Tonight, it was this..

I was stressed about maintaining my win rate, so stressed that I got in too early to try and escape the stress of sitting there, later on there were more obvious setups, I must next time, embrace the market and relax.

What can one do but laugh really.

Tomorrow night I will do something else wrong, should I just keep a big list of things not to do and eliminate them one by one?

that is not how it works, you will make endless mistakes and the list will keep getting longer.

How mechanical is your approach to trading? You should have clearly defined rules that need to be met before hitting buy/sell. This is something I preach, because it eliminates emotional based trading (most of it). If you have the mechanics in place, your accountable to yourself to execute off of those rules. Another great byproduct of mechanical based trading, you will getter a much more accurate depiction of how effective your trading system is.

Revan 

Tonight, it was this.. I was stressed about maintaining my win rate, so stressed that I got in too early to try and escape the stress of sitting there, later on there were more obvious setups, I must next time, embrace the market and relax. What can one do but laugh really. Tomorrow night I will do something else wrong, should I just keep a big list of things not to do and eliminate them one by one?

One day a king was strolling in the woods. He saw a wood cutter, with a huge pile of wood on his head easily jumping across a 10 foot wide stream. King was amazed, he called the wood cutter and offered him a bag of gold for jumping across the stream again with the pile of wood. Wood cutter, thou he does this everyday for a living, failed to jump second time. When asked, he said the thought of the bag of gold was weighing him down and he was unable to handle the stress.

Having wrong expectations always result in stress. What are your expectations from trading ?. Why do you want to maintain the win rate ?. You can have 5 loosing trades but one big runner could tilt the profit factor. You will always miss the big trades if you just focus on win rate, as you will be tempted to close the trade the moment it turns positive. Sometimes it is good to take a step back, observe the stress and see the real reason - expectations / beliefs - that is triggering it. Sit for few minutes, learn to breathe , it is fun to watch your own drama . After all you need some positive outcome from trading apart from making shit load of $$ .

rahulgopi 

One day a king was strolling in the woods. He saw a wood cutter, with a huge pile of wood on his head easily jumping across a 10 foot wide stream. King was amazed, he called the wood cutter and offered him a bag of gold for jumping across the stream again with the pile of wood. Wood cutter, thou he does this everyday for a living, failed to jump second time. When asked, he said the thought of the bag of gold was weighing him down and he was unable to handle the stress. Having wrong expectations always result in stress. What are your expectations from trading ?. Why do you want to maintain the win rate ?. You can have 5 loosing trades but one big runner could tilt the profit factor. You will always miss the big trades if you just focus on win rate, as you will be tempted to close the trade the moment it turns positive. Sometimes it is good to take a step back, observe the stress and see the real reason - expectations / beliefs - that is triggering it. Sit for few minutes, learn to breathe , it is fun to watch your own drama . After all you need some positive outcome from trading apart from making shit load of $$ .

I'm at break even so far this week, and OK. round2!

Revan,

Are you algo trading or what? For some reason I thought you were running 100% code, but I could be mistaken.

Either way, the approach to success is the same. Figure out a bet that works and gets you over the break even line. It can be any bet on any criteria, but you need to test the hell out it and make sure it really works. Most people make mistakes on this part.... They see a few patterns here and there, and their premise is flawed or not fully flushed out, and they trade live with a system that is not stress tested enough.

Think of it like playing blackjack with the proverbial (basic strategy) vs. with no strategy at all. Your basic strategy in futures will give you the best possible edge on the bet you are trying to make.

Most traders don't kick the tires enough on this part and the ones that do have some statistically significant alpha signal still often fail on the next part.... and that is the participation paradox. You may find that 75% of the time x occurs, of 51% y occurs. But how often can you get in and get filled to participate with x or y. Toxic fills on limit orders, or slippage on market orders are very often overlooked and this can make a decent alpha signal into a terrible live performance.

Hopefully you can figure it all out, but there is a process that everyone will have to go through to find their own secret sauce.

Best of luck

Ian