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Excellent points. I have never been long term successful with discretionary trading. One possible reason: I probably am trying to be too rigid in any rules I apply to discretionary trading. As you say, that approach may be more suited to mechanical trading.
For me, if I have flexible or adaptive rules, I can never prove to myself I actually have an edge, and therefore my confidence (and the ability to trade) is gone.
What you say is so true! My mentality has changed with the combine I am in now. I now see trading as a life long process. So yes, boring comes to mind! lol But it is also very rewarding. I see that now.
Another day behind. I thought it would be no trade day or somewhat break even day in small gain or loss, because in the morning (O/N session) volume was ridiculously low. I set up several trade levels but did not put any pending order there because price was so dozy, volume negligible. Of course right then Gold embarked on a rally of over 100 ticks in 5 minutes. No luck for me. But I would probably do the same again, volume and price action was not supporting this move. I tried another setup but closed at +1 tick, price stalled and then pulled back. And then after several hours of waiting a similar move up, finally I got in at the last part and got my fix of +15 ticks on two scale ins 5 cars each.
Then I decided I have did good on the day to do several tests. Small winners and losers there, no essential to the overall results. Overall around 1.5k in profits net today, knocking on 7k gains on the combine. Stats improved too, only 26 days to pass, or 15 more with this average. We shall see.
I just caught on to your TST journal Xelaar. Congrats! and thanks for sharing your journal. Nice to see the progress continuing on from your other journal.
Thanks for good words, Cloudy. I have seen the original version of your post and wanted to tell something. I am not new to this game, true, but I have yet to conquer many weakness of mine that influence my trading in a bad way. I know them and while very slowly working on them (takes years and years) try to trade in a way those weaknesses make least damage to my results. I did trade live before for about 1.5 years in a constant style and manner out of my 3.5 years of being an everyday student of markets. This stretch taught me about importance of being stable with your risk management, having well defined strategy with minimal number of setups, preventing any style drift, and more than anything taught about trusting your edge so you can get over the loser quickly and enjoy profits. Journalling was another huge lesson, I have a huge paper book on my trades from planning a trade to actual setup and results.
In regards to this Combine, I like the stability of results but little bit disappointed in quality of setups and gains delivered. I hoped for more originally as market was giving me much more stuff to work with initially than now. Thus my rule of 3 losers, I did have 3-5 genuine setups to work with a day. Now it's 1 or 2. The rest of trades I do is more less exploratory. I am thinking about reducing a number of tries per day but hiking up the volume to get to the target quicker. But anything you do must be calculated before, you must project this statistics on your trade history to see if it will do more damage than good.
A piece of advice I can have is pretty much what it is in Mike's signature: stop changing things, journal and publish to be accountable to your peers. Also I would add: discover your weak and strong sides and build your strategy to utilize the former and avoid the latter. No successful trader uses exactly the same strategy from another one, you need to make it your own first.
I would just wanted to find out about Combine and TST much sooner in my trading career, for sure it would greatly reduce trial and error learning curve. So don't take Combine as a tool to prove yourself, take it as a learning tool that will put you into an accountable environment with stricts risk management and responsibility. The price they charge will definitely add responsibility and having your records public will add accountability. Just don't take it as a contest.
Well it did not promise any good and it wasn't wrong by not delivering it. Gold volume was ridiculously low. First trade was a loser, 7 ticks including 1 tick slippage. Then few small scalps some could deliver at least 10-20 ticks let it them run at BE. One winner at 12 ticks, pretty much all market offered. Then I waited for FOMC planning to put stop buy above resistance and stop sell below double bottom support. It did not work because initial move was small. Then price went up and I put another trade at closer level of stop zone but it tricked me in to the tick, reversed on me, stopped and reversed and went back up. Happens sometimes. No reason to adjust stop or entry. I tried another long at next level, this one could work for 10 ticks or so but hesitated around entry and I bailed at +2. Hard to trade at such low volume day. Happy to end the day positive and not losing.
Today was all about ECB rate decision and Super Mario Death under the Circus Dome show. I had my levels but the ultimate action was due from ECB clowns. I should have hold longer to my first trade but it did hecitate when it should go straight through. So I played it safe today. Another 1k day is not to sniff at. Done for the day now, don't believe any decent moves with NFP in sights tomorrow. Tomorrow will be day to be a tick counter!