I day trade the minis; my setups provide 3 to 4 trades per day on average. Scalping is not for me, but I have found it hard to wait patiently and yet vigilantly for the right signal. When a signal does not come soon after the open, I either lose my patience and take trades in violation of my plan, or go off to do other things such as surf the net and eventually miss an entry when the right signal does come. Can an experienced trader please tell me how to overcome this problem? There is also another problem. An example is 10/17. The technicals indicated a big up move coming, and I went long. However, the market went down first and hit my stop. Then I just sat there, watching it up, unable to enter again. This has happened before. I guess it has something to do with both my entry technique and psychology, but what should I do to tackle it? Thanks in advance.
Patience is something you just learn over time. And even after years of trading impatience sometimes gets the best of you. As far as getting stopped out before the up move happened, perhaps your stop was to tight.
Do you want to be a successful trader or not? If you do, stop surfing the web and focus. Once you are no longer distracted and dedicate yourself fully, then its a matter of slowly changing your own natural tendencies that lead to self destruction. This usually takes quite a bit of time, but if you apply yourself to making yourself better, then you will slowly experience change. Old habits (usually bad habits) die hard.
The problems you describe are pretty typical. If trading were as easy as it looks, everybody would be doing it. I don't mean to be flippant, but it really is that simple -- simple, but not so easy.
The easiest way is to write down your entry rules, then further define them into a checklist. Then NEVER take a trade unless it meets your rules. Assuming you have tested your rules and they work, and assuming you are using good position sizing and risk management, it really is that simple. Good luck with it.
The first part of the problem (patience and vigilance) is something you will have to develop, not unlike a muscle. It takes time and develops incrementally. Perhaps you can listen to a radio (music or talk) to keep your mind occupied while watching the charts to keep from "falling asleep at the wheel." Perhaps not. Try different things until you slowly and eventually reach the required amount of focus. As for the captioned problem, it may well be that your protective stops are too tight, as suggested by another respondent earlier. However, that is something you will have to determine for yourself in the context of your overall method. Such a determination cannot be made in isolation. Alternatively, perhaps you should consider and test a re-entry strategy for when you get stopped out. Personally, I did not consider my own method to be complete until the strategy included entry, protective stop, re-entry and exit components. Finally, your method may be perfectly satisfactory in its present form. You cannot hope to catch and hold on to every move. From my (perhaps limited) perspective, that is just not realistic. Those are my suggestions for what you should consider. If you consider them to be reasonable, then it will be your job to determine which elements, if any, need to be improved upon and how.
The short answer is that you clearly do not know enough about the market you trade in and you are unwilling to devote the time, study and research to find out more, as shown by jacking around on the internet during trading hours.
You do not know what to look for. As others have stated above. You need to know what to look for. PAtience and viligence is bs. Will you buy a 95 ford taurus for $25,000 if you were a car dealer at an auction even though you sat there for 7 hours without no success? Will a car dealer pay $25,000 for a lexus without an engine? Car dealers know what to look for, Its not about patience, its about knowledge. Find the knowledge and you will find your patience. and also, get tradestation. duh
???????????? What are you talking about? Patience and vigilance is BS? So would impulsiveness and recklessness be good qualities then?
Good pointing that out I meant to say, Patience and vigelence is a bs for an excuse I mean. Its not that he doesn't have patience, its because he doesn't have the required knowledge for the patience.