Traveling, trading on a laptop using the laptop mouse, several times I have accidentally right clicked and missed entries only to watch the market run without me.
NoDoji, Bloopers. Eliminate that process. You will make decisions that you thought were right, just as a QB throws that tight spiral that he felt he could squeeze thru. It gets picked, dammit. If you trust your playbook, you do not make mistakes. I have not made a mistake in a long time. Does not mean that I did not have a losing trade tho.
when the es first came out I tried to trade it WITH OUT a realtime chart. just watchin the prem posted every 10 minutes on cnbc. I didn't think anyone including myself could be this STUPID. thats alot of time under the bridge now. still make losing trades but I'm right about 85% of the time.
What I've finally come to realize is that losing trades that occur as a result of following your trading rules are an indication that you are trading well; you're not picking and choosing as if you can somehow predict which valid setups will produce a profit and which ones won't. However, you can trust your playbook for days, weeks, months, maybe even years, on end and still make mistakes. Mistakes seem to come out of nowhere; you let down your guard and suddenly you have that "Doh!" moment. That's what this thread is for, for experienced traders to share those blooper moments. I imagine it's even more important for newer traders to know how the experienced traders handle the mistakes and move on. In my blooper that starts this thread, I took my full loss, tried a trade the other direction, scratched the trade when there was a false channel break, positioned myself long again (at a much better price than my earlier chased entry price) and had my best trade of the day. Sometimes a mistake places you in a state of mind that's not conducive to trading. The professional realizes this and rather than revenge trading or trading in a state of distraction, s/he takes a break and clears the mind. Check out Gaj's post here from 2/16: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=147883&perpage=10&pagenumber=34
I do think this thread is very inspiring. I thought experienced ones are perfect. When I made mistakes, I would think "what the heck did you do, the pros would not do that". I compared with myself with pros. And it made my trading life harder. But what really seperates pros and newbies are they cleaned up the mistakes quick. From that stand point, I think I am not doing that bad!
I seldom ever do breakouts, I prefer to wait for a close beyond the trendline, longer the trendline the better, then wait for price to come back to the trend line and closer to moving average to take my position on angled trendlines. I can risk next to nothing this way. But I need volume to be increasing at the highs. I was salavating, price made a double bottom with increased volume on the second low telling me accumulation happening. Often times out of sideways pattern price goes up. Waited for close beyond trendline. "I just knew this was going to be a great trade to the upside", this should be written on my gravestone. Got the close beyond the trendline, got the retracement, entered, forgot to check volume, :eek: ended up buying into a double top. Took half loss when I discovered error on Dummy move. I recovered nicely on downside few bars later. Amazingly after so many years doing this, I make errors each day, just the stresses of trading. Days of old, I would "hope" the trade would get back to where I got in, at least now I get out when I know I got in wrong.
This week: Not buying 97 on CL even though I felt my order at 96 wasn't gonna get hit. Same mistake at 100.5 to 101 later, thinking I might be buying chop. CL now? 104.38 and pushing. Next.