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Thanks for sharing! Lot of different (although probably very similar) ways to go about this.
-AT
"Is it hard? Not if you have the right attitude. It's having the right attitude that's hard." - Robert Pirsig
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Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
Today I was able to 1) keep my mind open enough to see what price might have been trying to do, and 2) be patient and wait until I thought I could see an opportunity before taking a trade.
"Is it hard? Not if you have the right attitude. It's having the right attitude that's hard." - Robert Pirsig
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In the Stage 5 chat room today a discussion started, and FT71 delivered some very straightforward and powerful material regarding our development as traders - priceless.
Then the topic of attitude came up, and some “concerns” about its importance were directed toward me and my posts.
I’ll try to be a little clearer about why I’m so interested in improving my attitude, and today’s trading will provide a good example of what I’m talking about.
My intent right now is just to work on learning how to recognize an edge – my edge. I’m not worrying about daily loss limits, risk to reward, appropriate distance of stops, etc. My only focus is on learning to see an opportunity (a real one) and executing the trade.
To the extent I had some clarity about price movement yesterday, today was just the opposite. I kept thinking I was reading it correctly, but I wasn’t. In fact I wasn’t correct a lot.
And this is where I think my/our attitude becomes an incredibly important aspect of my/our development.
Today’s trading is embarrassing, even though I’m just learning this approach, but it’s what happens during this kind of day that I believe is critical for me. Because how I react to what I’ve done today will make the difference between whether I make some progress or start the cycle of spinning my wheels all over again.
This would probably be easier if I was doing it privately and keeping it to myself, but I want to share this stuff because I’m sure I’m not the only one trying to get through it.
By trade #11 I was really in the “If I just do the opposite of what I’ve been doing, I might actually get some winning trades” mode, so I took that trade in opposition to what an amateur (me) would do, and amazingly enough it was a loser too.
So, do I talk to myself about how much of an idiot I am for not even being able to make money in sim? Do I go back to one of my “trusted” indicators (which in actuality were never really helpful) to get a better view of price action? How about if I start going through a forum or the web and see if there’s another method that I can learn or buy that works better than what I’m doing. There are other people who are making money, maybe I can get in touch with one of them and they’ll tell me what I can do to start making money now too.
For me, this is where attitude becomes everything.
Almost all consistently profitable traders have sucked at first, and almost all consistently profitable traders have had to go through a lot of crap and do a lot of work to get to where they are. It’s also unlikely that any two (or more) of them did it in precisely the same way. But there is something they do have in common – their attitude about their inevitable success, among other winning attitudes. In fact FT71 said this today: “there is a belief that there is little, if anything, that they can't overcome.”
Attitude doesn’t replace the necessary steps/processes to becoming a consistently profitable trader. It allows one to understand that the steps/processes are necessary, and gives them the ability to go through those processes, even when they’re difficult, slow, and embarrassing.
If I were going to try to become good at something other than trading, I feel like the steps would be relatively clear and I would have the choice of either doing them, or not becoming good at that thing. I believe that trading is similar, but it is my attitude, about trading and a lot of other things, that is either going to help me or hinder me in taking the necessary steps and doing the appropriate work.
Simple things like becoming frustrated by losing trades only serve to make what I’m trying to see become even more obscured, and it’s a sign that I’m focused on results rather than the learning process – I think this is a big one for me. And I've annihilated any potential joy contained in the learning, by being focused on whether I'm making (real or sim) money.
So I have to ask myself hard questions like, “Am I going to sweep today’s results under the rug because they’re so bad or am I going to see what I can learn from them?” “Am I going to see if I can find a better method because today sucked so bad, or am I going to get to work analyzing what I did, reviewing material that I have to support this approach, and looking for ways that I could have done better today?” “Am I going to make the effort to study my charts and trades after the close, like so many traders have suggested I/we do, so I can start to understand more about price action and how I might interact more effectively?” “Am I going to go into this afternoon/evening with an attitude of defeat about the day, or am I going to have the attitude of being in a learning process and excited about what’s available for me to learn?” “Am I going to go watch TV, play golf, run errands, or find any number of other distractions after the market closes today, or am I going to get to work studying my craft?”
