Day trading difficulties

Discussion in 'Psychology' started by oilfxpro, Apr 17, 2011.

  1. bstay

    bstay

    are you sure Jack Hershey said that? in my 4 years with ET, i have never understood his sentences so this is a big surprise for me as i made it to the last sentence.
     
    #31     Apr 17, 2011
  2. bstay

    bstay

    i actually switched from stocks daytrading to forex daytrading, as i found forex easier for me. the one change i noticed was the timeframes,
    stocks: 1mins, 5mins, 15mins, 60mins(6.5 bars for each day).
    forex: 5mins, 15mins, 60mins, 240mins(6 bars for each day).

    in other words when i trade stocks on 1mins chart and watched the 60mins for daily trend, in forex it becomes trading 5mins chart with eye on 4hrs chart for daily trend. i wouldn't trade forex on 1mins setup.
     
    #32     Apr 17, 2011
  3. Many years ago I read a book " trading currency cross rates".I feel it is still the best book around.If I had followed his book , I would be making a load of money in forex.

    He only talks about interest rates expectations and their relationships to prices.It is still true today as it was 30 years ago, before Nixon's fiat printing press .

    Based on t/a all the vodoo science(t/a) is like African jungle dance , even Africans are more intelligent than t/a vodoo doctors.
     
    #33     Apr 17, 2011
  4. KDASFTG

    KDASFTG

    Greetings O,

    Let me add my 2 cents into the mix, to give you “something else” you may want to think about. I have stated this same idea before in other threads. The fact that; “trading is a game that takes place inside your head”. Its not you against the market, its just you reflecting who you are in the market. Now before you mentally tune me out, concluding that I’m about to indulge you in some “half baked psychobabble”, please open your mind to hear me out, for I do not intend to go there.

    The fact of the matter is that the market just transmits ticks. That’s essentially all it does. The game being played, and the meaning assigned to those ticks resides inside “your” head. So therefore, you don’t see the market as it really is,…but as you really are, which is, the sum total of your own market knowledge and experience at the current moment. What else could it be?

    From my perspective, I do not believe that you have a “patience problem” per se. As I see it, you have a consistency problem that is affecting your “patience”. I believe you are allowing what is basically a doable technical analysis risk control problem, to stand in the way of your maintaining the consistency necessary for your success.

    As I see it, in your specific case, you have created your game unwittingly, in that you were not cognizant of the consequences of your initial choices for your game, technical or otherwise. You built your method unaware that there were “consequences” to every choice you made. So now, if the game that “you have unwittingly created” confuses you, guess who “built in” that confusion? Remember, the market just transmits ticks. The game you create with those ticks is inside of your head. You see, the confusion is not coming from the market. You created your own market experience by your choices! The market is simply reflecting back to you the consequences of your choices.

    But all is not lost. The best part is that, now, being conscious and fully cognizant of the types of choices you make, you can just as easily remove the confusion, doubt, and fear, anytime you desire. Decide right now to improve the quality of your market choices. Right now, you can just as easily say to yourself; “I’m going to create a game that I can win over time, that is easy for me to execute, and that doesn’t confuse me, or engender fear and doubt, in the process”. Notice how an "internal decision" to improve the quality, will now affect the technical choices that you will now make "externally". It comes from within! You are not trying to get something from the market, you resolve to reflect who you are in the market.

    As a start, just take a look at the chart “you chose” in your last submission. Since, I believe you are using the “structure of the market” in your decision making, just take a look at what that “structure”, on this chart is "speaking to you" during the day. It is changing its bias and direction so frequently, that, in your own words; "the chart leaves you full of fear, doubt, and indecision". Confident decisionmaking is virtually impossible with this kind of structural basis. Remember, you did this to yourself by the unwitting choices you made when you chose this chart! From what I can see, you have chosen a main action chart, that is “speaking to you” much too often, and in indecisive terms. In one minute, it is telling you that the bias is up, then the next minute, it’s telling you that it is down. I don’t believe that this is a personal problem with your patience. This is a problem with the “market experience” you have unwittingly created for yourself.

