I could tell you, but then I'd have to...nevermind. It is something that happens somewhat regularly. And it could be super obvious to everyone else and I'm just now picking up on the significance of it. What I'm focusing on is a little more specific that what you wrote. Just going to focus on all the aspects of getting that one pattern right....
Well, I spoke too soon. The pattern was really good on the days I was studying, but now that I've looked at other days, I can see it happens randomly. Guess I should have checked more than 10 days worth before getting my hopes up. It's still something I'll work on because it is a pattern that happens many days in a month, and it might become a set up that works consistently if I take it.
Made 58 ticks in my live account!!! Forget that last night I said I found a reliable pattern to work with. It's something I'm sure I'll use often, but it isn't super consistent....just like all other patterns. Today's trade was NOT that pattern, but turned out to be really good, although when I was in the trade I was thinking about all the reasons it wasn't going to work, and nearly got out too soon for a loss....oh, wait, it didn't really go past BE, so wouldn't have been loss....but it sure felt like it would.
Took today off...haven't even looked at a chart today. Have something else going on and seemed like a good time to take a small break...and it gives me another day to enjoy my profits before I lose them....every once in a while I get this thought that I might not lose them and the account might actually steadily climb upwards. It's been almost 5 years of seriously looking into day trading and just over 5 years if I count the time before, when I was dabbling in picking one stock at a time to buy and hold...my style has evolved a lot since then. And so far I've always ended in losses soon after trading live. So it's a little hard to think this time will be different and makes me want to go very slowly.
That's a good point to ponder. I do think the mental aspect is affecting my trading far for than I ever thought it could. It seems I have some scars left from reckless trading. I didn't have a rule based system when trading before and so didn't have anything to compare it to. I now see the difference as trading by intuition vs trading patterns with rules. There's still too much subjectiveness with my setups but it's a lot better than the guessing I used to go by. I think with time and careful record keeping what works and what doesn't will become more and more clear and that will help with gaining confidence and trading better. Thanks!
Yes. 5 years of a negative live trading record while maintaining a positive mental expectancy...meaning I always thought the next time would be different. Finally, I have positive expectancy records in demo and finding that I have a negative mental outlook. I'm really not that worried about it. It will work if I take good entries and follow my rules. If I don't, it won't. Either way will give feedback that can be looked at to try to find out how to improve. I only have a 40 percent winrate with this method, so some of that negativity comes from trying to cope with potential future losses. I'm trying to expect that they will happen and be prepared to accept them as part of a winning system. Mental gymnastics.....that's why I'm taking a nice break today.
Didn't take a live trade today. There were some good places that could have been traded. I usually watch the 1 minute candles closely to see if I can find where one might make it to close to 60 ticks without retracing, and there weren't a lot of those today. If I don't get that type of push then I need to use a larger stop loss, so that was part of why I didn't trade live. Also, I'm still not very confident about trading live yet and really want to get the best set up...especially because I only have a 40% win rate...I'd have more confidence if that was higher. Tomorrow I plan to carefully demo trade each set up I see and post charts from both accounts here.