I started as a trader believing that my statistical analysis would point me in the right direction. It would make knowing what to change and do obvious. I'd run my plan, generate data... course correct, and improve. But if for whatever reason I don't accept the risk... and actually do my plan... then this concept of how I self-correct blows out the window. It just doesn't work. My science isn't science. So this may be one reason why Mark Douglas says that analysis per se, and then more analysis, will never get a failing trader back to success. Instead, becoming more objective makes you a better trader. Then he said to become an even better trader, you become more objective. Just having a plan obviously didn't make me objective as a trader for years. Can objectivity be built into the plan? ...It has to be a plan that can in practical terms be done objectively. I'm back to SusanaDT and consciously making my plan result in objectivity more than analysis. Douglas says you get better and then better again by becoming more objective. Holy patooties, that is an opposite to the concept I started with. And I'm not saying I don't do analysis -- I have a process for that. It's what NoD said, perhaps the plan is more about how you think as a trader: My plan still needs to be more consciously like that. How I write it. What I put in it. The beliefs behind what I choose to put in it. Huh. Didn't realize that is what I was doing, where I was going. Of course I don't want to worry (which is probably not what NoD meant)... Instead, I love this. This "embracing/love" for risk is a new consequence for me as I become even a little more objective. Unexpected. And a surprise. ....... Mark Douglas also said that to succeed a trader needs to have absolute confidence of profitability in an uncertain environment. My plan exists to make me more objective, and not generate more fodder for analysis (while trading or to an extent even after trading). My plan exists to make me more objective about risk. "...absolute confidence of profitability in an uncertain environment" How about ...absolute objectivity about risk in an uncertain environment? I think that has something to do with the charts you just posted J.
I asked NoDoji once what the turning point was for her. She said that she'd worked it out what to do but wasn't able to do it. Then one day she just sat down and did it. At the end of the day she said it felt good, so she kept doing it. She is a girl. We are guys. She knows what she feels right away. ....... I got a little more objective and sat down and did it. A week later my eyes get big and I exclaim "I love this!"
Must be assimilated into the trader - then a funny thing happens - all things become objective..., are implemented..., approached objectively RN
Jas, in my head the short is only valid if the distance to the double bottom meets your target requirements, because it has some potential to stop the price. Rather than look for extra indicators, maybe you could just not take the trades that have roadblocks in the way of the trade. My trading is still a work in progress, and these kind of trades are a pain, but I have got over missing out on 30 point runs, when I stay out because I think the trade is invalid.
You don't realize many things about trading, for one, you have a Trading Plan-why are you thinking? You still think you are smart but you don't realize that any one signal has no more chance of being profitable than any other signal can you never have back tested the crap out of it. If/when you buy a new/newer car, you take how much time to find reliable of a model? Spend hours doing so? Are you spending as much time in theory of doing same? Do you study price itself instead of signals? Unless you risking termits, there is always risk, stress, bugs entering your mind to stop you from pushing the button. You got to become dumber. cause you just too smart, you much smarter than I am cause I am just a Cog and see rule based signal and take it. I don't change anything. I can't test being objective, I need black and white. I don't worry about anything in trading any more, it is playing the same game over and over, there is no chart pattern I have never seen less than once. As far as uncertain environment, life is uncertain, will I have coffee grinds in my coffee? You thinking way too much my friend. And What is RISK? It is different for everyone, some say it is money, some say failure in life, some say it neighbor who laughs at what you trying to do. What is it for you?
This journal has been around ET much longer than I, so I cannot claim to have read all or even most of it. But it is one of the few active threads here where both the topics discussed and the stories shared interest me and there is an apparent absence of egotistical jackass thread hijackers flashing their hamster dicks on every page. Hooti has been composing some real nice entries lately: I too only consider "horizontal" S/R (I call them prior highs and prior lows - daily, weekly, intraday swings). I have three patterns I look for, which are really just three variations of a test that occurs at or close to market turns. I have a simple rule set for stops and targets. I could explain my trading plan to a child of 10 or 12 and I think that child would quickly grasp the logic of what I do. In fact, they'd probably laugh at me for being so simplistic and go back to Minecraft or Halo. Everything you say about simplicity, hooti, hits close to home for me. I've said elsewhere that I overcomplicated this for too long. It seems to be a very common behavior amongst those who would be traders. Anyway, there is a lot of good stuff here. One can only hope it helps someone somewhere get whatever it is he ... or she (right @NoDoji) is hoping to get out the markets.
