In order to stop over trading and get consistent, I started using goals. Basically if I'm down X amount from the high water mark of the day - I shut down. And if I'm up X for the day - I shut down. This way I: - Stop overtrading. - Limit Losses. - Protect Gains. - Improve Consistency. - Save Time. - Avoid the aggravation of being up X by 10:30 then trade the whole day and end up being up less than X - what a waste of time and effort. By avoiding this aggravation, I go into the next day with confidence. The problem is that I've been hitting my profit targets early in the day. And I have nothing else to do the rest of the day. Maybe I'm just experiencing withdrawal symptoms from over trading and being hooked to the screen the whole day for so many months.
TV sucks, ET sucks, Youtube sucks, I hate reading, music nowadays sucks - there's nothing to do. My only hope is to build consistency, size up, then frequent massage parlors and brothels.
Try FXGame at Oanda, it's pretty fun; I think FX is less stressful than stocks. I also looking into trading futures, so I think I can use some free times at the end of the year to mess around with some web sites.
If you're hitting the profit targets so soon, make the targets bigger! Just an idea to not just settle for where you are at, keep pushing yourself!
Research for tomorrow,go to movies, visit places and spend the afternoon where there are hi volumes of cute women during the day, play golf(weather permitting), online poker, video games, join a gym. OR Take lunch and regroup thoughts come back to trade the close. Cut size in half and know when enough is enough. Please just don't make it sound like making money in the first two hours of the day and having a free day out to be a bad thing.
When I say profit target I'm not referring to a $ target but rather a points per contract target. Its important to keep it small and reasonable. Occasionally on a big trend day, you can hold for a really big winner. But I think that its important not to push the target too much because eventually your consistency decreases and your DDs increase. You make more by doing more size, not by increasing a reasonable points per contract profit target.
Work on new ideas or if you're really bored get a day job and come in a couple of hours late everyday
Successful trading is often very boring. Congratulations on learning one of the non-obvious lessons. If you look for excitement in the markets, you'll get it. Usually, you'll be sorry.
This can't be emphasized enough. Once you're consistently making money and are bored by your trading you know you're on your way to your financial goals. Trading is a business. Make your money, then seek excitement elsewhere. opm8