Just curious to see how anybody else handles this area.. I'm trying to stop looking at my P&L on every trade and just concentrate on trading properly and its very tough.. Has anybody broken through this problem?? Any suggestions on how you were able to overcome it?? thanks
Yes, points and NOT $. Actually, I have learned to simply close my account window and just look at the charts. I now often, when my trades (with stop and targets) are on, simply walk away for 30 minutes.
I understand this.. but you can still calculate in your head fairly easily the $ value associated with each trade.. and I usually only make 1 - 4 trades a day..
You may be going through this because you're trading with "scared money". If you were trading to learn how to trade rather than trading to build up your account, this would not be so much of a problem. If you continue to trade while you're trying to re-fund yourself, you may wind up going backwards. At the risk of igniting yet another yes/no paper-trading debate, I suggest you paper-trade and work on your system until you find funding somewhere. That way you'll at least have a bit more confidence when you begin again.
I guess I'm going to be in the minority here, but I don't see watching the P/L as a problem. In fact, I'd say watch it even closer. At the end of the day, it's the only thing that matters. I find it a great motivator to cut losses. If watching the P/L is creating pressure for you to do the wrong thing in terms of trade management, then I'd say the answer is to convince yourself that doing the right thing works in the long run. Simply not looking at the P/L seems silly to me, since as you point out, it's easy enough to calculate it in your head.
I don't think professionals in other fields calculate their earnings while they're working, they focus on the job they're doing instead, otherwise, they'd be distracted from concentrating on the task at hand. Imagine heart surgery being performed by a surgeon who, while his fingers are guiding instruments in the vessels of your heart and his eyes are watching and monitoring the circumstances and he's thinking about what has to be done next and what is hapenning right now and receiving multiple input from the assistants and instruments around him, he's in fact thinking, "This operation I'll get $50,000, then there's, let's see now, Mrs. Johnson is scheduled for one o'clock, that's another $90,000, gotta see if I got the insurance check from Blue Cross for the Stevens job, because that's another $60,000 I'm expecting. Let's see, that means by 3 PM today, I should book $140,000 and hopefully will get that check too."
dp, You are absolutely correct.. I went long the NQ at 1531.00.. with a profit target of 1536.00.. and I bailed at 1531.50.. it went up to 1537.00 as of this posting My last 4 trades were all great trades with a great profitable outcome had I held on and followed my plan.. If I had $3,000 or so in my account this wouldn't be so much of a problem I'm sure.. I know what to do.. I just have to figure out how to do it given the circumstances..
Flash, I think we all have had this, and similar problems in the past, present, and will have in the future. It's very difficult to change our behavior, but change we must! For me, I've found that it is much easer to focus on my trading behavior when I start the day with a clean brain. What this means is, that I need to wash away everything that I did yesterday, and start fresh today. ( one day at a time) I do this by getting in some exercise before my trading day starts. When I exercise, I practice with my focus and discipline. The focus part is to concentrate only on my exercise, while I am exercising. When thoughts about the market, or any thing other than my exercise creeps into my mind,I throw it out immediately, and refocus. I'll have to refocus my self many times each morning. On the discipline part, I focus on doing each exercise in good form as opposed to how many reps. I guess what I'm trying to say, is that you need to find ways to practice the skills needed for trading in other parts of your life as well. sulong