For whatever reason, I can never associate trading with calm or certainty, near or otherwise. While I do hope to one day achieve true calm while trading, I hope never to get anywhere close to certainty, be it in respect of the markets or the method used to trade them. But that's just me.
I had a dream. I was a coyote in the desert. Living off an occasional rabbit or mouse wasn't my idea of a good diet, so I crept up and hid beneath a bush, not far from Jack's old trailer.
Thunderdog, I forget, are you trading discretionary or system? 225, tell us more. Does it morph into a wet dream? That's where all mine end up.
Lest you wonder why I am wasting my time here, I made my money in one trade this AM, so I am watching the market with perfect equani-Mitty (lots of Walters here) and enjoying the ratcheting. And the dicking with system traders.
A good question. I have very specific rules for both entry and exit. The principal rules are numeric (and could, therefore, probably be coded), whereas the remainder are not. So it seems that I have a finger in both pies, although probably more in one than the other.
Oh! So you are an indiscretionary system trader like me! I have a very rigid coded system that calls maybe 6-8 trades a day, and probably has negative expectation (I'm afraid to test it). But it usually calls a couple of great trades, so I use my gestalt of the market to decide which calls to take. And I usually cheat on exits. When I get a few years of it under my belt, I will reinvent myself on ET and become Guru. I already have a sleeper name so I'll look like I've been around a long time.
Well, yes and no. (How's that for decisiveness?) The secondary, non-numeric rules are part and parcel of the method. They just don't come into consideration until the principal criteria are met. (It's very unsophisticated.)