Discretionary Trading and Statistics

I know there are discretionary traders out there who keep stats to make themselves more mechanical.

If any if you here is primarily a pattern trader or price action, without the use of any indicators, how do you keep track of your setups?

I have been taking screenshots and largely categorizing my setups for a few months now, but I'm still often wondering if perhaps someone out there is doing something better/different.

Would appreciate any advice from those of you who call yourself at least partially discretionary and still keep track of stats for setups.

 

Bump...

 

most people use some sort of indicator, custom made or not

not per se as signaling but for decision making overall

I sure hope you are not asking to see my setups

 

Could you give an example of this.

No I am not asking to see your setups...

 

way back when i was still trying to learn trading i would just simply keep notes and stats of the setups. are you just looking for something easier than that? i don't really think there is anything easier. it just takes work.

 

I use price action only on the charts without any traditional indicators (e.g. cci, stoc, macd, volume, moving averages et cetera).

However, I don't use stats to help me be more mechanical.

Instead, I use a rule based methodology.

I then categorize my trading into three main groups:

* Trades via the rule based methodology

* Intuition trades outside my rule based methodolgy

* Trade Errors

Then when I do my stats...it's for each of the above categories.

Also, if you are implying that anyone that doesn't use a mechanical trading system are then a discretionary trader...

Based upon that info...I'm a discretionary trader.

Mark

 

Robbie... thanks for reinforcement.

I didn't think there was a better way, but of course, I was thinking I might get some examples of how to make it less discretionary I guess. I'm in the same boat... taking notes on everything I see after it lights a bulb in my head.


Nihaba: Exactly what I was looking for. I am not interested in describing what is considered mechanical or discretionary trading though. I just threw that as a label, but didn't really mean anything by it. Thanks.