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My life has become filled with passion and purpose since I have been trading with a positive attitude, fueled by the desire to excel at the process.
The simple goal I have set for myself is to excel in the process of trading. I derive my sense of pleasure from the process, however trading has ceased to be exciting. Trading has become a job full of controlled boredom infused with forced and concentrated learning, interspersed with sudden flashes of insight as mindfulness towards self and markets reveals a setup as the market waves its sleight of hand right in front of my face.
My state of mindfulness at that moment dictates if I able to assume risk in a timely manner at that moment as the setup folds itself out, wrapped by uncertainty and my action or inaction immediately tells me if I am still thinking in probabilities.
This is a game of skill. This is a high performance activity where my action of every moment determines my success - this game has a geometric outcome.
However, a tiny dot that I am in this world, though proud to execute correctly and with full concentration to prevent mistakes, I realize that I do not know what will happen next once complete the action of putting on that trade, simply because I am too small in front of this vast market.
However the game I play is simply executing my small edge over and over and that is all I put my faith in without being blind simply because I have tested my edge.
It is in this state that I begin my next combine and continue my learning, hoping for nothing in return. In my humility I have my full and complete repose. In my calm I am my own edge. Knowing my weaknesses is good but I remember that action (the decision of 'not taking action right now' is counted in the scope action) triumphs everything in the markets.
My next combine puts a capital of $30,000 in front of me and on 01 July 2013 I will begin to observe the market and execute my edge everyday from 5 AM Central (3:30 PM India) for a minimum of 10 days during which period you can expect me to post regularly in this journal.
The single twist is that I will also be trading the EURUSD on my live funded $300 account trading executing a similar microlot trade corresponding to the 6E trade I execute in the combine.
I suddenly realized that if I am to present a meaningful journal I would need to explain my premises first instead of jumping into trade after trade after trade.
It would also be a good opportunity to present what I understand about scalping in my own words.
So here we go.....
A market is characterized by movement of which the remarkable part is that sometimes the movement tends to continue in one direction, resisting any attempts to halt, and tending to continue. Of course we all know that is called as a trend.
The non-trending phase also known as a trading range is where action is listless but usually tradable nevertheless.
A scalpers job is to focus on the NOW and determine which of the forces among bullish and bearish are currently exerting a greater influence and simply join the winning party.
The answer to this question is not one a newbie is going to like.
THERE IS NO WAY OF KNOWING WHAT PRICE WILL REALLY DO NEXT.
In the other words, my pet setup may come at a precise location, with many factors going for it - however it is no guarantee that it will play out to make this trade a winner.
Which brings us to the concept of an EDGE.
What is and edge? It is simply the probability of one thing happening more over another.
Thus, claiming to have an edge in the market is a pretty bold statement. The Efficient market Hypothesis lends voices to skeptics that there cannot be a lasting edge allowing a trader to consistently make money. Traders have proven otherwise.
So where does a trader's edge come from? It comes from exploiting the predicament of fellow traders. The trader's job is to stay ahead of the rate of change and figure out inflection points or in other terms what will cause traders to do something (buy or sell) that will push prices in the direction which will benefit his or her position.
However the catch is that the trader needs to be positioned in time before other traders and that is the meaning of staying ahead of the rate of change.
Mark Fisher's book "The Logical Trader" presents it's context edge in pretty convincing fashion although one still needs an execution edge based on that context. His premise is that the opening range is statistically significant and can be used to build an edge upon. There are futures.io (formerly BMT) threads that follow his path (most notably MF Breakouts). Just my 2 cents.
In the earlier chart I did not discuss the tipping point.
The original stop is entered as a 10-tick stop with the target being 10-ticks.
However it is not our intention to allow the trade to go against us full 10-ticks.
The tipping point is a place where the trade premise loses its validity and the technical reason to get into the trade has diminished to a coin-flip.
I could have place this tipping point beneath the 1.3131 lows where a triple bottom is clearly visible at times 13:06 13:08 and 13:10.
However I chose to place the stop below the last higher low of 1.3130 - however both locations for the stop would have been technically acceptable.
Note that the target is always 10 ticks and is NEVER tampered with - only the 10-tick stop is moved to a proper technical location (never out of fear).
If this stop is hit then the trade is scratched then and there, no questions asked.
I will cover the five aspects of how to manage a trade as per its five behaviors in some later post.