I have all that ammo , I guess I still need more practice.... -125 yesterday; BS - took one of 3 possible; close to adding another setup to my plan - one of those 3 was not in my plan but it was the best trade yesterday by far. Very closely related to the one planned trade I'm doing right now. +445 today; I'm done working @ 9 am what a dream. NOT I'm sitting at a desk doing excel. I'm good at it. It's boring. Recent gems for actual traders not trolls; Short term to reduce risk; long term view to max gain Now that my short term trading just needs practice - I'm looking at other forms of investment
Part time trader woes Missed the best trade of the day (the one that goes from 1690 to 1681 without hitting the 3 point stop) because I was busy. Took the trade @ 1685 that just ends up turning into consolidation and continuation of trend. I violated my plan and exited the trade early and was rewarded for being a plan breaking trader. -104 for the day.
I am a brain surgeon. Every day I gain experience through trial and error; performing operations on different people that have similar anatomy, but are not exactly the same. I studied texts, but text is not practical experience. With my steady hands, I learn each day which nerves to sever and which ones to let alone. A full time trader with my plan would have short around 1690.25 yesterday with a stop at 1693.25 and would have held until about now.
If trading size equaling $1000 per tick is your plan and not an ego-based or a one-time gotta-do-what-you-gotta-do type trade this would not be a concern. Why? Because you "own" two things. One, you own the fact that you defined acceptable risk before you entered the trade. And two, you own the knowledge and confidence that your trading skills and setups produce results which makes acceptable risks not only possible, but unimportant.
The part time trader gets to trade sporadically which is awesome because you get to learn how to take repeated small losses. -117 today
~4 point range @ 1105 ; about to say f this Though there were several planned trades today, I didn't take any of them. The market didn't "feel" right and after the huge sell off yesterday I didn't feel like shorting. The only long I would have taken isn't part of the "official" plan yet.
I am a butcher; Every day I execute the same things over and over, methodically, and observe meat for patterns in size and shape. I show no emotion for the cows, pigs and chickens I slaughter. I am cold-hearted and emotionless. I work in a freezer. Back and forth the meat swings on the hook; sometimes more violently than other times. I can't tell if we'll sell more meat in the future, but I can make decisions based on probabilities and prep more beef than chicken. When I was a new butcher I let my animals bleed out; this made my end meat product rubber like, decreasing sales. As an experienced butcher I can sell more if I cut off hemorrhaging animals quickly. The real money comes in when you ride the consumers' buying trends.
The future version of myself would have; 1646 short 1647.5 / 48.5 stop out & reverse mkt @ 1654 currently The present version did attached. Need to make sure stop/reverse is worthwhile though.
Cost myself a little more today then I should have because I bailed with $100 loss early and re-entered for the full ~$600 loss. Only short I would have taken was yesterday afternoon. 3rd day of observation; reverse position upon inverse entry pattern completed below lowest low of original entry pattern = 3 points + recovered.
*sigh* Easily a positive day but I stopped early due to frustration and had some things I had to take care of at work. 2+ trades this afternoon did not meet my 3 point risk criteria. Of course one just fired that has run for 8 points but I was sitting in the podiatry clinic getting my feet looked at. Probably going to start trading more contracts soon.