I still have a problem with taking my winners off before they hit my target price. I did it 2 times today, and both times they would have hit the target price. I am getting angry with myself. Anyone else with this problem? Any advice to stop doing it?
1. trailing stop? 2. take some off with stop to b/e keeping fear out of the trade.. (free trade) 3. put sticky notes all over your monitors telling yourself your rules? (wait for targets etc)
Ok, this is good advice, but for the most part on back testing, scaling out does not work, it is better to take profit at max target and/or hold other contracts to see if trend continues past max target. I could of course bring up 2nd contract trade to break even.
I recommend scaling out (never scaling in). You may wish to liquidate half your position as you near your target price, then let the rest ride, knowing your stop is working.
Trade with a much smaller size, one that won't bother you as much if it comes back to breakeven or stops you out. Then use discipline to hold your trades until they reach your target. As you do that more and more, you will get used to the feeling of what it's like to see your trades reach their target. Once you have done that successfully, gradually start increasing your size again. The reason you are cutting out too early is because you are afraid of watching a gain turn into a loss, and the reason for that is that you are trading with too much size. You are putting too much pressure on yourself to be "right" on each trade. Reduce your trading size, and it should help.
FWIW Buy a tape recorder and record every (and I mean every) thought you have throughout the trading day (IOW - speak all your thoughts out loud and record them) Then after hours, when youâre relaxed, clear minded, and in a quiet setting â replay the tape, and listen to yourself⦠Figure out what youâre thinking / feeling / having issues with â then focus on, and work out - those kinks (potentially it could be a myriad of things) But no matter as itâs always best you diagnose yourself â then fix it (the journey is yours after all) Aside â If youâre having trouble maintaining a calm mind â let me know â Iâll post a couple of ideas BTW - Getting angry at yourself won't solve it - this I know Regards RN
Yes, my mind is calm before I get into a trade, then it becomes upset. So please feel free to post suggestions on how to maintain calm within a trade.
What you are looking for is confidence. You are trading to make serious money, and if your trade has not racked up enough profits yet to really make it worth your while then leave it alone. If if never gets that far then it wasn't meant to be.
The combination of your two posts explains, on a trade, how things go for you. You have backtested and discovered that your targets are on the mark. What thei means is that you have a mental or geometric picture of trading cycles and you trade both ways on that market cycle from one extreme to the other. Imagine to two half cycles as forming a V or inverted V. They are probably tipped a little one way or another. After both of these have happened, you probably feel pretty good having taken two consecutive trades with the same good result. To get it to work again the market has to form three legs of an M or W or maybe do all four legs of the M or W. Doing the third or fourth leg seems "iffy" to you from what you say. It actually may be as your backtesting would tell you from an analysis of how many alternating similar legs are likely. Redneck will tell you about his emotional experiences with this technical opportunity. My comments will just tell you why you feel the way you do because of the technical behavior of the market. You are on very firm ground with respect to those lousy feelings. The 10,000 hours people put in @ 2,000 hours a year give the result bentedge experienced, too. After the 10,000 hours, probably people see entry/exit trading some what differently. Cycles in trading follow a different course than most people start out thinking they do. Some people choose to think the same and others are open to new things (every day, perhaps). Look at your entry and then look at the target. Now look at what is inbetween. Mentally, you deal with the inbetween in two different ways. At first you can reach targets and then after a while you do not reach the traget but the market does. Fear and anxiety "build up" for you as time passes. What if you let the market tell you what was going on as a policy? Look at how redneck does this. He uses four different charts. Each one says something else except for the fourth chart. The fourth chart says what one of the other charts is saying because it is a chart of composed of a composite of many things. Keep using your present chart. But do put up another chart where the bars are 1/3 the duration of the regular chart. On this chart what you will see that you can't see now is what happens as you go into your maximum fear and beginning of anger period. You see that you are on your way to the target, and then the price bars for a little while do not continue to the target, they take a little pause or small retrace. This steams you up. But as it turns out, in just a little while the bars start translating again just as they did after you entered. They finally stop translating when they get to the target you figured out. I am suggesting that you look inside of each trade you do by using a magnifying glass by having another chart with a given magnification. this magnification will show you two things: how price moves with a given internal volatility an, second, how in the middle third of the time from entry to reaching a target, the price just takes a breather. At this time you peak out @ frustration, fear and anxiety. By sitting through this one third of the trade (the middle third) and seeing what is going on, you get to become confident and supported by what you are seeing. Oh, if you have volume helping you, you get to see the first and last thirds are on increasing volume and the middle third is on decreasing volume on the magnified chart. On your regular charts, the times when it is making you the most anxious is when the third trade of the am or after the first couple of trades in the pm breakout is testing R or S. Usually, the beginning of a day doesn't test R or S, then it does get around to testing the daily range; its retested in the pm. Parts of trades (first and third parts are usually translations (see definition of trending); the middle part is often referred to as an "internal. There are five kinds of internals (FTP, FBP. hitch, stitch and sym*) By simply seeing one, you know it ends soon and translation resumes. The PA threads here do not deal with internals as yet, but they may some time in the future as people get their 10,000 hours in. * by the way there was some chit chat on Covel the author of trendfollowing. None of these terms are in the index and neither is the word volume. Each of these is defined in ET. "clean page two" defines them.