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So, when I sat down to trade, was my mind totally absorbed into the market? ... of course not.
I took 5 trades. 4 losers and 1 winner - all bad.
As I was trading, I was fiddling with all this other crap, THINKING I was focused on the charts.
I reflex traded all but one, and the one winner I exited too early.
Granted, one day, my brain was cooked by mild heat stroke, but what part of my mind was left was still
preoccupied.
It's simply not my time yet. I'm lucky to only be down $120. It feels much worse, because I didn't trade
my game at all.
So, I'm putting the live trading on the back burner until I get my life in order and back to normal.
I'm taking the losses a little too hard, thinking in the back of my mind, I may need this money.
I will, of course, still constantly study market replay and hone my entry / exit skills.
When I do return to Live Trading. I will trade 1 trade at time - meaning, if a take a trade that is well
stalked and executed, I may have another. If I fail, one and done. Until, a. I get used to trading under fire, and
b. Trade MY plan every time.
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To those who may follow behind me -
Do not go to live trading until you have thousands of hours of screen time as close to real time as you can muster.
In other words, SIM if you can. Market replay will do you a diservice if run too quickly, as you will get "accustomed"
to it. Then when you go live, you will go nuts because the market will appear VERY slow - resulting in early entry / exits.
Make sure your psyche is in the right place. - No life stress of any type.
Make sure you have no emotional attachment to the trading account fund. Don't trade with "scared money"
When you do go live, as soon as you take a "reflex" trade that has no bearing on your studies at all,
shut it down and come back another day. If you get flustered at all, you are doomed, shut it down.
Tomorrow is a powerful tool in trading.
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So, Here I go to battle life. Certainly, no time to trade live money.
My daily studies will continue and my knowledge will grow.
Fate slapped me in the head and said, "this is not your time".
On second thought, I did take one excellent trade - I stopped trading
AJ, that is pretty impressive. I am trying to do something like that myself but I am torn between keeping it short and sweet - like yours - and putting everything in there - which I need because to be frank, my trading is poor and I need to stick rigidly to pre-planned procedures. That's not to rule out flexibility - I would be ready to change my rules from one day to the next if there was a convincing need. Do you have the same quandaries?
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
Just saw I'd missed your last post. I read it and thought, did I miss another one saying why you were trading real money and not sim trading, right after coming from some good results on market replay? Or are you talking about backing off from sim trading?
I like your idea of doing one good trade at a time or stopping. That is similar to what I've been forced to do by my work situation - I am only taking one trade per day. It made me look at myself in a much sterner light. It also cut the emotional connection between one trade and the next. I'm sure it'll do you good to try that out to start with. Just one trade, without even considering whether that was a good trade and whether you can carry on. Do that for 5 sessions before you add in the decision on whether to take another trade.
Good luck!
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
If you are not in a financial position to lose 100% of your trading account, without a second thought or worry, then you should not be trading that money because it will adversely impact every trading decision you make.
This is why it is easy to make money on sim, and hard to make it on cash.
If money is tight, or you are questioning the future source of your money, then you need to make 100% sure that you are risking the least amount possible with your trades. And this has nothing to do with your stop, or worse yet, a really small "pain threshold" stop that makes no sense in the context of the market. It means that you should re-evaluate your product. Futures are not for beginners. Even micro's (M6E) can be too big for beginners depending on trade style, you could be risking $100 a day and that may be 10 times too big for your current economic situation.
My suggestion is simple - before your losses stack up, and you feel compelled to "make back" what you've lost (the worst idea), make sure your product and position size are correct. Make sure you are trading the right instrument class.
The money should not be any worry or thought. The money does not enter into the trade decision. Decrease your risk until this becomes true. And remember, decreasing risk does not mean lowering your stop.
D4, I have all quandaries that are possible in trading.!! Since I appear to gravitate to trade the extremes , I
feel that I need to be very flexible in reading PA. Since my main entry chart is 5 min, I have to gauge if
price is weak enough to test that extreme and then PB to give me my profit or is the retest strong and will
blow right through my stop. This takes very cool calculation and I am very good at it in SIM.
However, When the "red light" is on, my mind just starts working differently and I can't process all the data
as effectively ... not even close really.
I simply need More time under fire of live trading with a clear, calm and confident mind. I seem to
have none of those traits right now. So i won't trade live for a week or two.
So, yes ,I like to keep it very short and simple and just trade price action. I have tested the odds
of retest success endlessly and it works much more than it doesn't. The rest is simply execution = A clear, solid
mind. Since I really don't have a scalping "system" per say, I have to be very cool, to judge which extremes to fade.
Even PB's are extremes. When is the PB over? It's all the same judgement. Just different scales.
I don't want a mechanical system where if the blue line crosses the red line and two oscillators are moving
just right your in.
I can "see" PA developing in SIM... I just can't live..... YET!!
I just feel a system could never find the major SR on an hourly chart and then stalk the reversal. This gets you
entered on the beginning of a large potential move and gives you the opportunity to scale in.
I believe this is where the big money lies. More than my wildest dreams.
I know all these things, Mike. You have taught us well. I have plenty of money in the account.
It's not so much the loss of any money, it's that I didn't even give myself a chance. Only one of
those live trades where my planned entries - the one that made money.
I just have too much on my mind and got really ticked off when I "choked". It was the bad entry
resulting in the loss that got me.
I have all your rules memorized and will never break them.
Thanks, so much, Mike, for looking out for all us SIM champions trying to make our minds work under
the pressure of live trading.
I just need a couple of well stalked live trades to get me on my way.
I can read the TF very well and trust it's movements. If I can't afford to run 1 car here, I shouldn't be trading.
I promise, nothing until my finances are a bit more solid.
Just give yourself time. You need to be trading cash for a LONG TIME to work through all the issues that come with that.
Accept that you will be losing money for a LONG TIME during that process.
What you need to do is simply stay focused, don't get discouraged by the losses - instead, think of the losses as tuition costs in your education.
Make sure you are doing all your homework, which includes analyzing trades and the reasons you took them at the end of every week, and learning from your patterns.
Keep things consistent, you can't learn from patterns if you are constantly changing them.
I think that it was actually @Adamus who asked the question, but thanks for the detailed explanation anyway!
"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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