Yukoner Just a skosh under 14 hrs remaining Time to begin preparing Clear / center the ole noggin..., get some good rest tonight RN
Man, now you seeing the light, I can only speak for myself, what you went through on Friday are feelings I do still get no matter how many more trades I trade, I have split second pauses of "Oh crap" going the wrong way, or it not going in my profitable direction fast enough or pleeeease turn around OR that instant cold feeling going down my arms and nerves, but thankful lasts but a second, no one wants to lose even a tick, I go back into monkey mode, do what I need to hit buttons to get the monkey food, I can't dwell on if it going right or not, what do I do next as watching price action unveil, thinking of possible problems and form ideas of what to do next. You are starting to get it now Yukoner. You past the stage of not trading cause you want to take a break, breaks are for weekends, you have a good Trading plan, you are the captain of the ship, so each day you go boating! So Monday is a new day, what are you going to make for us today?
I use three bars, so if I was trading two minute bars....comes down sometimes to speed of the instrument but three bars works for me
So if you want to advance, you have to stay humble... this morning I struggled with that. Going through my mind,"C'mon @Redneck I just dug myself out of a hole and had a profitable month! Cut me a break!"... blah, blah, blah goes the hurt ego. But in this business you also have to stay tough, tough enough to look at yourself and your weaknesses... and your strengths. Here we go... this is Friday's trading... taken from the above book, page 87. FIRST "Worry thoughts anticipating danger" 1) Fear of loss 2) Fear of blowing it 3) Fear of failing 4) Fear of not having a profitable month THEN "They set the panic cycle into motion" and I feel "an intensification of physiological symptoms called the fight-or-flight (or freeze) response" 1) Heart beats faster 2) Occasionally fingers tremble 3) Occasionally pain/tightness in the chest 4) Body gets cold - blood leaves the extremities NOW "Have catastrophic thoughts about your..." Trading. 1) I'm going to lose 2) This won't work out 3) This is going to rocket up or timberrrrrr down 4) Going to stop me out, then move my direction THEN "catastrophic thoughts" about my trading "cause the release of adrenaline signaling danger" so now 1) Just fight back. Trade bigger size. 2) Close the trade - stop this pain. Stop trading. 3) Tighten up my stop and lower risk 4) Just do something! Anything! 5) Intensification of focus on the screen, as if I will pick up some secret clue that will help me to exit or make a better decision NOW "the cycle gathers momentum: triggering more adrenaline and more fight-or-flight symptons that continue until you pass the panic threshold" AND NOW I AM BREAKING MY TRADING PLAN.
Thanks Monoid, Appreciate the thoughts, and sharing one of your trading plans. I take what you say seriously, however today I have been solely focused on the emotional aspect of my trading and what I can do about it. fwiw, that trade was the result of exiting a trade but my T4 DOM was still on auto oco mode so it closed the trade but enter an automatic stop and take profit. Market was moving fast, and I did have time to cancel those orders but in a brief second I decided to leave it and let it play out.... that was without a doubt a mistake. Here is an example of the strategy I was employing on that day, cut and paste from my docs: News Report Trade This trade is fairly simple, and is based on news being the fuel for the market. I simply wait for the first 1 min bar after the news to establish direction of the market, then I wait for a retrace back and enter in that same direction. The retrace is based on the one min bars starting to bottom out, and tighten up on the chart into 3 or more bars. An example is this 15 min chart below, which I will pretend is a 1 min chart. My risk reward stays the same, as I am looking for 1:3 ratio. My target is that the trade will make a new high/low beyond the first 1 min bar. Example in the chart above I would expect that first 1min bar to be broken lower. My stop would rest higher just above the 2nd 1min bar (black one). So I might be risking 8 pts, but expecting a 24 pt gain or higher. At which point I just exit the trade. This means I just set my orders and leave it alone. The discretion being if it comes close to my profit target, and then retraces I would be looking at closing it out manually with at least a 2R gain. OR if we just go sideways for more than 15 mins, then I am not seeing any more follow through because of the news, and I will look to “scalp” my way out of this trade. Scalping means I am changing my exit strategy, and now am watching price action on the DOM to close out my trade by squeezing out as much possible profit. This could include tightening up a stop loss to just above 1min bar price action, or could mean closing out manually as I see the market start to rest at a certain area and maybe look like a retrace. This becomes an exit based on trading “feel”, but the premise is based on the fact that the market is no longer being “fueled” in the same direction as my trade assumption, which then means it is time to get out.
@Handle123: Do you remember the first time when you were able to recognize those detrimental thoughts and made it last only a short time before getting back to trading? How did you do it? What were the tools you used to do it? I think your answer will be very helpful to Yukoner. In my opinion, Yukoner is recognizing these detrimental thoughts, but doesn't seem to posses the tools to make that transition. What is the use of listing and recognizing all the defects when one doesn't know how to correct them, even though one has the desire to correct them? Our mind is funny in that way! The way I did it was by using mindfulness as a tool, but my journey was inverted: I had the tool of mindfulness with me before I started trading! Regards, Monoid.
Yukoner: You seem to put the cart before the horse. The cart is the PnL/profitability. The horse is your mental abilities (Trader's mindset). There is no use talking about profitability if you don't posses the Trader's mindset. That was the point @Redneck was making. So, please stop talking about profitable month etc for this is just an illusion which could as easily become a loss making month. Work on your mindset and get it anchored before talking about profitability. Fine, you recognized it -- you have been recognizing it for a while. How are you going to move from recognizing it to getting back to trading without that thought affecting you? What is your game plan? I think it is time for you to start thinking of how you can make that transition. If you read back in your journal, there have been some suggestions; but, here too you have to make a method your own, and follow it so that you make that transition to acquire that Trader's mindset. As Handle123 mentioned, these thoughts will come to you even after you acquire the trader's mindset. So, you cannot expect to get rid of them. The only way is to let them go and get back to work. How are you going to do that -- letting go and get back to work? (another way of framing the same question asked in the previous paragraph). All the best. Rooting for you. Regards, Monoid.
I meet a gentleman in 1978 who told me to keep two sets of journals, one for the trade itself and other for "me", he said to divide them into each. Trades could be great and I stink if I am not thinking and body not right. Trades can be horrible but I was doing well in mind/body, so he stressed that money is for keeping score, and when I can get to where both are doing well, score will be where I want it to be. It was everyday for couples of decades, then every week, month, as far as how mind/body but still do trade journal, very much like Yukoner a checklist and each trade must be in different colored ink, don't want to fall into just checking boxes. I also use plastic covering for blank white and number of colors and use water based markers for different markets on price and support, green for ES, brown for coffee, yellow Swiss Franc etc. I suppose last fifteen years I have noticed more of numbing effect of feeling "scared as hell" to reduce and watch clock of how long and still watch chart. Many say to reduce size, but feelings never change whether trading 200 lot or 1 lot, so why change. We all have battles, if that the only one I ever have, I am blessed. I think even if you have the tools to control "self", when it comes to money, often goes out the window cause "self" in normal everyday life is nothing like trading contracts that is highly leveraged and in sneeze time you can lose few to many thousand bucks. I have mentored quite a few psychiatrists who had their life in order yet come to trading they got shakes. I have found often that higher the IQ, longer it took them to learn how to trade and that janitors did much better faster both in trade and self cause they just did the rules and didn't over think. I use to think I was smart, but markets have a way to make you poor and in my case I am one dumb sob and push buttons for fun and profits. But I think all have to find their own way of finding "CHI".
Today simply another new day We are the same No matter what happens / we think - feel / mkt does We work through it / set it aside / move on We do our job Trade well today Yukoner - screw the results RN