Thanks KDA I'm trying things... I wasn't being as conscienous as I'd like to be sim tading, so my agreement with myself is to trade one contract on the ES, with only a few trades a day, for the month of Dec. See if I could focus more. It's working. I could stop now, the first 3 days really did it for me. And as of this moment I'm up $39 even after commissions. I'll probably keep going for the month and see. But I'm more than willing to stop at anytime I see I'm not holding my own, and switch to sim trading. Actually, if I only trade one contract for months or years that's fine with me. Or sim trade if that is what I need to do. Susy Orman talks about finance as... if you try it as the race car you tend to crash or break down. If you pick the put-put though... that works. You are ahead in the long run. I've picked the put-put all my life... in money, living in a small town, occupation. I'd say so also in women, but that might get me in more trouble than even I am willing to face! I've had a delightful life. In fact, I've rarely cared about money per se, just haveing enough made sense. Owned a mom and pop type business (a garden center) for many years. One of my better friends owns an organic farm. He thinks money is ...bad. Necessary evil. Nothing that really matters is purchased with it. I don't go that far, but can go there in my thinking and experience. At the same time, I like winning. And I really want to get my thinking back. I can't express that strong enough. Sorry about your friends. I could easily be there now but due to a different cause. I was there. [I guess I should say, my brain injury started with picking up a respiratory bug while visiting a friend in the hospital. I ran temps high enough, long enough...] I'm starting to rattle about here. I have good people watching me. It does seem odd to take this tack in healing my mind, but it's clicking with some as working. I am improving in observible ways. You'd have to be here to get the whole picture! I'll trade small as it helps and sim as that helps. Certainly not risk much! What ever I am, I am not crazy. I actually have that in writting! got to go for today I feel your concern, thanks for your interest.
My trading plan is not set. I'm in a class on futures now. 6 weeks on-line. Had the exact same class live in Sept. The class is very technical analysis oriented. My homework this week is to real or sim trade with Keltner Channels, Bollinger Bands, etc., and send charts to the teacher. Tho I suspect I will end up trading more with Al Brooks approach, there is value in learning this stuff. When this teacher gets to Fibs... it's a thing of beauty to watch her application and it's accuracy. While my traing plan is not set Geez talks about his 4 set-ups being simply the one's his eyes pick out redily. When Al Brooks talked about using up/down or down/up twins as entries, those stand out to my eye more than anything else I've seen. Makes sense to work with something like that. So. I back tested those for two months and found a 70% success rate. They don't work often if in part of another pattern that says things will probably go the other way. They don't work if they say things will continue and there has already been several legs up... etc. Sometimes they just don't work! But there is usually one set every day, and often several. And good for one point and often two or more if a trending day. If that is not a fluke of the two month backtest, I could drive my economic put-put to where I want to go averaging one or two ES points a day. And I see that consistantly doing that is more easily said than done. I also am working on a class setup of trading economic reports. I aim to do that with the one's 1 hr before market opens. I'm pretty sure if something happens then, that is the reason. And economic reports just keep coming. I'll want to ad more all around, but this is where I've started trading my one contract. I occassionaly do an obvious pattern if it is just blatant. And I'm quickly coming to only trading for minimal points or parts thereof... see if I can get consistancy there before going for all those points that seem possible on a trade. As to the other parts of a plan My record keeping seems to cover the essentials I also print a chart of each day and look for the best trades I know of, and see how many I took or not, where I could improve. I'm tightening my R:R... along with my entries and exits. I'm still looking at how they fit in trending vs. trading range. And econ reprts are different than other things, a much larger reward seems possible. And then I have all my class homework. Certainly picking up insights in class I've not found elsewhere. Appreciate that. I've also picked up things here on Elitetrader I've not found elsewhere! Thank you. I'm still growing in the basics. The classes include a 3 day 1 on 1 live with a mentor. We are supposed to travel to their work station and.... work! I haven't done that yet. Just don't feel ready. Maybe after really trading for a month I'll be better equiped to think about it. Thanks for reading all my stuff. I wake up in the morning and think of that Gary Larson cartoon, where the guy wakes up and sits on the edge of his bed. He's scrawled a big note on the wall in front of him saying "First pants, THEN shoes". Yep, I'll get my trading plan in place too one of these days!
