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)
I believe you are at the same stage as I am, trading in sim mode for four consecutive profitable weeks. I feel after months of working at this, I have turned a corner. One thing that happened was how I was looking at the FDP. I would figure out which one it was according to my setup. Now I figure out which FDP is in effect (yes sometimes it changes multiple times in a trading session), then from the FDP I know what the higher probability setups I should be looking for. Try this it help me. Example if the price is in an up trend, this is the First FDP (pages 145-146 in volume 2), then the highest probability setups would be PB & CPB (pages 41-50 of volume 3). So these are the only trades I really watch for until the FDP changes. I have the FDP's with their higher probability setups printed on a sheet of paper next to me when trading. Give this a try, focus on the FDP.. find a premise (FDP) and trade it with only the higher probability setups. When price proves the FDP wrong it is replaced by a different one. You can do it, be patient.
Also, regarding your response to Big Mike's question, what one concrete thing fom your review can (and are) you going to do to keep you "Bad day" from happening again?
[EDIT - I changed the flash card text fundamentally since I first posted it 2 hours ago - you got me thinking as I analysed the setups I'd traded. So I edited it here too - but it's still not succinct enough for me, I'll have to work on it more]
I'll pay more attention to the premise then. At the moment I just analyse the chart and decide where I am on the bullish - bearish spectrum. I do need to develop my awareness in that area more though - I'll bear in mind the way you do it. I'm still nowhere near that corner
I hope another couple of weeks will get me there and I'll finally get what it is to make all these losing trades profitable.
I actually have a cheat-sheet, in fact I have a stack of 10 flash-cards, print-outs glued to the back of some nice postcards - this is the one for Principles of Future Trend Direction, lifted from YTC PAT and edited briefly - I need to flesh them out to be more precise about trends and ranges:
The main thing which I am struggling to do is to review my trades properly - I always rush the review because I love trading and tell myself another hour trading would be alright. Plus at the weekends I always have a pile of things to do and they're busier days than the weekdays it seems. Then I struggle to get to bed in time for a decent night's sleep. So essentially I am only going to trade 1 hour today if at all but first I'm going to catch up and analyse deeply exactly what I did Tuesday and Wednesday. Yesterday was another bad day, I think the market is telling me something.
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
just caught a post of yours and thought I'd chime in with my unsolicited two cents.
IMO trading off peak hours is a reciepe for disaster. That is to say entering new positions after 11 am or Noon EST for me is generally a non starter. Exit at target or stop, that is as it should be during that time. Many guys are just more comfortable flat over the asian session.
Review your trades....every one of them after your session is over do not wait till the next day.
This stuff about sleep and rest seems like you have been listening to a yoga instructor or one of those reki healers...bologna. Your trading entries and exits should be a conditioned response like a damn machine. The thinking and analysis is done during the non production hours. Don't think at your computer screen, execute based on your precise preperation. The book "How We Decide" might be helpful.
Hi Wildman, thanks - I will try to do those things - i have heard the advice before, I am trying it and you are adding resolve to my commitment to do it. I'll definitely follow up on that book, sounds good. I'll put it next on my pile to read, after I've finished my current book (The Way of the Warrior Trader). I do have sleep problems though. Looking at your profile picture, you probably had the same 3 times - small people with loud screams. My partner works full time too so until I can afford a nightwatchman, we share the small hours work equally.
Plus for your info actually, the top psychologist at University of Chicago did loads of research into sleep and performance - if you get rid of your "sleep debt", you can increase your performance by 25% to 35%, fact. Admittedly it was research on physical sports performance, but I think it will transfer to mental performance. But let me read that book you recommend.
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
Public Admission of Stupidity and Lack of Fitness to Trade
Much as I hate to appear a fool in public, part of my learning process involves re-inforcing lessons learnt, through public humilitation. Please see the chart and mark-up of my activities during yesterday's Euro/USD action.
I was already heading into a big re-visit of much of the learning material I am using, so this made it all that much easier to abandon any attempts to trade today and to go through what I had learnt so far and what I still had to learn. The mark-up of the 1min chart is my brief trade log / review (done correctly after revisiting the books) of Wednesday's early trading - before the central bank news took the lid off the market. The 3 min charts are just my commentary.
As they often say, I've got a long way to go. I hope this amuses and maybe even helps other newbies. It helped me. Thank God it was all in sim - no money burned - but my confidence in my iron will is gone.
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
One of the great gifts we have is the ability to learn and learn from our mistakes at that. I know for me I tend to learn much quicker from my many mistakes. It's really encouraging to know can all learn from mistakes. Thank you for sharing this lesson, Adamus. If you learn from it you really have not lost, keep at it.
OK thanks for the detailed plan. But you may wish to consider just identifying one or two key objectives for the following day. Try and pinpoint these objectives, be very specific. For example "make profit" is wrong idea. You could look over your detailed plan and identify your biggest weaknesses, then pick one or two on a daily basis to put all your focus on.
At the end of the day, did you meet the objective? If not, then no need worrying about the rest of your plan. You have your work cut out for you, you can focus on just 2 bullet points instead of 200 until you are doing those two extremely well, giving yourself an "A" grade on a regular basis before moving on to two new items to focus on.
I'm still trying to work out which is my most damaging trading problem.
I'll have to think it over a bit and make a definite goal of it for tomorrow.
PS: looks to me like I'm just not applying the trading plan properly. It's quite simple: once the future trend likelihood, bias, strength and setup are decided (which I take care of OK) then at the setup as it develops - a stall or consolidation or pull-back etc - you have to decide (1) the last point at which you would want to enter the trade as it moves in your direction and (2) the stop where you would want out if it all goes wrong. Then you try to get in at a better price than you decided on in (1). I'm not doing 1 & 2 properly, I'm just assuming mostly that I'll get in at a good price.
And then often I bail out at a price a long way before the stop - with the frequent result that I miss the move.
So, tomorrow: establish the LWP (last wholesale price) and the stop before working an entry.
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
One of the problems I have with near-by stops is that they can easily get taken out by a spike.
So, I need to use distant real stops but have virtual closer stops which I operate manually if the market starts acting like it's going to hit them. So a big push down in a bar is likely to be a spike where the price comes straight back, so I'll leave that to hit the hard stop, but if I see signals and triggers and strength in the opposite direction, I'll bail out before the hard stop.
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.