Well for me anyway.. I notice a huge difference in my trading attitude/psychology when I do my homework the night before.. Meaning.. go over charts.. rework my strategy.. finding the support/resistance areas.. but mainly reassuring myself of my strategy and how patience pays off. and today I was so calm and patient.. I've noticed this other times when I do the proper preparation. I trade a lot less emotionally I have a tendancy to be lazy sometimes and think I don't need to do homework.. I've already studied the markets for years.. I know how to trade.. thats the wrong thinking for me.. anyone see a direct result in the profitability when they become complacent??
Behind making money by trading, are several stages of growth. I have about 8 levels that I have become aware of through experience. You speak of a general and basic function that has given you a good and consistant result. Any Et'er posting, telegraphs where he is in the sequence of opportunities that he has become aware of and accomplished. Similarly, you can see ET'ers on the way out through their behavior that engenders repeated failure and cyclical busting out. Before you lays a lot of fundamental milestones that come about as your potential is realized. There are several significant levels of involvement in trading. Humans, by their nature, practice whatever is necessary to survive. On the other hand they make a lot of efforts to improve and grow. Because, a moderate amount of reasoning is involved in trading, most potential traders start out with intellectual processes. They "encounter" emotions at some point. The point is in respect to market data. It is simply a function of begining to monitor the market in any of all the ways imaginable. By using senses, with regard to the market, you automatically get what comes with all human behavior. You get handed emotions. All humans use their senses to practice "survival"and even better "growing". Emotions are what accompany the use of senses to acheive survival. If learning occurs in surviving and growing, then fewer repeated errors are made and also stepping stones are created to get to better places. Trading involves several human processes. Intellectual (reading books, for example) Sensory (Watching the market) Emotional (You get this contribution as a consequence of sensing) These processes provide for, as time passes, the acquisition of everything needed to make money and become wealthy. Ultimately during market hours a person "works". He uses knowledge, and skills deployed according to a strategy or plan to realize his potential to make money. The bridge from beginning to maturity is a series of accomplishments. Along the way a person develops a routine for handling each step of making money during market hours. From the intellect, sensory powers and their corresponding emotions, a learned routine is created, refined and used optimally. Do you think there are any other aspects of this modus? Obviously, there are many paths and the vast majority of them lead to defeat and failure. This is a real blast to have to consider and take into account. It actually leads to what is going on as the predominant character of going from the beginning to maturity. The bridge is built by everyone as they choose. There are collateral non-financial things humans do. These other things provide a rich resourse for consideration. Such things can also be used in trading to enhance getting to maturity. To trade and really be successful a traders has to complete two major efforts to get to a level of performance that works.. Preparing for the day's trading surfaces what is behind how learning that preparing is important to do. Alll successful trading practices and routines, evolve from establishing beliefs upon which to make decisions and, secondly, as a human being, relating to those beliefs in precisely the same way as is done in every other aspect of "survival". the thing a human does with respect to the beliefs he has that heuses to survive it doing "trusting". At ET you see all kinds of posts that are way below the radar in quality. Posts lack any basis in "belief" levels and they are not considered as something that can be "trusted" for making money. For any trader to perfect his skills and abilities, at some point he has to work through having them based upon beliefs that can be trusted. This is not how people operate as traders in ET. It probably accounts for the failures spoken about. Preparing to trade before the day begins is something that reflects a belief. A person can put a lot of belief in trusting that prior market performance sets the context for what is coming up. To move to excellence and focus and consciousness, other human processes and successes can be adapted. We all need to build comprehensive means to succeed. By repeatedly and continually annotating the market's movement, you are going to inculcate "being prepared" in more than just a interday context. actually in the "intraday" context, you must have an absolute belief in "knowing how to know" when, within each day the market changes its "long" or "short" "characteristic". What this means is this. It is going to be the milestone in your life where you have the benefit of your emotions while monitoring instead of your emotions stepping it to try to "protect" you from yourself in a "survival" sense. As people continue to screw up instead of "get with it", their spuriously arriving "emotions" are those emoptions that are dealing with non trading human considerations. They are related to "failure" that are "survival" considerations. If a person monitors and does it satisfactorily and continually annotates (drawing lines and notes), I believe a person gets to understand what is true and believable about the market. Once that confidence comes it may be deployed to make money. It leads to beliefs that can be "trusted" for making decisions to engender action. I recommmend strongly that traders who are developing expertise get to the place where they consciously strive to entrain beliefs that can be trusted. It is a process gained from experience during trading hours.
Yep... The goal is to not work as hard as possible. The goal is to work as efficient as possible when doing any thing involved in trading. It's not just complacent we should avoid as much as possible... (to take this a little further) We should also avoid using our time being negative while doing anything involved in trading. Allowing negativity to consume us can have an adverse result on our trading. I know a few guys here at ET that were recently involved in a lot of negative posts...lasting several days or weeks. For some...it had a residual impact on their interaction with family members. Another had his first drawdown period in about 2 years. Another was stressed via the lack of sleep (insomnia) and in a single losing day of trading via lack of discipline... Gave back about 2 weeks worth of profits. Heck...this morning I bit the dust on one particular trade for a -2 ES points... Simply via a lack of discipline after a heated argument on the phone with a delivery company about a missing package I'm expecting. I had to sit down...relax and take some deep breaths to get in that positive mental area to make good trade decisions. Working efficiently with a good attitude is where we want to be... Especially with our hard earned money on the line from trade to trade. P.S. Excellent post by Grob109 NihabaAshi
Sounds nice that you know how to make your own strategy. But i don't.... Will you teach me? hmmmm tell me how to make myself a startegy.
So true. Some guys continue to beat their heads against the wall (or desk) by repeating the same counterproductive words, phrases, or attitudes post after post - not a positive environment for trading day preparation. A few also inadvertantly burden/reveal their trading psyche with self-limiting connotations in their bylines.