Nobody knows how hard it is to trade until they have tried it for a year or two. For most of us, half our trades will go sour and at least half our days, in the beginning, will be losers. You must keep your losing days small, but one of the hardest things in trading is to get in the hole early then stand aside for the rest of the day, but if you cant do it you wont be around long.
I did not want to say it myself, but I agree with you. First of all, are you sure you trade what you wanted to trade? That is: are you following your plan? Today (Wed) you had a good TICK divergence setup (ca 1:15 PM) with TRIN confirming it (testing the LOD, double well, not reaching the LOD and rebounding). It was a good short. How about trying only one setup? Just so you could concentrate better.
Wally, I believe you are correct. I am trying to do too much (too many different kinds of setups) and as a result I am just confusing myself. I read an article by Linda Rasche recently and in it she said that the best traders tend to specialize in just one or two types of trades. Jack of all trades, master of none. Pardon the pun
Hi Corallus, I read about your loss yesterday. well, I got chopped to pieces in the afternoon as well, gave back profits of the morning and ended up with a stiff loss. However, it can be learned to be profitable during chop. After the market close of today i have been practicing on the simulator of ensign windows, this program has a playback feature, with which you can playback any day you like. i picked a day at random, luckily it turned out to be choppy as hell, i made 8 loosers before i knew it, but then i adapted to the conditions and came back to BE. I can really recommend this tool, it gives you the possiblity to practice whenever you want and at 10* speed if you like, i wish i had known this product before i started trading. I spend a lot of time tweaking my setups but paid no attention to exection skills before i started trading. that was a big mistake, execution skills are the thin line between profit or loss and need to be developed as well. A simulator works perfect for that purpose. well, don't let the last days get you down, keep up the good work and have a look at a good simulator. i guarantee you, you'll benefit tremendously from it.
I try to adhere to my trading plan as close a possible so I try to take all the setups I can as I am never sure of what is an "error" or what is an actual loss cluster that is creating my downside for the given day. The setups I use have a very small amount of discretion and I will discuss today as an example to illustrate what I am trying to say as far as when to stop after a down period, be it a couple trades or a couple of days. Today I went short at the open for +8 ( NQ's ) and then waited for the 30 minute range to form. Once the range has formed I wait for it to break to trigger my first trade. Todays range created a situation where I had to use some discretion for playing the break or fading it. I chose to go with the break despite the sizeable move down and fairly wide stop needed ( for my setup ). Anyway, this failed and I took a sizeable stop. Once the pullback began I looked to enter long at the place where I would have entered if fading the break since my target would have yet to be reached. I entered and this trade also stopped out. Now after starting the day +8 I was now -10 on the day. A reversal like this would generally cause me to stop trading as I despise letting up days turn to down days. BUT, I thought about two things: 1. My first loss was an error in my discretion. 2. My second trade I used an improper stop due to being a bit skittish on taking two sizeable stops. (error) These two things told me it was not plan that was failing but perhaps my execution. Therefore I decided to take a re entry on the third trade of the day. Long 1060 which was lower than the prior entry and slightly higher than the stop. This trade was a winner for +4 ( hit trailing stop after being +9). But this was a better execution of plan so I went for another trade which called for a long above 1069 which triggered at 1070 and was also a winner and got me back to even for the day despite some early errors. I run a room as most of you know and errors on my part or even slight plan execution errors I make I have to take very seriously. I am human and fall victim on occasion to emotional breakdowns. The moral for today was to recognize the reason for losses and try to understand if it is a day where your plan is not in sync with the market or are you making some execution errors. If it is the latter, figure it out as quick as possible and be firm and confident in the next entry. If your plan is not in sync regardless of your losses it is best to stop trading before the market forces you to. Good luck comes to those prepared to accept it. AllenZ
It sounds like you took a couple losses similar to what Corallus took with the breakouts not working.
No trades today. I am currently in the process of evaluating my trading methods and making refinements. I feel that in order to do this most effectively, I need to step away from the market for a few days and not do any live trading. I'll probably start posting again in about a week. Talk to you later. Good trading!!
Except that tomorrow may be a big up day... Two of my systems are suggesting going long, but one of them may still flip its signal in the morning.