P.O.S. journal without disclosure (ie journaling) I really don't get the whole $200 a day kind of crowd. In one sense it is limiting and on the other hand it leads to forcing trades. I'd prefer to dine at the table set for me each day and enjoy what is there. Sometimes there is no food, other times a real feast.
I did a little more thinking afterwards and I suddenly realized that it was NOT the cause. Actually it is one of the causes. There is another cause that clearly dragged me into this abyss many many times in the past. The "another cause" used to be considered a major cause. Somehow, in the process of searching for the real cause, the "another cause" was lost. After careful examination of the "another cause," I decide that it's the combination of the two causes. When the combination concept is raised, a door suddenly opened. Walking through that door, I found another pair of causes. The "another pair of causes" were once considered the reason of failure. So I keep re-visiting the old causes. Sometimes I was convinced one of them was THE cause, sometimes I put two together. When the two didn't work, I went back to one. When one didn't work, I went back to two. Othertimes, when one didn't work, I threw it away and focused on another one. But one thing is for sure, the cause I thought yesterday (the quoted post above) was the reason of failure is definitely NOT the cause. Now I think it's a combination. Not two, but four. Now looking back, I am wondering why I keep narrowing onto one single cause. One explanation is that I came up with a solution first, then went back to the imaginative cause. Oftentimes, the solution needs an easier cause. If the cause is too difficult, the solution wouldn't work. So I selected one corresponding cause to match the solution. Of course, one by one, those causes failed to establish themselves as the reason of failure. The process was frustrating because I kept wondering what the reason was for the failure. By the way, that process is a long one. How long? I don't know yet, because I haven't reached the end of it yet. After I reach the end, I will be able to tell you how long the process is. I promise I will tell you how long the process is, unless I am banned by this website.
I am still working on it. The combinations of four elements are the same. That's a good thing, because it went through changes a few times. They survived. Fully convinced. That's a good thing. Another fully convinced thing added. Now the solution part. The most difficult part. It seems difficult because I was not convinced of the problem. In other words, I was not sure of the cause of failure. Once I am fully convinced of the cause, the solution becomes natural. So instead of finding a solution, one needs to focus on the problem.
Stage Three: The Cynical Skepticism Stage You've studied so hard and put so much effort into your trading and this universal failure in the patterns only when you take them causes you to feel betrayed by the market, the books and materials and gurus you tried to learn from. Everybody claims their ideas lead to profitability, but every time you take a trade, it's a loser, even though the setups all worked perfectly before you played them. And since one of the most painful experiences is to fail when success looks easy, this embarrassment is transformed into anger: anger at the gurus, anger at the vendors, anger at the writers, the seminars, the courses, the brokers, the market makers, the specialists, the "manipulators". What's the point in trying to analyze and improve your own trading when there are so many dark forces out to get you? This excuse-driven blame game is a dead-end viewpoint, and explains a lot of what you find on message boards. Those who can't pull themselves out of it will quit.
I mean no disrespect. But unless you have a well thought out trading plan, you will lose money. The game is not tough once you understand the game. Trading is like brain surgery, you have to learn completely what makes up the brain, you have to learn how to keep it alive when doing surgery and what chemicals will work and which ones won't. Unless you day trading the ES, your idea of taking a profit once trade is profitable, what does that mean? How much profit? Minutes? hours? days?
I mean no disrespect, either. But a well thought out trading plan doesn't make money. You know it. OK, back to my search: I played roulette yesterday at an Indian casion and lost $16. One can lose control pretty easily. I reduce the combination from 4 to 2. I used to call them the horizontal combination and the vertical combination. Now I only focus on the horizontal combination.
Since I been trading since 1978, I know much on how to make and lose money. All my day trading systems been backtested using tick data going back ten plus years, some methods have sample sizes of 30,000 plus, my short term methods use hourly bars using same approach, and my long term methods-some have been tested going back to 1920's using few commodities and stocks on daily/weekly bar charts. So you are totally wrong in your beliefs that a well designed trading plan doesn't make money. I know when I didn't have one, I was like you and lost money and very discouraged. And in my past, I was into gaming long ago, only two games where you can have statistical edge over casinos, but it is small and I tested that over very long history, but each casino has different odds and decks. Making a living gambling is much tougher than in trading and why I changed my profession from gaming to trading. Casinos have tightened the edges so much now since economy went bad and so many more places to gamble, it takes great discipline to pull out profits. But everything in life offers an "edge", up to you to watch and study to discover them.
I know a guy who has been doing trading for 20-30 years. I talked with him and he sounds like a total idiot. Point: years don't count in this business. Many people remain ignorant for the rest of their lives. Many ET posters still don't get it after many years. A well designed trading plan is simply a plan, an edge, nothing more. It takes an "additional thing" to make the plan work. I don't need years or thousands of samples to know an edge. You simply sit in front of a computer for a few weeks, you will know the edge. And there are many edges. A plan is simply a written explanation of an edge. I can give people a dozen edges, but they won't make money, they will destroy them. To make the edge work, you need something else. Most people don't have this "thing." I went to the casino more frequently recently. Not because I wanted to take money from it, but because I found I need to train myself. Roulette is a better training game. It has something that my trading doesn't have. I am trying to build it into my trading. Roulette has this "thing" automatically built into it. Of course, the casino has the edge and this "thing" makes sure that the casino makes money. Like some other games, roulette is simply a luck thing for players. I don't have the edge, but I do have the luck from time to time. As long as the edge is not too much on the casino side (no more than 55% for the casino), my luck may get lucky.