So I assume you enjoy looking at the computer screen for about 2 hours and forcing yourself to find something to trade, yet at the same time forcing yourself not to trade because it is such a bad period? Cause I certainly do not. Trading is a career that places very very high tension on your nervous and emotional system. Taking paths as Discipline, will only make the matters worse. You know, in case the two of you forgot, you are supposed to like..no... LOVE what you do for a living. Unless you have a fanatical, militant personality, I do not see in any fucking way how you can honestly enjoy trading the way Discipline does. I get up on 4 hours of sleep after an 18 hour workday (with a gym work out) sometimes to go to trade because for the first time in my life I really really want to come to work. The first 2 hours, I try not to even go to the bathroom or get a drink. The last 2 are so so lately. But sitting and trading during lunch, even if I do not get into positions, is either boring or frustrating. Or I start trading too much and end up churning or taking big hits. It's simple math. I've looked over my P&L's for the day and that's exactly what it showed. I figured I needed to do something else durig lunch to take my mind off a bit. So instead I play an online PC game which is fun, enjoyable and somewhat exhilirating. At any moment, I can switch programs and get into a trade that is worth the risk. It works for me. I do not need to get into a "mode" and if you do, you are trying too hard. You know, you just gotta see the top 2 traders, who are actually the managing partners of the group. They are a nuthouse most of the time, pumping music, making funny noises, making fun of each other, telling jokes, yelling..etc. With the militant mentality, you would think they are total failures as traders. A good work environment is very important. If I had to trade in a work environment that Discipline trades in, I would not want to be a day trader for long.
holy moly! ok, i'm up at 6 (i live in SF), music on in the background, 1 laptop for chat, another for trading + extra monitor. stick to the same nasdaq stocks all day, pretty simple. mxim, lltc, qlgc, qcom, ebay, nvls, ..... watch the NDX, when it starts an uptrend, i'm long, downtrend, i'm short. nap at 1:30, up to greet my girl at the door at 5.
....keeping yourself busy doing other things SAVES you money. Its kinda like keeping on the lights in your 20 acre manufacturing building all night just because. i've lost most of my money when the market just isn't going anywhere.
I wake up at 4 am do some some yoga excercises, and then head to the office. By 6 am i'm in the office and looking at a 15 minute chart to see where the support and resistance will be. By 6:30 the market opens, i have one chart up of NQ, and a few indicators like up, down, side tick volume, and volume distribution. Using Neoticker for this. I put on relaxing music and head phones and try to get into a hypnotic trance where emotions don't effect trading. I occasionally take the headphones off and stroll about the office, talking to traders. I also communicate with traders in the chatroom. I take the headphones off at 1:15 pm, and i go to lunch. After lunch i come back to analyze my trades, and reflect. By 3 pm i'm backtesting code and creating indicators, working with others in the office on ideas. I usually browse the net for a bit before heading home at around 7 or 8pm. Although I put a great deal of intensity into becoming a successful trader, I do it in a relaxed way. I can't imagine doing what you do unless of course u do it with headphones on and a relaxed state of mind . All the more power to you though for having that sort of mental capacity. Unfortunately, my brain doesn't have multi-threading capabilities. Good luck.
If you have been trading for as long as you claim Discipline, you should know by now ALL people work at things in different ways. To make such an ignorant and blanket statement as "you don't have what it takes to be a trader" is asinine. Some of the best traders out there do NO research, take many breaks during the day, and come away with easy 6 or 7 fig incomes. Everyone is different and has different styles. If being a research guru and taking every second of the day to sit down and be disciplined works for you..... great (although I feel sorry for you) but don't assume that others need to do the same thing to be successful. Some of the best traders I know do nothing but wake up in the morning, trade, play games, trade, play games.......whatever.....
Jesse Livermore and Jimmy Rogers (among many others) highlight that they made/make the most money doing nothing. It takes discipline to, at times, sit on your hands. Fortunately I do nothing well ...
This is nearly identical to what I have called my "Peers Trading" method in another thread. A group of six stocks (but I trade the Single Stock Futures). My group of six is: MXIM, QLGC, QCOM, NVLS, KLAC, XLNX
I hope I didn't imply that I'm a frazzled, high-strung trader on the edge all day, because I'm certainly not. I've taken off for a run in the middle of the day, or booked off early to go to the beach. And I think playing video games or just goofing off during the day is a great way to break up the day and keep you out of bad trades. I woud like to do that stuff, but I just honestly feel that there is opportunity to make money every minute of the day. However, let me qualify that by saying that my idea of trading isn't just going long or short a listed or naz stock. The more time I spend working on ideas, the more my eyes are opened to just how much opportunity there is in the financial markets. I'm learning to think differently from the crowd and try to see things that the masses are missing. I'm literally only able to act on maybe 20% of the ideas I have, but that's because the stuff I'm doing takes time and there are only so many hours in the day, so projects keep getting pushed to the back burner. So if there is a day where things are slow for me, there's always something for me to do, whether it's reasearch or doing small trades to try out an idea. There is a large farming community around my area and farmers are a funny bunch. They usually had the family business passed on to them and they've learned how to raise cattle and wheat since they were knee high to a grasshopper, but they make lousy businessmen. When times are good, they're spending money like drunken sailors on tractors and pickup trucks. A couple years of low grain prices or drought and the bank comes and takes it all away. The smart ones re-invested the money from the good times and diversified their operations and insulated themselves from the ups and downs of the business. Traders are similar. If you only know how to make money one way, and that way stops working, then what? I want to be a well rounded trader with skills and strategies that can be used in any market, under any conditions. I've seen one-trick pony traders who's strategy wasn't working play video games all day because there was nothing to do, then complain that they weren't making any money. Guess what? They're not traders anymore. Is this kind of thinking really in such a minority among us?
This week I tried trading without any external information but the tape and charts (no cnbc, no news or trading sites, only one peek at the weekly data reports to know when to expect volatility). Just a few cd's playing, and a guitar in my lap trying to learn a few riffs. It was definitely a refreshing change, esp not having to listen to the same broken record of commercials on tv. But it got me to focus more, not on the market, but on my own discipline -- I wasn't constantly trying to push when there was nothing to be done. neways, sonic youth is a bitch to play