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I still feel a little overly cautious, but I still took a profit home today. Crazy action. Really glad I have this on video now as it will be good to refer back to.
Crazy day! I'm not sure what I was thinking through the first part of the session. Several good longs that I cut short. I started shorting it perhaps out of frustration. Finally I was able to see some good signals and made most of it back. Ended the day -4 ticks. I'll be studying this one a lot.
Crazy action, but lots of missed opportunities for me. I missed many of the long setups I wanted, and for some reason keep trying to take fade trades. On a strong trend like this I should never be counter trading it. I know we are in that trend, but I forget the rule and still fade it. I need to insert something into my process to trigger my mind's voice before I take those trades so I'll consider the context.
I believe that right now I'm having some issues with impulsivity. I think I have some good signals and rules, but I often don't realize my trades contradict them. So what I am trying to do now is develop a routine to help me think these things through before I click. I'm going say stuff out loud on the video and point at things on the screen to help activate my mind's eye and voice. Here's what I'm going to start with. Suggestions would be appreciated.
Breathe in and out once
State you are considering a trade
Identify risk and reward and point them out on the screen
Identify daily and local trend
Identify daily and local volatility
Are we in a chop zone or range?
Describe signal I am looking for
Instinct lies beyond the dam of discipline
Attempt, not victory is its charm,
Yet its works are not small and vain nor null
It is nursed by a portion of your inner strength
And can create the high things it wills
Its passion …
The above post goes into a lot of detail - its nice to plan, but its more important not to choke on decision making and FLOW when trading.
It is becoming a person who is majority of an OBSERVER, and who knows that HE is not the thoughts that run through his mind, and once there is an experience of this SEPARATION then the automatic stream of thoughts CEASES, and you become more powerful because you actually realize YOU ARE IN CONTROL!
Once there is sufficient practice on these lines, the matter has actually been decided even before you take the first trade. Not the trade location, not the what-if analysis, because these are static and subject to change AND there is a very real danger of we imposing our expectations on the market and 'concluding' or 'feeling' that we know what the market MAY do next but really, the best approach is within ourselves, knowing that we are still knowing ourselves while engaging with the market in the now.
It's been a frustrating few days. Before I felt that I just needed to eliminate mistakes, and I would move from breaking even to profitable. However, after this string of bad days I'm starting to feel like I'm just clicking randomly. Even when I was doing well at not overtrading I was running into issues. My win percentage is just not high enough. When I'm doing well I'm more like 40%, and I really need to get that over 50%. So it's clear that I need to make more significant adjustments to my trading plan.
I'm going to stop the combine account for now and move back to sim. I'm going to spend the next week programming, backtesting, and reading new material. Some of that time will be used to make some programming videos I've been putting off.