June results were - 108 ticks. with commish about - $ 1400 Went on a much needed vacation and back at it this week. Feeling rested, focused and less pressure to make money. Focus is back on trading my set ups and getting good reads on the market. The benefits of breaks from trading is something I will remember and maybe add to my trading plan. +34 ticks for this week . only 8 trades. Did not trade Monday and on Thursday I had a trading seminar and other trading related things to take care of so only took 1 trade. The quality of set ups i'm taking is improving. By that I mean i'm respecting the bigger TF trend and not taking reversal entries too soon. That cost me more than a few ticks last month. Unfortunately (or fortunately) I have nothing exciting to add to the journal today.
+ 42 ticks for the week. net about $ 360 The profits are trickling in, which is a vast improvement over last year. The knowledge is also much better and I expect will continue to improve. It's that damn discipline. Missed several trades today. I hesitated thinking the set up wasn't quite right when in fact they were fine. Also had a trade +20 that I exited at +2. A realistic exit would have been +13 or 14.The exit signs were there but hope , I suppose, took over. There are signs of improvement however. On wed I missed a trade. Frequently that has caused me to either take reversal entries too soon or sit on my hands thinking I've missed the move. This time I maintained good focus and found the pullback to be tradable and took it. It was a decent profit. Another weakness of mine is not wanting to give back profits- under trading. Yet on that day I was able to find another trade and take it for another profit. I guess this doesn't sound like a big deal but at the time it was for me. Tuesday was my first time having the internet go out while in a trade. After about a minute i realized it wasn't coming back. I was up slightly on the trade and had my initial stop in so knew worst case i'm fine. I have my broker's # and my acct # on all my daily trade worksheets so didn't have to fumble around . Just called and got out for a slightly better profit. BTW, that was the first time I've called Mirus to place a trade and they were quick and professional. That's my week .
- $ 84. for the week all commish. Thurs. I was not well rested and as happens I traded poorly. thurs and Friday I slipped into my old ways of exiting trades too soon. I'm aware of it so will again work to improve. The flip side of bad trading is that it usually inspires me to more study. Spent several hours this weekend reviewing and making notes on normal trends vs strong trends. This I expect will help me stay in trades when I should. I'm feeling a slight amount of self imposed pressure to perform better. there are enough opportunities to be making on average 15-20 ticks a day. A better trader would do more I realize but 15- 20 would be a meaningful improvement for me.
Been doing lots more studying and trade reviews which means another bad week. - $741 for the week. finished July with an extremely small gain of + $ 154 and starting Aug in the red. The positives: Had two trades MFE +20 closed for +2 & +3 and another trade with stop trailed too quickly so -2 instead of +20. The negatives: Had two trades MFE +20 closed for +2 & +3 and another trade with stop trailed too quickly so -2 instead of +20. Seriously, though i'm doing some things right but just not enough of them. And plenty of mistakes, missing trades and poor focus primarily, that are causing frustration and lack of profits. The mistakes can and will be fixed. This past week I made an effort to not make the mistake I often did of trading reversals too soon. I went to the extreme and passed on valid reversals I normally would take that did in fact work. I can only imagine what a reader of this journal must be thinking...This guy is just not getting it. how long will he keep banging his head against the wall doing the same things ? Yeah, I feel that way too sometimes. It can be very frustrating especially when I have much higher expectations of myself. But I do see areas of improvement and will continue at least until the losses are not due to my poor execution.
No Sir I have a plan..., which I choose not to follow I do not have a plan, but instead choose to trade hit and miss..., then regret the misses in hindsight This is what comes to my mind JIH Hopefully I'm wrong (and hope makes for a piss poor technique) RN
Thank you Rn. The honest truth (and why do anything, in trading especially, without total self-honesty) is that I have a plan that I do not have complete confidence in. Most of my set ups depend on context of trends, reversals, trendlines etc and I have not been able to articulate this context into an If:Then objective set of rules. I've read that some traders do have strict rules and I really don't understand how they're able to do it. I'm still in the discretionary/ rule based type trading. As my trade reviews and screen time grows i expect to be able to refine my set ups so that there will be less discretion and more specifics. My plan is too loose with exit rules. I've had ingrained in me the 'let profits run' adage. I suspect this is why I often overstay trades. This can not continue. My lack of confidence is directly related to my weak plan and my results reflect that. My approach to building my plan is based on my belief that market experience is necessary to find what works and refine the plan that fits me. So I guess bottom line, i'm not shooting from the hip but i'm not trading an ideal plan as well. Thanks, RN. As always I very much appreciate your questions and comments. QUOTE]Quote from Redneck: No Sir I have a plan..., which I choose not to follow I do not have a plan, but instead choose to trade hit and miss..., then regret the misses in hindsight This is what comes to my mind JIH Hopefully I'm wrong (and hope makes for a piss poor technique) RN [/QUOTE]
Excellent idea and yes, I've been thinking of returning to sim if things don't improve quickly. Thank you for posting.
Looking back on your June 26th screenshot. Yes, those two last trading opportunities were good ones, It was breaking out of the recent highs of the consolidation area, plus there were good volume spikes. Also by the first loser, one could see a small break of downtrend, then a pull back and then an opportunity to go long for at least a leg or two. So even if your initial short was stopped. You can see that price gravitated above the trend MA and a countertrend setup was forming. So at that point you could re-enter with a "reversal" of the last small loser in mind for at least a leg or two. Often times a rejection goes on for at least two legs the other way. Like what they say about the big money or "locals" "washing" out the stops by probing but not breaking through to continue, rinsing then using the fuel to launch the other way. Your Moving Averages are set up well. You have the longer "trend" MA and the entry faster MA. You could observe how price acts in relation to the longer "trend" MA. If you haven't done so, reading Al Brook's "bar by bar" or his new set can help with recognizing, price action patterns.
I would do this a lot in my early days before I settled on something(s) that worked...sometimes I would get a hunch that I was just not clicking with 'the market'..often it was right before my method blew up due to the fact that what I was doing simply stopped working and because of my inexperience in designing robust methods that could withstand different market environments... you may even need to start over from scratch and develop something that both has an edge and fits with your belief system / personality...this process will ultimately lead you to something that will work...the beauty of sim is that you can avoid giving back what you already took from the house while you work you way through the above process