I would get a job if it pays me decently enough to cover my cost of living. However, no one is willing to offer me that. For me, trading offers the best opportunity to make money is reason enough. What makes you think you got the right to judge? You and most here do it for the same reasons. Like what? Today was a good day. The losses were small. Good entries were made. Exit rules were obeyed. Those were major issues I had in the past. I'm slowly getting to the point where the account will start to take off.
09-16-10 10:29 AM Tough day in the market. Hard to get a position in from all the choppiness. 09-17-10 10:48 AM Frustrating day. Had multiple great entries that would have netted around $100 each. However, I was trying to aim for the big profits today. Didn't take reasonable exits when I saw them and ended up getting out at breakeven. One of them was even a short at a very good place. What I'm trying to do is just find a good one and ride a big trend for the rest of the day. However, I think it would be better to scalp in one direction. Take profits when I see them. Re-enter if I think the trend would continue. My interest in this forum (and your journal) is in learning, not really in commenting. You don't post charts that identify entries / exits, and provide little commentary on your thinking / approach. This takes away a lot of learning for viewers. And really prevents others with more experience from providing useful comments. Without meaning you any disrespect - one trader to another - this thread pretty much to this point - shows how not to approach markets. You speak about trading based a discretionary approach that adapts to markets and can be automated. You want to be able to ride trends and counter trade during low range days, but it does really appear that your system struggles with identifying which to do when. I'm not sure which session you are trading. It seems your day ends mid-morning during RTH. I don't have any charting / data in place, but have attached a basic chart which shows the last 3 days. You can see that Wednesday RTH started with a rally and shifted to range trading; Thursday ranged in the overnight and was range bound until the afternoon breakout. There were a lot of points between that break out and until the open in Europe where gains were paired back. Friday showed mostly range trading. If you are trying to trade both types of market, your system / rules need to be able to tell which approach to use at any given time. I hope you have a good weekend and perhaps can squeeze in some time to review your rules and simplify things a bit (for now). We all want to build big fat positions in long trends. Winning at trading involves reading the markets, not bending them to your will or desires.
Welcome to the real world, where everyone has "the right" to judge. You're being judged every day by everyone around you, and I suspect you're defensive precisely because you know what most are concluding. I, personally, believe in (non-religious) karma. I have always believed that the proper combination of hard work and fortunate inspiration will, eventually, lead to success. I also believe the opposite: physical and intellectual laziness will, eventually, lead to failure. The fact that you'd rather turn down $10/hr in order to sit at home and play video games while praying for trading inspiration, quite frankly, disgusts me. I don't say this with the intention of insulting or degrading you. I don't know anything about you beyond what little you've shared in this thread. I'm not cheering for you to succeed, nor am I rooting for your failure. However... if someone was making odds, I would bet on your continued failure based on attitude, and karma, alone.
What I meant by that statement was "what qualifications do you have for me to even care about your opinion." P.S. you don't know anything about me. IMO, journals here are not good learning sources. I looked at a couple here and most are too confusing to be of any value. This forum has some good advice but there's a lot a lot more bad advices. I would say for every one that is good there are 10 or 20 that are bad. Problem is sometimes you don't know which is which. Only when you gain some experience can you figure out what's crap and what's golden. And you have to really dig through a lot of garbage to find a good one. My first month here was spent shifting through a lot of old threads to see if there's anything of value. That is my recommendation for any newbies that want to learn. And yeah, I don't say much and like I said before it's intentional. That's why I don't reply to any statements (good or bad) about the system. All I can say about that chart is I see a lot more in it than what you wrote. I'm currently in the process of transitioning to trading for a full day. My profits had been small largely due to trading only in the morning. Why do you think I'm starting to aim for the big trends?
