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Resuming trading in 2016 after a hiatus due to fund depletion. Time off was good, though involuntary.
Some rules I will be trying to implement this go-round:
1. Focus on trying to make good decisions, rather than trying to make money.
2. Save the bullets for when the target is clear.
3. If the market is ranging, take points off the table.
4. Be centered
What will you trade and based on what rules/techniques ?
Not that i want to be nosy, you wrote : "you want to safe the bullet for the target"
having a clear plan of what is the target seems like a good first step
Did you test/confirm any approach before going into the ring ?
1. Ok, so I will trade anything that moves, mainly NQ, CL, ZB, EUR
2. I trade with the trend, using the week to establish the trend (this is why I'm bad during ranging markets). I use VWAP (weekly and intraday) to get an idea if intraday price is trending or not (consistently above or below vwap). Many times, the trend is obvious, and that's when I want to trade. I don't want to trade when the trend is not obvious (difficult for me). If in a trading range, Sell at vwap+2sd, buy at vwap-2SD (but that's a future setup, not one I"m comfortable employing right now). I use ProAM indicator to see where/if there is professional buying.
3. By "target" I mean targeting an obvious trend. When the trend is obvious, I want to be all in so to speak. I don't want to waste funds trying to guess the market. I don't have a monetary/point target.
4. I have not tested these techniques, as they're descretionary.
Making good Decisions is the best way to go obviously, and being excellent at what you do is a far better goal than just making money. You can make money doing a lot of things, but my satisfaction comes from knowing i made money because I know what I'm doing and i do it well.
Cash. SIM is not for me. I'm been successful at SIM in the past I think because of a lack of emotion, which doesn't transfer over to real money. My main issue is not a lack of making good trades, it's making bad trades due to bad decisions spiraling into worse decisions.
While there have been glimmers of hope, I find myself repeating bad habits of making decisions out of fear, rather than context, not limiting my risk, and not protecting profits. I'm working on shifting mentally to a probability-based mindset, where each trade has a probable edge of being a good trade, rather than thinking in terms of certainty. Being mentally flexible in order to be in sync with market flow and assimilate new market information should it present itself, even if counter to my original plan. Technical and macro analysis of the market is not sufficient in itself to put on good trades, if the trades are not with present market flow.
My focus will be on implementing:
1. Risk control with every trade
2. Cutting losses
3. Profit taking
While I have been implementing the above goals, I feel like I've swung the other way to the extreme of fear, and I'm getting completely chopped up. In a gorgeous one-trade day like today that would've netted 30pts, I lost about 2 points jumping in and out of trades all day. I'm not sure why I'm able to hold a short for 40 points but can't hold a long more than 5.