is a bit scary to me. I've seen too many times where limit orders are jumped or data connection is dropped or some other such thing that requires manual intervention to correct. I understand the need or desire to walk away but a technology guy since '85, I don't trust technology. Leaving it to technology to work right every time is like giving the keys to your Corvette to your unsupervised teenage son. I feel the same way about strategies. I like the idea of an automated strategy but I don't trust them.
I feel the same way you do. But, as you can tell, I don't get in the car and go for a drive. I am always within ear shot, because I am listening for a trade exit. If you are in a trade and you have a stop loss set, there's very little that can go so drastically wrong normally. If you loose connection, your stop is at the exchange, so no problem. If the market has a violent move that skips your stop loss, you will get a large slippage, but in this scenario, even if you were sitting looking at the screen, there's nothing you could have done anyway. So, yes to be prudent, I would never totally leave a trade unattended, I just don't sit looking at the screen.
I did get one of these weird situations that you are talking about though. I had a stop limit entry on the CL, and the CL had one of it's regular violent up/down moves, my stop limit got hit, and I got filled on the trade, but the move was so fast that by the time my ATM stop loss got sent to the exchange, the market was beyond it, and I got the error that you cannot put a stop on that side of the market, or something like that. It was a live trade so I had to scramble to kill the trade, don't remember the message text exactly. So the result is that I was in a trade with a profit target set, but no stop loss. I killed the trade at a loss, but sure, if I was not there for the entry, it could have been bad. I don't know how to solve this kind of situation yet. If anyone has any ideas on how to guard against that situation with ATM or in an automated fashion, I'm all ears.