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Net 115 ticks today. Took me to many trades as I made a couple of WTF trades. But I sure did learn some valuable lessons today.
Lesson 1. NEVER trade unless it looks like your set up. This is rookie stuff. I made that mistake more than once today.
Lesson 2. Don't get greedy. I did, held one trade that went +47 ticks in my favor, and watched it bounce off a support line and take me out +1. I KNEW the support area was the place to take profit. But I thought it would run even further.
Lesson 3. Quit while you are ahead or when you get tired. I traded longer than normal today. Thats not a good thing. I need to stick to my time frames. Funny thing was, when I got to my normal quitting time, I was trading well, was up nicely and decided to keep trading. A while later, I felt the fatigue set in, my internal warning bells went off and I ignored it. Thankfully by then, I was back to sim. Mostly losers after that.
Picked up the book, Zen and the art of poker. So far its mostly about waiting and folding. Good stuff.
I am gonna experiment this weekend with just marking higher time frame S/R on the chart and then minimizing them. They do freak me out sometimes when I get a signal on the 1M but think I should pass on the HTF. I dont trade HTF, I just look at them for S/R so why have them up if the levels are marked?
Anyway, ended the week +150 or so. Best week in awhile.
Have a great weekend.
Cheers
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, Leonardo da Vinci
Most people chose unhappiness over uncertainty, Tim Ferris
I think it will reinforce what I've learned so far about waiting for the market to match my trading strategy. I am absolutely blown away by how rewarding the act of waiting is!
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, Leonardo da Vinci
Most people chose unhappiness over uncertainty, Tim Ferris
Today will be my last post for a while. My best friend passed away today...43 years old from cancer. Its been a hard blow and I won't be able to attend the funeral. I wont be trading until after the first of the year. December is always tough for me for some reason, my friends death and just all the assorted duties to attend to during the holidays. My kid is off for three weeks and its always tough trading when she's around.
Anyway before the news of my friends death, I was up 75 ticks on 5 trades this morning. I did no further trading after that.
I will check in on a few threads during the month of course but for now, I think its best I don't trade.
Cheers.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, Leonardo da Vinci
Most people chose unhappiness over uncertainty, Tim Ferris
Sorry to hear about your loss. I lost my best friend about 3 years ago (December). Nothing that I can say except that always remember to celebrate that person in everything you do.
Well I had not intended to post until after the first of the year. But I am finding that talking about things has a cathartic affect. I also wasn't going to trade. But my kid is in school until the 19th and I need something to do to make sure I stay out of trouble.
The death of my friend last week was a hard blow. He's the guy I liked to do life together with. I think a person that has one or two super close friends over their lifetime should count themselves blessed. He was one of those friends. I have lost him much to soon. But as his wife explained, his suffering is over now and while I feel angry and cheated, I should be glad his reward for a faithful life is now his....and in that respect, I am so happy for him. So as this last week has progressed, the conversations with others who have gone through this have helped tremendously. And as I have developed over the years the extremely valuable skill of compartmentalizing stuff, I decided to see if I could trade today and place my loss in one of those compartments while trading.
More about today's trading later on but I decided to read some of my other journals here on the forum. I was struck how each of those journals was a sad story of not being able to take the trades I knew I should and of breaking my rules over and over again. Each method I tried and failed on had merit. Perhaps some were better than others but in the end, their success or failure was measured not by the method itself but by my emotional inadequacies. So in a fit of retrospective, I printed every single page of my posts to PDF and sometime this month, I will consolidate them into a booklet form and then perhaps post the entire thing here in this thread as an attachment for posterity.
Those posts seem somewhat pathetic at this point in my life. Full of hope, frustration, despair, trial and error, refusal to change myself instead of the method and yet at the same time, each post represented some small measure of progress. Sitting here today, I am almost convinced that each trader MUST go through the cycle of unrestrained exuberance at the beginning of their trading career, the realization that their computer will not simply print money, the commitment to learn how to trade and finally the awful knowledge that success or failure is within their own psyche. Its at this point that I think traders give up when they realize how difficult it is to change ones own self and how that MUST be done before lasting success will come.
