Another good thing about using goals is that I know how much I'm going to make tomorrow: either +X or -X. So it all comes down to hitting the +X target as accurately as possible and limiting DDs to as low as possible.
Don't get me wrong, I do believe in letting winners run but for my intraday futures system - I'm all about being as defensive/consistant as possible. When trading intraday futures its just silly to hold unless the market is ripping vertically or its going parabolic - otherwize when the chop comes your profits will be gone. Its my core system. For longer term plays, I'll set the stop and hold unless stopped out or my view changes.
dont let boredom get you into trouble. I've been there before. Especially if I'm up a % over my target, I tend to "gamble" and push the envelope. Just think if u hit your target everyday straight for a year, would you be very happy? if so, then stick with it for a year and see how consistent you can become. Like the other poster said, seek excitement elsewhere, not in the markets
i totally agree. when i was starting out, i cannot count how many times i traded away my morning's winnings. i had to learn that the money i earn is NOT the house's money ... it's MY money i am not giving it back what i have done before is trade my demo account, AFTER i make my target. but i do agree that the more successful i have gotten has come with a much more methodological, rational, non-emotional approach. one of the reasons traders lose so much, and so often, is the urge to gamble. and there are few things more dangerous to one's P&L than the emotional euphoria that comes from making money. it is very hard not to want to keep trading and getting more reckless (cause you are a winning trader and you can't lose) gotta avoid that. ask yourself. would you rather be bored with making $1k a day or seek excitement, but risk losing it all? i know my answer
I have a big problem with boredom too just because my setups do not come up all that often. Online poker helps a lot and makes a little money too. I have a tivo type setup on tv and record football games and other shows at night and watch them because there aint shit on during the day.
If you are having feelings about things related to your trading regime, you are being told something important. If the feelings are closely related to your specific monitoring efforts involving sensing data that's another consideration. I read your subsequent comments after this pithy post. There is a possibility to consider: you may want to establish a partnership with the market. For the market to commence to tell you things, you will have to agree with the market to not do its job. If you cannot concede to the market the things it is responsible for, then the market will tell you only the very little it is currently imparting to you. What you think is boredom is estrangement. Trading is a business where you operate accounts and that is all you do as real time work. Just to glance lightly at the "target notion", it is not an operating aspect of the business of running an account. Your mind is open to changing what has been your trading approach and activity. The market day is fairly regular and the trader's business is very regular. As you read and post about the times of the day you see this common and regular kind of expression about how it is. Others speak about their maturing and fitting into the constraints they have no way of avoiding. Any business on Mainstreet of America does not just make money in the morning and give it back in the afternoon. Ordinary business people are not on the golf courses in the afternoon because they have shut down in the afternoon because they cannot make money then. They are on the course because they can afford to play in the afternoon because they have their shops and businesses humming away. They have made the appropriate agreements with respect to the markets in which they do business. You as a trader may want to look at the regular way in which the market operates day after day. Taking money out of the market is what traders do and markets give money to traders. The business of the trader is to take money out of the market and it is a full time thing. If a trader takes it out in the am and not in the pm, then he does not know the difference of how the market operates in the am compared to the pm. So what is the dividing line between the am and the pm? We google that under the heading: settlement. The huge sums of money that are always in the market are adjusted a little here and there by those who have huge sums of money in the market as their business practice. This is, of course, a different business than trading. It is the BIG business of the markets and after settlement one major business purpose is served and before settlement another major business purpose is served. You as a trader are telling us, loud and clear, you operate the same way all day long. Part of the day you make money and part of the day you do not. It may be time for you to partner up with the markets and to do that you have to agree to do your part and insist that the market do its part for you. How do people move beyond this beginner stage and way of trading? Agrivating is the normal modus. And agrivating can be replaced by making money or anything else. Some of the lists proferred are very humorous as we all see. The myths of supply and demand are not where to look The driving factors of daily settlement is where to look. ET has over 30 forums. Settlement doesn't appear in any of them so far. BIG money works all morning to have the settlement statement available at 1:15pm NYSE time, Monday through Friday. Then administrators have the troops go to work to get things straight by the end of the day (they always fail) and to have a game plan ready for the am to fix what is still busted. What is the other half of the BIG business model besides settlement? Its making money or cutting costs and money management. Sales makes money. Minimizing fixed costs cuts costs and money management makes sure capital is in the right pace at the right time. Now you can see why you make money in the morning. That is the only tme of the day that you do what big business does, i. e., you are placing capital in a place where it is getting the job done (so are they). You do not do well when you are trading and BIG money is balancing the daily books as required after settlement reports are repaired. What would it be like if everyone used EMH because each day was transparent. That list of yours simply blocks your views of what the market says transparently to high velocity traders. Have you ever watched, during the day, when BIG money is throwing some protection in place to deal with capital movement beyond their timing type control? If you (BIG money) find out at 1:15pm that you have a problem that you can't fix in a New York minute, how do you lay off the temporary risk? To begin to go to an intermediate level of trading from the beginner level a person has to recognize that the market operates in different ways during different times of the day. Getting this straight, then allows a person to understand that the same beginner type (think set ups and edges) trading strategies only apply when big money is doing one of a few of the obligatory things that they routinely do. When a person goes from intermediate to expert trading , the opportunities become greater because of available capital and less constraints when the money velocity (pace is extreme) and by having the ability to jump in front of the freight trains of BIG business (sentiment shifts). The Time Magazine announcement says it all. By making YOU the person of the year, they are conceding that the electronic global scene has, at long last, removed all the barriers for people, as individuals, to really pull capital out of the markets. YouTube is just child's play as far as doing commmunications and the related topical stuff. 2007 is the year (the upcoming year) of the Financial Individual and it starts just a couple of weeks from now. There is not a market anywhere in the world that a person cannot extract the potential the market gives. The fact that this is not commonly done is just the way the conventional orthodoxy has made it. That is history at this point. As Time determined, neirther YouTube, Iran's boss, nor the boss of China do hack it as luminaries anymore compared to the power of the individual person; the Financial Individual is 2007's classic YOU that steps out of 2006 burning rubber all the way to 2007 New Years day. It is not a goal thing it is operating as an individual trader, electronically and globally in any market with any instrument, at full tilt 24/7. Follow the hits that's where the money will be.