Today: +2.25 points / 8 rts / 1 contract Last 4 days (points before/after comm.): +1.75 / -2.46 Today was a near identical repeat of Monday. I entered one OTW trade, which was a very stupid trade at the time. They are best left for later in the day it seems when indecision lingers a bit longer and takes more of a push to become decisive decision. Lost 3 ticks on it. Worst trade of the day, and it was one I threw on because I thought "what the heck". One trade I intentionally targeted 2 ticks instead of 3 since at the time we were within ticks of the LOD, and the trade was a short. I've been burned too many times shorting the LOD, so I thought that was reason enough to lax the 3 tick rule in this instance. The last trade I bailed for a single tick because the price action felt wrong almost immediately. Glad I did, as the price tanked a few seconds later. However, it had the effect of forcing me to start worrying about what I was seeing. Ended up passing on some good trades because of that. That was the signal to pack up for the day. Reflecting on Wednesday vs. Monday I came up with the following differences that may or may not have been the causes of my mistrading. First, a physical difference in my trade screen. On Monday I had X_Trader's volume at price displayed on my price ladder. Wednesday, I didn't. If nothing else, the volume at price bars give me a bit of perspective on the current position of the market and its movement. If I needed to recenter the price ladder I didn't lose my feeling of where the market is "relatively". Did this help? Who knows, I had it up today. Didn't seem to hurt, so I'll keep it on my screen for the next few days at least. Second, on Wednesday, I didn't manage to let a single entry run to its 3 tick target, and let a few losers run to 4 ticks. On Monday I let nearly all my entries run to the 3 tick target and never let a loser run more than 2 ticks. I was very nervous about all my entries, even though my entries starting out on Wednesday weren't that bad. Most of them would have hit 3 ticks with very little back-flow, but I didn't let them. As I lost, I became a bit more lax in my stop amounts and tighter with my targets. Bad combo. No revelations. Just run-of-the-mill self destroying emotional trading adjustments. So by the end of my trading I went from decent entries, but losers due to my fearful exits, to really bad entries that just had no chance of ever winning. My last three trades were either buying the top or selling the bottom of the respective move. I was just throwing out trades, hoping to get back some of my money.
Today: -0.75 points / 7 rts / 1 contract Last 5 days (points before/after comm.): +1.00 / -3.75 I don't seem to handle very fast and high moving markets well. I still let myself get sucked into buying tops. Bought 1 tick from the HOD and it shot down before I had a chance to really take a "normal" loss exit. Lost 1.75 on that trade. Almost called it quits then and there as I was down 2 points after that and had images of losing more ala last Wednesday. Instead, figured I was still well within my plan to continue trading, so decided to allow a few more shots to see how it would go. Grabbed some back (1.25 points), then called it as it was near quiting time anyway. And, on days where I start out bad, it doesn't often get better. I may tighten my hard stops to 1.0-1.25 points, as the way I currently am trading, on my better days, I manually cut trades off at 1 or 2 ticks. On my bad days, I end up taking larger hits like todays 1.75 point hit. Something to think about. I do plan on dropping my max trades from 15 to 10 (per hour).
BTW, when I say "normal" loss exit, I mean one where I actively make the decision to exit and put in an order to exit. That is as opposed to my protective stop getting hit.
Three years later... I haven't traded much over the past few years, but would like to get back into it. Hopefully for the better this time. I have created a system that backtests well enough that I'm willing to trade it. I only let the computer place the entry order so I'm not succumbing to emotions with regards to entry. No chasing entries, etc. However I only trust backtests so for. And for that reason, I am reverting to an old habit of closing trades a bit too soon. Even still, I am net profitable for 5 days in a row. Possibly a record for me. I am working full time so I can't keep my eye on the charts as much as I'd like. Which is another reason I let the computer make the entries. It also means that even a low $50-$100 day is actually enough to make me happy right now as it is just bonus money. Not sure if I'll officially start up this journal again, but I'm thinking about it. I'm not dead yet.
FWIW, still averaging $80-$100 net a day while letting the computer decide when to enter (and automatically placing the trade) and me choosing the exit. Since the computer makes the entry, I only end up spending maybe 10 minutes a day staring at the trading screen. Not a bad dollar per hour pay scale.
You know what I hate about back testing? Occassionaly you'll find a truly awesome system. So awesome that you know there is something wrong, but you still hope the results are accurate. This has happened to me on several occassions, and again last night. Although at least now I realize sooner that I'd better start trying to figure out what I did to "lead" the results. Always hope I don't find anything, but I always do. Sigh. FWIW, this isn't the system I've been trading. Just something new I was playing with. The system I have been trading has so far shown to have live forward test results in sync with the back tested results.