Just reporting. One thing I left out, tying our connection directly to the thread here, is when I asked CL about her last encounter with a guy she described the whole encounter as "nothing more than 2 bars on a one minute chart". She of course was hoping to connect for a longer time frame.
What does she expect, flitting from bar to bar every day? If she's really ISO of a LTR she should seek a much larger ATR and ditch the bars. Maybe if she updates her Market Profile she'll attract someone who gets her Point and Figure out a way to let a winning relationship run.
It's all about having a plan with an edge, a target, and being flexible by reading the clues of the multiple timeframes, but never being attached to particular trade outcome. Pretty soon you got a runner and profits locked
Dow theory uses "major, intermediate, minor".......... Any decent trader needs only to look at a daily chart to get a handle on where the mkt sits at the start of the day. That all can be gleaned from a daily chart in a flash. OK, lets say you trade the stock index (ES), you are a one women man or one man women and also a one timeframe person. Playing the field in love and money has very high costs. Thus you should stick to a single timeframe to extract the daily goal. Knowing dow theory in the back of your head after your viewing the daily chart, you have the mkts macro picture imprinted on your brain. Then you sit and wait for the mkt to open as you bring up the "ONE" chart that is used for order entry/exit. Lets assume you use a 5m chart. It is a waste of time and effort to try and outguess the mkts next move by pretending higher timed charts are going to produce that perfect entry in a smaller timeframed chart. We are traders not freaking magicians. OK, i agree "Super Chick" can use a SMALLER timeframed chart as a confluence to the 5m chart, that at least makes sense as "early entry/exit". Hocus-Pocus is best way to describe playing peek-a-boo with higher timeframed charts to see what is behind the "green door", the STOP loss placement simply will not be in sync, it just will not work in real world. 1956, Judy and i loved the door song............ Quit guessing guys, JUST TRADE THE CRAP>>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVlcqMLMbVA
My attempt to practice trading humor was cut short unfortunately by a previous telephone call. I wonder what would happen if we dedicated the psychology of trading thread to the thread of trading/ dating - humor related material?
if someone wants to create a thread for this topic have at it. here's one true story for it...back in college i said "i would short my gf and long her roommate for the perfect pairs trade". the next 5 secs looking around to make sure she didn't hear that were the longest of my life
Just an update. I appreciate all of the advice, and I actually took some of it to heart. The information overload question has always been in the back of my mind, and perhaps I had to go public with my concerns to make it count, and realize it was a serious issue. I am only looking at 8 charts now, especially in the first minutes of the day, and I only look at 1 minute charts later in the day, and it's usually just out of curiosity. It was amazing how hard it was to switch. The first week was spotted with severe bouts of switching over to the one minute, but discipline seemed to have prevailed, and the desire gradually subsided. And then a nasty event happened in the family (someone died) which had me realizing everything I had been doing up to this point was just simply childish. I have doing this shit for 15 years and I knew what to do, and I just wasn't doing it. Fear of success, fear of failure, whatever. You can judge all you want. But within a week of writing the first post of this thread, and within a day of getting that horrible, horrible phone call (no it was not an immediate family member, but the son of someone close), something just clicked. It is inexplicable. I knew I had to change, and I knew my trading had to evolve to a mature level extremely rapidly, or I was going to get stuck. And this last week, I started to use a strat which I have always wanted to use, and integrated it with the automation my programmer has always provided, and the results are just stupid. (Sorry Donna. No trading plan. I just knew it would work. Sometime ya just gotta go with it.) There is a ton of manual position management to deal with after the thing gets me into 10 trades, but I could have worse problems. (Sounds silly. I used to have a thousand standing orders out there). I still have a 1, 5, and a Daily linked to my scanner for a snapshot, but the way I trade, I don't give a shit about what happened yesterday, last week, or what any other S/R levels may be. If it's moving unusually, it will blow through those levels without hesitation, so the 1 minute is still just a matter of curiosity, and the 5 is what keeps me in the trade for some profits. Don't get me wrong, I will occasionally need a fix now and then, and will take something based on the one minute, but I will know as I am taking it it's a quick fix, and nothing substantial or productive. I have always said I refuse to grow up, but maybe it's time to take that next step toward doing so. I guess this is my public declaration of that. Thank you all for your contributions.