I'm talking this weekend with one of our local special ed teachers. She has helped me in the past understand 'loss of compensations' and 'perseverance'. Perseverance being the repetition of ineffective behaviors. Something some traders seem to have experince with! She says that she spends all her time helping her students build viable compensations. I expect she can help me focus in ways to place my orders better, and evaluate the market more consistantly. There has to be smart ways to overcome or get around places we get stuck. I notice many begining traders drop out or at least vanish from our sight. Or never seem to get the CP stage. And I may never get there too! But perhaps sharing this approach... will allow one or two to rethink their possibilities... from a different perpective, with ways of getting to the profitable part. ------------- AH... she has been here. She watched me set up buy and short stop entries, with bracket orders... and I told her of the errors I've made that I know of. Mixing up my limits and stops, just entering the wrong numbers, etc. Do a short and make my limit larger than my stop! She suggested making 3x5 cards with examples of like, a 'buy stop bracket order'... to compair with. The card I fill out should have a high-lighter background color coordinated exactly with the way the order should finally look like on the screen. Always enter it the same way, e.g. with your protetive stop prior to your target, etc. So I write out an order on a 3x5 I compair it to the example one... and make sure the numbers that should be bigger are, i.e. the tgt is right in proportion to the protective stop. I enter the order... at the confirmation stage I hold up my color coordinated 3x5 card to the screen and verify. ... if all this takes too long, well, another trade will come along. Or I can find different kinds of patterns to trade, etc. that this will work with. Hope that all makes sense! I make enough errors that a system like this is worth a try. If it doesn't work, I'll talk to her again. Also I go my neurologist Thrusday -- Barrow's Neurological Hospital... one of the top 20 hospitals in the nation no less-- we will review my MRI from last week. Based on that I will likely get a new occupational &/or speech therapist. I'm going to ask for one who knows something about trading!
Stats for the month so far: 12 wins, 11 loss, 2 BE Wins 48% Avg win $56.54/ avg loss $61.68 = .91 I didn't record things right one day, but over all made and lost $700. The losses include the commissions. I'm trading less than 4 trades per day I trade, and am making just over 2 recorded errors per day. I know I actually made more. Also making far more errors trading for real than I did sim trading. That is cutting my profits alot. So I'm working on that, and will try the technique the special ed teacher suggested. But along with the compensation thing, I just need to relax! With sim trading I had a kind of relaxed focus. Need to find that again. Monday will be sim trading, and working on my homework for class. I'll sim trade until I feel I can place my orders error free, and until find within a more centered place from which to participate.
Sell stop on econ rept 6:30 Not filled, so cancelled at 6:33 I meant to also place a buy stop simultaneously... it would have filled and reached a 1 pt tgt, but my 3x5 card 'anti-entry-error' system took just a hair too long to do. I like it tho. It's going to help.
long 1238 hard to believe it will go up further! But it's 8:00 and sort of a retracement.... min's later and I"m sitting here with my finger on the sell bracket order. it looks like it's forming a triangle continuation pattern.... Hey, it's working? Moving up for the moment Tgt is 1239 stop1237.5 bracket order entered. stopped out. And THEN to 1239.
You know, I can't believe how much difference there is for me in trading live vs. sim trading. I compair my records and I'm just to 'tight' now. I'm thinking to try two approaches. Set a budget for losses, don't worry about it and see if can trade as freely as I did sim trading... for a few days as a test, or maybe once a week? Geez said he could sleep well if he had 5 losses straight in a row... which would be about $1000 for him. With one point stop loss... that would be about 20 trades for me. If that doesn't work, alternatively I'll take some days and just trade one play from each of my basic set-ups, and then only if they are 'textbook'. No trades in a day is good. If I get to many losses I'll start skipping a day and studying, and then limiting trades to one or two a day, rather than sim trading. I'll use sim trading just briefly for testing new set-up's. See if this is the problem or not. I have growing confidence I'm reading the charts and seeing the probabilities my classes say are there. My 3x5 card entry system has given me a couple of perfect entry days, so that is working. I just need to shake free of this... whatever it is.