anyone out their been at the point where being impatient works against you.. I have this tendency to move before my system tells me to move... and i move myself into a position that i wouldnt do normally. how do i break this bad habit and impatience to enter a forming position before it has formed.
Patience is one of the many importnat things a trader has to master. many times, there is really only one good trade in a 4 hour period. and seeing it developing, and getting in at the right time is the art of trading.
Ive been breaking that very habit in recent months.... mostly, I spend more time examining PA and less time jumping in on everything that 'looks' promising. I'm learning to feel the PA flow better,and develop a better sense of 'knowing ' when the time is right to trade. finding the key s/r point.after watching for hours...sharpens the mind to see the best moments to enter. and this takes many hours of practice. when you get to see it clearly, but fail to pull the trigger,and realize shortly later, that this was the key moment to enter,and now its past.... when that happens many times in a row,over a few weeks, then you will know that you are improving your vision and patience in a good way. missing these good trades,but seeing them coming and going,is like being close to the gold mine..... this is a good development.... it means youre getting there, and closer that you realize to making money. the next step is to .... practice trading in demo for a bit..... see how that works out.... to test your vision. developing a 'feel' for the flow of PA, and seeing how that many times over the course of a 4 hour period.... there might really be only 2 good entry points,maybe 3, but not too many. and I'm learning this by watching PA for many hours at a time. learning that its much better to watch and wait,than to get in too soon, at the wrong time,wrong price level, etc.... the right entry time and exit moment is the whole game. the whole tricky puzzle.
good point i traded in demo for 6 months I now trade live for a while close to a year its just i get so excited I read an article about how the certain part of the brain is lit up by trading same as gamblers... i just need more practice and remember i have a job to and im not needing this to live i have a job to this is investing.. and if things arent perfect then its a bad investment.
I relate to that. I usually pull the trigger too early because I think I am going to miss out on an opportunity. Sometimes it's out of boredom. I have learned to talk myself out pulling the trigger prematurely by remembering and visualizing the last time I lost money by being impatient. If I can't talk myself out of it, I usually get up and walk away for 5 min to distract myself. As Tom says, patience is skill every trader has to master. Everyone can click on the buy/sell button but only masters have the patience to wait for the right moment to take action.
How about scaling into a trade as a solution? I don't mean getting in when there's no trade set-up, I mean getting in a tad early with a percentage of the position. That way if it goes your way without reaching your 'real' entry then at least you have something on it, and if it goes to your real entry just add the rest of the trade. If you get out too early as well you could use the same strategy, scale out to take some profit and move stops etc etc. Both may skew risk:reward slightly but it's compensated for by not missing trades because price never went to your exact entry. Talking of which I just had a perfect example: I was looking to buy Usd/Jpy around 98.95. Price was stalling at 99.32 so I entered half the position. It never went down to my entry and is now at 99.57 so I've come out and made 25 pips (on half a trade) that I wouldn't have had if I'd waited.