There are two main types of journals...public and private. The only way a public journal can be a learning source for a trader is if the journal had the sole purpose of soliciting HELP and opinions. The only flaw with that is the location of a public journal and/or its readers. Thus, the reader is the teacher. There's also public journals where someone isn't seeking help but trying to inform or educate the reader. Thus, the journal starter is the teacher. I believe you started a public journal to solicit help and opinions. If not...you shouldn't be doing a public journal because your journal doesn't fall in the "I'm the teacher" category. In contrast, a private journal is more like a diary that contains private information you don't want others to see for whatever reasons. Private journals (diaries) tend to be for those that want to document their learning, trading along with aspects of their personal life without any feedback from others. Regardless if a trader has a public or private journal...I strongly believe all traders should maintain a trade journal because they document how you as a person interact with the markets...good or bad. You're looking at this the wrong way...in an insecure way. You should be able to determine if someone's opinion has merits without asking for them to validate their background in trading or whatever. For example, pretend you're riding a motorcycle 40mph over the speed limit, without a helmet, weaving from one lane to the next lane and someone pulls up next to you and saids...stop before you kill yourself. That person doesn't need to give you any qualification information for you to take him/her seriously. Thus, in your opinion whenever you've said that in your journal "what's your qualification for me to take you seriously"...you're implying you will only take serious the opinion of the person that pulls up next to your motorcycle is a cop or an emergency room doctor/nurse. My point is nobody is obligated to qualify themselves to you because you should be able to use "common sense" to determine if an opinion has merits or not. Thus, instead of asking what qualification someone has...you should be replying with FACTS why you disagree or with a simple YES (i agree) considering this is a public journal to prevent looking like you don't give a damn about the opinions in your journal. Lets put it this way, if you continue asking for qualification info...you're going to start attracting the worst types that Elitetrader.com has to offer whereas those that have been giving you good advice will eventually leave you alone as in "good luck kid". If you don't understand, review my own messages in your thread about your complaints concerning having a "small trading account" when I specifically gave you FACTS about how to increase your trading capital without risking your money in the markets until you are ready to trade properly capitalized or trade with a much larger trading account... I don't need to give you qualification information about myself to validate the merits of my recommendation. Instead, you need to stop being so damn insecure and use "common sense" to determine on your own if my advice, advice by heech, advice by others has merits or not. Mark
jinxu, Please explain why you don't post charts that show your entry and exit price. The only valid reason I can think about is that you have some sort'uv proprietary info on your chart that's a pain in the butt to remove prior to posting the chart here at ET. Also, you should show here on your charts where you got your trade signal at in comparison to your actual entry price on the chart considering your journal is full of commentary by you about exiting early or not good entries et cetera...tag it with the discipline related commentary you've been making. Charts are the lifeline of a public journal for those seeking help and opinions. However, if you're not seeking help...you need to make that very clear right now...most of us will go away if such is the case. Mark
This thread is pretty sad... Jinxu, you need to realize that what people are telling you is correct... you are in denial. Every time your system takes a loss (if you even have a system) then you rationalize it away, saying something wasn't right, or maybe you didn't follow the rules... On top of that, you are way undercapitalized. To all the people that posted helpful advice over the past couple of days, I think all of us but Jinxu see the value of your posts. But there comes a point when someone is too stubborn, and too invested in their system (so to speak) where they cannot take a step back and be objective. They say that you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. I think everyone who is posting useful information should just stop wasting their time. If Jin doesn't want to accept that advice, it is his loss. g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tof5b1Qs_OE jinx, a common reply here is that you are your own roadblock,you accept small half truths to avoid the pain of the truth,.........the ego is there to protect you but it can also be your enemy,.....you need to learn too read it like your reading the market, ......just like the market will fool you and take your 5oo ,over and over til you get it,.............. your ego will do the same,just as the market humbles you ,..............you must be honest and truthful and let the truth humble you .............,the ego is a little 2 yr old in your head that says i want it ,and i want it now,...........blocking the truth because that 's not the answer it wants,................you have to take control and be honest, right or wrong,.....when you drive a car ,you go to the stop sign,stop, then procede around the corner....it would be shorter and quicker to just drive thru the neighbors lawn and miss the stop sign altogether,............. but you know thats wrong,doesn't make sense,stupid,so you don't do it........the reason that your trading mistakes are wrong,don't make sense ,stupid,.......... is the ego's mental block,it wants to be right.........in the driving example, the neighbor would see you, the cop would give you a ticket,these things make it easy for you to accept avoiding the lawn. ....... i assume the reason you started this journal was to get help in seeing the things your missing..........this has been pointed out to you several times.....if your having trouble acccepting the truth ...take a closer look at your self........read the excuses you've posted.........ask yourself if those are absolutely true...you've posted them...now if they are not true..you have to tell your ego that...if you can't admit that ..then the ego is still in charge and you will keep making the same mistake...this is your missing piece