To me, keeping with the automated system is key. Emotions are what destroys trading because everyone loves to pick a winner or call the bottom on the market. We like to make a prediction and have it come true. Thatâs why gambling is so popular. But the market is structured to take advantage of that. If we can use reason and trade only off of that there are ways to make money.
Good tools are also very helpful to analyze historical and realtome data and to help manage your trading. But be ware of many traps there in so-called back testing because no where you can get quality data for your system otherwise composing your own from tick data to suite your own need.
Track all metrics such as MFE and MAE. Adjust RR accordingly. Dont overtrade. Have a daily loss limit. Look at yourself in the mirror and accept all responsibility for losses. You are welcome.
How do people learn in other skills? They get instruction from experts, practise the basics, try to implement them, review their progress, iron out mistakes, study the subject in depth, rinse & repeat.
Study about the successful traders and try to give more time in practice. These things will improve our skills. The natural talent is also a big factor because some people will develop better skills than the others if give same training.
Learn to read PA bar by bar. Learn to read VA bar by bar. Learn to define "trend". After you define, trend, learn to not trade against it. The rest will take care of itself.
Heres my take on improving our trading skills... If your a successful discretionary trader please chim in; however, I'd like to argue that theres a reason why 95% of traders fail. There's 3 areas to trading - Your psychology, your trade management, and your ability to correctly predict market direction (the hardest but most profitable area of all three) One poster on this thread already mentioned that "it is a reason why he automates things" - Takes out emotion and if that works than great for you! I don't think there's a holy grail in regards to DOM analysis or Tape reading - HFT destroys that edge I personally don't think pyschology and money management matter. They do in regards to protecting your capital but is your trading due to an actual edge or is it complete chance? The only way we can improve our trading skill and not be fooled completely by randomness is to correctly predict regimes - I hope Taleb dosn't belong to ET because he'll rip that statement apart - however, others (i.e. victor niederhoffer) have been able to make fortunes due to correctly predicting regimes