For those familiar with my previous notes, attached is an updated version including the notes I had posted separately on Piscuy and Stealth Trader. These notes are almost identical to those you may have previously downloaded, other than a few topics Anek discussed in the month of December and some minor editing. I opted against posting the outline's on Piscuy and Stealth as their contributions must be read completely for maximum benefit. It is highly recommended for all those not familiar with Anek's method to read the Thread in its entirety to gain the maximum benefit of Anek's contributions. This document is intended only as an overview of what has been discussed to date, and as a reference for those who have been following the thread since its inception. Anek's charts have been cataloged in chronological order, and have retained the comments of each post. These charts are included as links in the word document and as separate files located at the following link: http://www.4shared.com/dir/4772355/e2259420/sharing.html Note: to download charts. wait for download link (URL) to appear, as many banner ads appear as "the download button" Beginning, 2008 I will continue my business trading plan project and look forward to working with those interested in bringing a working document to fruit. Anek has provided the tools, Success or failure is now entirely in your own hands. May you all use this gift wisely.... -hwk-
I'm sure that most of us who have traded futures for a while have experienced early in our trading careers what you describe. The only real solution to overcoming your psych hurdles is screen time. Trading futures requires a combination of patience and persistance, combined with a good dose of self-discipline (since trading allows so much "freedom"). You gain patience through experience. And you only get experience by being persistant to overcome all the hurdles in front of you. Now, beyond those maxims that we all know (but are hard to implement) here's a bit of practical advice. If you find that you are taking impulsive trades because you can't wait for the trades that follow your system to set up, open up two DOMs - one in sim and one for your real account. To satisfy your impatience, take your impulsive trades on the sim DOM, and only take the proper trades on your real account. Over time, compare the results of the two accounts. Seeing the results will help you train yourself to only take the trades that follow your rules, without losing money in your real account. Clicking on your sim DOM will satisfy your psych need to do something when you really shouldn't. Hope that helps. Sandy
Stop trading with real money and paper trade if you don't want to lose. This will help relax your mind enabling it to absorb only positive vibrations. When I went through your predicament I used an excel spread sheet to record entries and exits. (I intra-day swing trade with equities, so hopefully this will work for your scalping). Today you can use camstudio to record your paper trades. When you enter a trade just use a keyboard shortcut to start recording and after a few seconds or longer you pause the recording, and release the pause to record the exit. I keep the region on âFixedâ 320x240 if you want to publish your records to the web. Review and watch the ones that worked only. This is training your brain to have patience to act only on a premonition or feeling you get when winners present themselves. You will build on this success of identifying what fits you best. (Scalping or holding for an 8 point swing, for example. Learn to record only when you receive a premonition. (THIS IS IT! -- feeling) All others are papertrades to see what happens. With this method, you should learn to act on those premonitions that you feel you know will work. You can learn camstudio from clips on YouTube(Very Simple program) I think it would be best to stop trading with real money because the extra stress is not going to allow, or at least hinder, your brain to focus. Focusing on winners will dispel impatience, and develop a skill to act on premonitions only. Jeffrey P.S. I just noticed I gave the same advice as Sandy. (Just another method)
If you have the discipline only allow yourself 2 or 3 trades per day. This forces you to wait for the best set-ups. If you don't have the discipline go to a casino. You might as well enjoy yourself as you lose your money.
Good advice. Another thing you can also try doing is to trade/monitor a different market while you're waiting for a setup. You shouldn't have all of your eggs in one basket/market anyhow. ie. I also trade options and there's almost always something to do there whether it's looking at chart patterns for different stocks, etc. Looking at chart patterns for stocks also helps solidify pattern detection on futures since you'll be getting a lot more practice.
sandygray, jeffrey, boib, carb... Thanks much for the advice and suggestions on improving patience and discipline. They're all excellent. The crazy thing is... intellectually, I KNOW what I'm supposed to do and not do, but something wacky happens in the heat of actual trading and the best laid plans go out the window! The idea of trading sim and real together is a great one. Thanks all, thotspeed
AHG Chat log there seems to be some connection problems to othernet - something to do with a split server, for those that find themselves in a near empty room.
Hmm... that would explain why there was hardly anyone in the room when I logged in the past two days, and now just trying it again it won't connect. Perhaps they're updating their DNS and switching IP addresses and it hasn't been fully propogated through the system so some people are still getting routed to the old server like me. What IP address for irc.othernet.org are you showing it connect to? Mines says it tries to connect to 66.90.118.191:6667 but then fails.