It’s easier to run away to another approach, indicator or guru when things get difficult (I know this firsthand), than it is to buckle down and work on getting familiar with the market I’ve chosen and the tools I’m trying to use (and that I know work for goodness sake). As always, easier said than done.
"Is it hard? Not if you have the right attitude. It's having the right attitude that's hard." - Robert Pirsig
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I think you have been extraordinarily tenacious with your posts and rigorous in your documentation. i think you know the answers to a lot of the proverbial questions you asked in that recent post. FT71 has offered to review your stats, why not try and summarize them. You have bared your sole here, why not see what the 'mechanic' can do to help. You know he can help. You have a huge sample size, FT will show you some pitfalls you might not be aware of. Go for it!
And keep documenting, the answer is on there somewhere.
Rest assured, he already has them. And you (and the rest of the room) will probably have the opportunity to see what he has to say about them - good and bad.
-AT
"Is it hard? Not if you have the right attitude. It's having the right attitude that's hard." - Robert Pirsig
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I get one or two days a month like that and they are usually sufficient to undo the rest of the week's positive work. They happen despite you and I both knowing that a 3 consecutive full stops and finish for the day would stop them occurring - so why don't we? Human, that's why, work on attitude and discipline we must. Thanks for another precious futures.io (formerly BMT) journal inspired lesson in honesty and sharing.
I’m a little worn out because I was really focused on my charts today.
My results weren’t very good, but I was back to work applying the same method as yesterday, rather than jumping to something else and looking for a “better way.”
My entries were fairly straightforward today and I had specific reasons – according to my read of price action as best as I could apply it – for each one.
I worked with two charts today, both the same time frame, but with different channel lines as I saw them. I used two charts so the lines wouldn’t get so confusing all being on one chart.
Even though this is only about finding the entries and executing the trades right now (not about the stops or finessing entries), on the last trade I allowed myself to get a little aggravated because price touched my target price (but didn’t exceed it to hit my MIT order), then reversed to stop me out by one tick, then reversed back down to exceed my target.
This, again, is about attitude. Am I trying to make profits now or am I working to learn the skills that I need to develop?
I said I was worn out because I was really focused on my charts today, and that's true, but it's something else too. It's very apparent to me that trading has a powerful, mostly negative, effect on my attitude due to all of the fears and worries I have surrounding it. And a lot of those have just come from spending a lot of time approaching trading incorrectly. This is where I believe the vast majority of my work lies.
"Is it hard? Not if you have the right attitude. It's having the right attitude that's hard." - Robert Pirsig
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“The greater part of human pain is unnecessary. It is self-created as long as the unobserved mind runs your life.” ~Eckhart Tolle
“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear” ~Ambrose Redmoon
Choose to be bold. Being bold simply means that we commit to taking the action, to be bigger than our fear, and our sometimes-small notions of ourselves; all for the sake of expanding our life in the direction we know that’s right aligned for us.
With boldness we choose to be bigger than our current self; to step toward that new future to bring it into the present; to expand beyond what we know, knowing that fear will show up, but we commit to action anyways
My first three trades were taken without having a clear idea about what was going on. The rest of my trades were taken based on thinking I had a clear idea of what was going on. Then I realized that I really didn’t have a clear idea of what was going on.
I thought I would only be working off of one chart (Chart 1) today because I thought I had the appropriate lines marked, but by 12:30 or so, I realized that the more appropriate channel was on Chart 2. I was too tied to the lines on Chart 1 and didn’t keep an open mind that I could be wrong. After the fact, my activity on Chart 1 looks silly in comparison to what was occurring on Chart 2.
Apparently (obviously?) I wasn’t as focused on my charts as I should have been. I wasn’t as diligent in continually checking my lines as the session progressed as I could have been.
Now I’m going to talk about attitude again. When I realized that I had misinterpreted the trend lines for today my first reaction was to be a little aggravated, disappointed, and embarrassed (because I knew I’d be posting this).
But, because I’ve been working on my habits of thought, it quickly occurred to me that I could/should actually be pleased with the fact that I did find the appropriate channel; that I was able to see it; that I was able to see that there was a better way to operate today.
This is far better than what I’ve experienced so much before, which is finishing the day with poor results and having no clue what I could have done better.
"Is it hard? Not if you have the right attitude. It's having the right attitude that's hard." - Robert Pirsig
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