Exactly. Irrelevant. Now, to the poll questions: First setup of the day - no, one of the easier ones as you have all the time in the world to prepare and you have your template for the day Setup following a losing trade - no Setup following two or more losing trades in a row - no Setup following one or more trades where you violated your rules - shouldn't be violating rules - take time off until you sort this out Setup after you dug yourself out of the red & into the green - why focus on intraday P&L if you are doing what you should be? Setup after you attained a minimum daily profit target - what is this? Imposing "minimums" on the market? Take what it gives. Setup that would position you opposite your bias - this one is worthy of comment. Cause is gaps in your knowledge - awareness of uncertainty leads to difficulty in executing, as it well should when you press the button but are guessing as opposed to knowing. Cured with more knowledge and experience.
Clearly, you are clueless of what is the most difficult trade. A pollster is eager to know what fruit people like most, so she asks people this question: What fruit do you like most? and then she lists the following: 1. apple. 2. orange. 3. banana. 4. pineapple 5. pear. A respondent answers: I like papaya most. Another answers: I like kiwi fruit most. Now do you know what problem your poll has?
If you like, I can give you 10 setups that have edges, sharp edges, very sharp edges. Let me know if you like active trading or slow trading, I will provide you with a custom-made setup. But let me tell you beforehand, a setup with an edge is NOT the holy grail.
There is no Holy Grail. But a set up with an edge will make you money if you have the discipline to take every set up. Of course once you have taken the set up you have to manage the trade.
The poll has no problem. It's a poll for discretionary traders who have defined one or more setups that offer a statistical edge over time. Such traders either trade all their valid setups each day (that is a choice in the poll), meaning they've attained a trader's mindset and their edge is not diluted, or they hesitate to trade some setups based on a variety of reasons, the most common reasons being those listed in the poll. Let me ask you: Do you have a well-defined setup (or setups) that have proven to provide a statistical edge over time if all setups are traded each day? If so, do you trade every appearance of the setup or setups each day without hesitation? If not, then you have no reason to trade with real money at this time.
You are contradicting yourself. Being "discretionary" means the setup needs human input. Needing human input means any human input may have an impact on the setup. If a setup doesn't need human input, it's not called "discretionary," it is called "automatic."
Discretionary means I see a setup forming and there is a price at which a position will be triggered. I place an order at that price. Automated/automatic means the computer receives ongoing data that tell it a setup is forming and there is a price at which a position will be triggered. The computer places an order at that price. The difference is that the computer never experiences a difficult trade because it simply trades all the setups it's programmed to trade. The discretionary trader who hasn't attained a trader's mindset makes choices about whether to trade a setup or not. My automated system put on a trade the other day where the previous price bar was way too large for me to believe that my stop loss would survive. It took the trade and took the loss. I didn't trade the setup and was happy to have saved myself from a quick loss. Later that day it put on a trade where the previous price bar was also way too large for my comfort level. I didn't trade the setup. The setup resulted in a move of over 100 ticks from the triggered entry price and the ATS captured a large chunk of that move. Because the automated system trades every setup, it netted 60 ticks between those two trades and I netted nothing. That's the advantage of trading all setups, of being the casino not the gambler who picks and chooses which hands s/he will play. Every professional trader knows that this is an important part of maintaining profitability, but some of us still hesitate, or find certain trades very difficult. This is a psychology thread to invite discussion about the psychological aspects of trading ONCE YOU HAVE AN EDGE. If you have no edge, there are plenty of threads about strategies where you can discuss strategies. Mark Douglas doesn't have to be a trader, nor does his Zone book purport to provide trading tactics. He assumes you have an edge and are having difficulty becoming the casino by trading every appearance of your edge, and he provides guidance for attaining that level of mastering your own edge.
If i had 2 accounts setup where one was discretionary and the other was an automated version for whatever strategy, tactics i choose to use that particular day, then the automated one would NOT have any choices. On the discretionary one, if i saw a setup forming and just before it was to fill i spilled a hot cup of coffee in my lap...............I might choose NOT to take the setup if i felt distracted. The truth is, we trade with choices every day. Even an automated system might be turned off if the trader decided he/she was not in the mood, headache, company, throwing darts at ex's pictures, whatever...........choices, that is one reason we do what we do. Nodoji was a textbook example on how a new trader was seeking perfection. She was driving herself up a wall, but guess what? The speed she advanced was quite an achievement. Listen to her. Detail oriented, that's her forte. many in my life said i was a perfectionist, when i understood that as a flaw, i did better in everything by trying less and getting satisfied faster.