I wish new traders could be convinced of this fact BEFORE they start trading, but alas, I fear only a select few will realize its all in their head and that simply trying harder or working longer hours will not work. Even in this thread where I titled it based on a cartoon character that finally realized it was all in his head, I've digressed into methodology at times.
But over the last few weeks, I've discovered myself. As a trader, and more to the point, as a human being. I've finally recognized my weakness and how to simply avoid them and not strive so darn hard to over come them. At the same time, I've recognized my strengths and have begun looking for ways to capitalize on those. I've opened myself up to new concepts in trading that went against everything I thought I was taught at the beginning. That in turn has allowed me to trade confidently well past my "daily target". And in the midst of struggling to come to terms with my new identity, I found the patience to just wait. What an amazing concept. Waiting. I now fully realize what the saying "we get paid to wait" means. When I don't wait, I lose, when I wait, I win. Pretty damn simple.
My original mentor told me once that once you "get it", you can take money out of the market all day every day. I believed him because he was doing it every day. Trouble was, I could not do it the same way he did because it wasn't part of me. I didn't have his method as part of my soul if you will allow me that metaphor. I think it takes the journey and the realization that's its all inside before the head knowledge becomes heart knowledge and the trader can act in his or her own best interest. After all, trading is nothing more than acting in your own best interest. To bad the journals I just printed were more about "getting it right" than it was about figuring out how to act in my own interest. Had I realized that earlier, things like defining a set up, an exit point, a trading plan I could actually live with and the incredible concept of simply waiting until the moment when acting was really in my best interest to act.
Today was one of those rare straight trend days. Normally I totally blow it on days like today. I might get one or two good trades but will miss most of the move due to my fear of not really knowing what kind of day it was, what the market state was and how to trade it. But not today, I just waited and while my trade targets are only 15 ticks, I managed to capture 99 ticks today. I had a couple of break evens, one I took only ten ticks on and the rest my full target of 15 ticks. No losers today. In between trades I talked to my trading buddy on skype, engaged in extended instant messaging with two other trading buddies on skype, took my kid to school, ate breakfast and in general, traded with no stress.
It stemmed from one thing. Confidence that comes from knowing its ok to wait. And confidence that comes from knowing exactly what I am looking for in terms of a setup and confidence to enter the trade with no fear knowing that while this trade might not work, over time, my edge is valid and will produce a profit. I traded with stops almost twice what my profit target was because that was the proper place to put a stop. Of course I moved it down very fast as per my trading plan, but the point is, the trade was a good trade regardless of the potential R:R. In truth, there is no such thing as a fixed R:R. There is potential R:R but that can go against you instantly and erase 100% of that potential in a heartbeat. In general, its not good to trade like that, but with the strong trend today, I was not fearful of the trade.
I've had one losing day in the last 7 days. That losing day was one in which I did not wait. All other days I have waited and acted when I thought it most beneficial to me. Somehow it feels almost to easy. I do not claim to have found the holy grail but its the closet thing I have discovered to it. In one of my conversations today, I said it feels almost to easy and my friend said that this is what intuitive trading is supposed to be, almost to easy. I am proceeding with caution at this point, almost waiting for the other shoe to drop, to find the weakness in what I've experienced the last week and a half.
At the same time, I am also very optimistic I can sustain this kind of trading, it is far less stressful than anything I've done before and therefore I think I can sustain it over the long term. Perhaps not the 99 ticks a day, but that is not the point, those ticks are simply the result of the opportunities presented to me today and of me taking advantage of them. Other days this could be 10 ticks or perhaps 20 or even none, but the key to happiness in trading is trading the plan and then being content with how that works out.
Many people have posted in my threads with either heartfelt thanks or have chimed in with suggestions both helpful and otherwise. Some of them have pissed me off and others have spawned what I think will be lasting friendships. In some small way, each guest post represents a step on the journey. Something that provoked a new thought, or perhaps challenged me in ways I did not care to be challenged but needed to be. All of them are part of my journey and I am grateful for each one.