I've been trading for one year and am breaking even. This morning was easy money--a set of patterns that I've witnessed a dozen times. ES opens up and drops to the 1275 area, a critical support from January and March 2008 which was confirmed on Friday. Price bounces off, retraces to the 20 ema, chops around, and moves up. This is it. From here on out, all one has to do is look at price action and decide whether to go long at the retracement either to the 8 or 20 ema. Every time ES retraced, all I had to do was look at the strongest sector or the strongest stock in a weak sector and buy it. In this case, healthcare and industrials were strong. The top performers in XLV and XLI would've yielded big winners with just a few thousand shares. So would GS and WFC in the financial sector. Then when ES hit resistance in the 1291 area set last week, all I had to do was short the weakest stock in the weakest sector. A simple short on AIG with an exit when the ES retraced to the 20 ema would've yielded a 40+ cent winner. Going long a strong stock after the retracement would've given you another winner. I've seen this over and over again. It feels so close within grasp it's frustrating. BUT I STILL LOST MONEY. YOU KNOW WHY? BECAUSE I READ THAT IRAN WAS THREATENING TO IMPOSE CONTROLS ON AN OIL TRADE ROUTE, AND SO DECIDED TO PICK TOPS THE ENTIRE WAY UP!!! <-----TOO STUPID TO LIVE.
Dont pay too much attention to news - those are usually reflected in the charts anyways. Unless there's a nuke heading to NYC ~ most news will only serve to confuse you.
news stories are like hypnotic suggestions carefully placed thruout the week and the day to massage the market so the persons placing the information can get a better fill, it's hard to beleive that anyone in the oil industry would do anything like that
Exactly the reason why I do not have a news feed, will not listen to CNBC except to get economic numbers, and ONLY pay attention to the charts. The fact that you broke even during your first year puts you WAY ahead of the curve.
trader 'gremlins' always come to haunt you. even if you've made it you have to deal with self-sabotage. self-sabotage is when you trade to lose and you know it. self-sabotage is another reason for traders blowing up.
Overcoming self-sabotaging behavior was a vastly greater challenge for me than was figuring out the setups. I would imagine it is like that for many. My demons still haunt me to this day, I'm just more aware than I used to be.
I have gone trough the same thing over and over again. Now I only wait to see if price action tells me to change my bias etc...I know it might sound obvious, but not sure what else to tell you.