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The purpose of this journal is to work on finding and eliminating psychological issues holding me back from successful trading and document my development as a trader.
My foremost problem is that I have been exiting winning trades far too soon (Ha! Have you ever heard that one before?).
Throughout this journal I will seek to increase the duration and magnitude of winning trades and develop my trading psychology into a winning mindset.
Inspirations
The main inspirations and influencing forces in my trading have come from three main sources:
1. TradeItDontDateIt
Lak's performance has been a great inspiration for me for many years. I model my ideal trading after his work.
2. @DbPhoenix and his work with the SLA/AMT
I've read and followed his work on nexusfi.com (formerly BMT) and other sites for years now. Discovering AMT has helped my trading tremendously.
3. YTC Trading Series of books and weekly emails
When starting out in trading I found the YTC series to be fantastic in putting price action trading into an understandable framework along with discussions of psychological issues relating to trading.
The Journal
I will be fully transparent in this journal and open to any discussions/questions/comments. I believe that participation by other traders can only help to advance everyone's development. I look forward to kicking this journal off!
I've been exploring Kewltech a lot this week and a common theme of the kewltech methodology is advancing or declining momentum combined with accumulation and distribution.
ES has steadily declining momentum over this past week:
Declining momentum, approaching resistance, combined with failure to take out the day's highs.. Great combination for a short.
Shorted NQ at 4600:
Declining momentum and a sideways market = distribution.
Still holding short and will hold into the weekend as long as levels above aren't taken out.
Shorted ES at 2101.50 and covered at 2098.50 and 2099.25.
Perfect illustration of the fear of holding winning trades just now.
First two trades were what I was looking for, the third is the example I want to journal about now.
I put the trade on thinking the market would go down to at least 90 and then some (and it has as of this post), but almost immediately fear crept in and I closed it for a small (ONE TICK!) gain.
I think closing this trade early was fear of not wanting to be proven "wrong" on my assumption that the market would go down.
As soon as the fear creeps in I seem to "freeze up" and forget everything I know about trading.