First thank you, and Yes, you are right. Alpha asked me to explain something I said a while back here on J’s thread and I started posting my thoughts-in-process which I usually don’t do. Some people seemed to resonate with it, but this kind of wandering and wordy approach is certainly not for everyone. So I’m working out some things in public which is a little weird for me. But the reason I’m going back around to this level of stuff is that my niece asked me to teach her to trade back at the start of the year. I started wondering about how I could have grasped some things earlier, been taught better. Once I thought of a curriculum for her I actually stopped trading live for a few weeks and put myself through it, thinking about where did I get more on track, and where did I get more off track. Having received a paycheck for teaching for a few years, I knew my trading would improve by sorting through how to teach it – and it certainly has. I’m putting this on J’s thread because his willingness and ability to describe his experiences as a trader, along with RN’s input, has helped me a lot to understand trading and ‘getting it’ better. I hope my POV is helpful to him. It is an interactive thing. …….. This is that objectivity versus analysis conundrum. Of course... I am trained as a scientist. And in one of the detective sciences, which is different from other kinds of science. Being objective has a different tradition here. One professor presented our grad school class with a real event. He was hired to figure out some toxic run-off thing for some agricultural field. So he presented the problem to our class. Each of us could only think in terms of our primary research… and came up with a way to use the tools of our trade… if you have a hammer any problem that comes along you hit it. I was doing electrophoresis right then so came up with a way to solve the problem doing that. Each member of the class came up with ways that would take days of intense lab work and cost $$. Where is objectivity? What the professor actually did was go to the pet store, buy a $1 gold fish, he put it in a cage in a ditch with the run-off water. It was still alive after a week: that was all they needed to know. Objectivity is important. Analysis is also. The two interact in a particular way for traders. …….. You can’t trade without doing the analysis before and after you trade. It’s a process. It is essential. As you have observed most people don't understand the process or do it. But Mark Douglas says that none of the traders who came to him… either because they were failing or just wanted to get better… could do it through analysis per se. They had to become more objective in their trading. Once you do your analysis, you have to somehow trade and apply it in an objective way. Once the graduate students had all the tools and analytical part down… they still had to apply what they knew in the most practical objective way possible. The good ones as they moved out into the real world became more objective and you can see their progress. The other students eventually were out with tweezers mowing the lawn… There is something about trading where you have to have done all the analytical for yourself so you know it at a deep level, but then turn the analytical off once you place your order & take a position. As RN has said no other experience in life requires of you what trading does. Eventually you hire yourself to do the job and don’t analyze it so much while doing it, just do the protocol the prior analysis says to do. And then you live the risk. And then you live the risk? There it is. What is risk to me? As a trader I live it. I live it by being objective, which means not trying to force it in any way. Trade what you see, not what you think. As a trader, the more I analyze the risk while in it, the less I’m in the present. The less I’m present, the less I’m able to just do the protocols. I think too much. Risk becomes unknowable. I just put the fish in the ditch and watch it. ………… NoD’s example of the rats beating out the grad students in the maze is the same point. The rats were objective and learned the larger percent of the time the food was on the left. They stopped analyzing at that point and just lived it. ………….. …………. The new part for me in the line of recent thought My plan is based on analysis. But I’m going through it and thinking about each step I put in it and asking myself if that step is allowing me to be more objective when I trade or making me more analytical when I trade? I used to think of my plan as existing in terms of analysis. The other big thing for me, I think that concept also of trading in such a way that risk is undefinable (because I’m not trading consistently, trading my plan)… Risk becomes this misty ghost-like thing that can come around and bite my butt when I don’t see it coming. Undefinable risk is scary as a trader. No wonder trading engenders fear and confusion. It should. ....... …….. Further answering Handle’s question, Yes, risk has to become black and white, firm and real… and then I can live it… and when risk is real, it is not scary, it is actually interesting and even fun. “Satisfying” might be a word for it. What I put into my plan, and how I put it in my plan has a lot to do with risk being real so that I can embrace it; live it. My thoughts have come to a kind of logical conclusion so it is a good time to do more trading and less thinking!
Hey Jas! I'm going through a transformation myself. I know without a doubt my method will make money but only if I follow it to the T without any deviation. RN has been riding my tail trying to get into good trading habits. The days I follow my plan I am so relaxed and proud because I know I'm making sound decisions. I'm not where I want to be as a trader but my plan is already there.
Hi ZBE, Good to have you here and posting. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and info. I've mentioned before trader/educator Lance Beggs. I think my style is similar to his. Looking for basic set ups and using some discretion to judge context or strength of PA. One of my set ups is absolutely clear and easy to define. My pullback in trend set up has key points I look for and a couple different triggers. Whether to take a simple pullback or wait for a complex pb or another variation is where discretion comes in. Same with reversal entries. ========== One of my problems lately has been impatience. Earlier I might take only 5 trades a day. Lately I'm taking twice that. Forcing some trades. Not sure how that crept back into my trading. ====== Yes, Hooti is great as is everybody that posts here. jas