    As one technical suggestion, in order to improve your market "read", if you were to move this bar chart systematically to an incrementally Higher Time Frame (HTF), I believe a “useable reality” would soon appear. One that provides you with the “read” consistency you desire, and at the same time, provides you with the decisiveness you seek. It will “speak” to you, in a manner that you can readily apply! Then you can use the timeframe that you currently have on this chart for risk mitigation upon entry. But,....you only allow the HTF chart to do the talking to you. The sole purpose of the LTF is for risk mitigation, once the HTF chart has spoken,.....that is it.

    In making these types of qualitative improvements, you will have thereby “created” for yourself a consistent game that you can win over time. One that is well within your comfort zone, because you have built “your comfort zone” into the method. Since you will now be decisive, and playing a winning game, the market will merely reflect this fact back to you in the results you seek.

    Just my opinion.

    KDASFTG
     
    #34     Apr 17, 2011
  5. NoDoji

    NoDoji

    He said those things in a post about a year and half ago I saved it in my personal trading journal because it had an immediate impact on me. I spent a great deal of time practicing in sim after that, and it was to become the first of several "Aha!" moments that completely transformed my trading.
     
    #35     Apr 17, 2011
  6. wrbtrader

    wrbtrader

    What's preventing you from using the information from the book now. :confused:

    Mark
     
    #36     Apr 17, 2011
  7. I just thought I would try some day trading and develop some strategies for day trading , and also develop some mechanical automated strategies.It has taken me off track.

    If you look at this chart , the things he mentions still work in today's currency markets.
     
    #37     Apr 17, 2011
  8. Here is the chart
     
    #38     Apr 17, 2011
  9. I am grateful for all the responses.Thank you.

    Books are mainly written by people who do not trade and have never been successful at trading.It is often difficult to believe and follow everything you read , until it is proven and verified in the trader's mind.

    My only grudge against authors of t/a books and snake oil salesman , is why didn't they help prepare for trend failures and fakes.What if a book title said " 50 % of trends fail , prepare yourself for trend failures and all trends fail eventually".
    An author says 50 % of trends fail , would you bother buying his book on t/a.Why not just toss a coin for 50/50? 50 % of what t/a authors write is rubbish and does not always work .It may work sometimes , but you can put your cash on it, the author would rather take your money in books.
     
    #39     Apr 17, 2011
  10. bstay

    bstay

    if you no longer believe in trend-following strategies, or books written about trend-following, why not experiment with reversal or counter-trend trading? ignore everything said about "trend" or "continuation pattern" or "moving averages" since you now believed that >50% of trends fail and it's better to toss coin for 50/50.

    reversal trades look for extreme movement in one direction, exhaustion, and entry upon specific candlestick patterns like pin bar, dragonfly doji, hammer, railroad tracks, morning/evening star doji, engulfing bar, etc. not to support any of these candlestick junk but just for examples. so in reversal trading you look for entries on a U-turn signature, and target the retracement to a neutral area, or reversion to mean. besides individual candlestick pattern you also have reversal structures like double-top/bottom, head-and-shoulders, v-tops/bottoms, with MACD divergence or RSI divergence, and "location" qualifiers such as confluence of daily/weekly pivots or major fibonacci retracement, or prior major/minor support/resistance lines (horizontal price, not diagonal trendlines) to add probabilities to the reversal zone.

    in other words, if trend-following methods as you've determined will fail 50% of the time, do you also think that reversal trading is also 50% at best? one well-marketed snakeoil salesman suggested the "60:30:10 Rule" that exists across all markets and all time-frames,
    Trend 30%
    Breakout 10%
    Counter-Trend 60%
    so maybe reversal trades might come easier for you trading the 1mins chart.
     
    #40     Apr 17, 2011