Heya! Well, I did short this morning but I was very weary of reversals because of my previous experience with shorts. And then I got in LONG a little bit of the mid day rally. Not much. So, longs don't feel so bad. I just need to do that everyday. But I'm still so fearful from the scars. This is some progress. I'm not making gangbusters. But then again I'm NOT losing gangbusters either on this reversal. It's somewhat of a good sign right? Making some progress right guys?? -k
Needhelp, Well, you are making good progress! Congrats! I think one possible solution to your problem is perhaps to build trading systems. Trading systems will REMOVE any EMOTIONAL PITFALLS you might have - like the tendency to short RALLIES. Or get nervous with longs,etc. Or any number of issues. I can empathize with you. This last week, I went through a rather brutal process myself. It has nothing to do with not being to go long. It's more of me not doing what I'm used to doing. I'm more of a systematic/quantitative type trader. And this last week all I did was manual scalping, because I"m still in the process of setting everything up. The results were DISASTROUS to say the least! Like ouch! And it was the WORST week of my trading career so far. I couldn't believe how fast it went. One person on here knows that. So you are not alone. Because it's so EASY to get into the pitfalls of emotions - fear and greed. And errors in entries and exits. Risk management, position sizing, etc. Trading is difficult enough as it is. But to get emotions and host of other nontrading issues involved makes it a lot harder. So, why bother sweating over it and let the machine execute your strategy exactly EACH AND EVERY TIME? I mean no strategy is perfect but that's why you backtest it until you find something that is suitable. I mean I've done some successful manual trades in the past. Some exciting war stories of being up huge on a big down slide or big rallies. But on average, I think manual trading costed me when you are not in the right frame of mind. When you and the market are aligned, a manual trade can result in explosive profits. But when you are not it can be not so great. So, on average, it's best to be systematic about things at least for me. You want to cover 80-90% of the cases. Not 10% of the case when that one manual trade is so great. There will be times for that... Now, I'm embarking on a new plan of systematizing everything: Entries, exits, stops, risk managment, position management, real-time filtering/scanning, executions, etc. So, I'll spend my time refining and working with system issues. And let the yo-yo feelings of the market volatility be dealt by my trading system. Plus, by using the system, I'll not only not have to deal with the human issues of fear,greed, indecision, mistakes,ec. But I can trade more securities as well. As a daytrader, you can only watch closely at most 1 or 2 stocks or futures closely. But with a trading system you can run an entire portfolio and potentially produce more profits. When I was working at various quant funds, we held positions of hundreds and in some case thousands of securities long/short. So, in that case, it's impossible to manually open up a hundred charts and read the a hundred times & sales. Just think of what a system can do for you. Relieve pressures and make you more disciplined. Good luck! Wish me luck too! quantpatterns
quantpatterns and everyone, thanks for you suggestions. I don't know enough about programming to design fancy systems. But what you say does make a lot of sense. -k
NeedHelp, It would appear that some harm has been done to your trading if you have become wary of your natural tendency to stay with a short. The question is why and the probable answer is that you are staring to appreciate that the markets can and do have fast moves in both directions and there may be a bit of information overload creeping in. The next step is for you to explain your definition of a trend and then perhaps an indicator or two can be added to give a directional bias which only allows you to go with the flow and not worry about corrections to the trend you are trading. What market do you trade?. It is impossible to know what you mean when you state that you went short\long at a specific time when the market is not known. I have Liffe, Eurex and CME only. It was well meaning of a poster to suggest a system approach but I know a circle of professional traders and not one of them uses a system per se. They do however use systematic approaches to discretionary methodologies and that is a whole different thing. Many years ago I designed more systems than I care to remember and the search for the "holy grail" cost me years and large amounts of money. Traduk.
Good Morning all, good luck today, I'm still around... I'll be back after todays close. Watch out for the eco numbers.. Keep up the good work K..
I just bought a Trading CD on Ebay from a seller named "changenow" called "Successful Trading with Hypnosis." The CD is only $12.99 (minimum bid, I think, but there are a bunch of them on there so you should be able to get it for that price). It's a lot like Ruth Roosevelt's "Power Trading" but much cheaper. The idea is to "reprogram" your subconcious mind to have the right trading belief system. For that little investment, you might want to give it a try. By the way, I have no affiliation with the seller -- just thought it might help.
Hey Chaos! sup?! I was basically flat on Fri. I got in , got out, got in , got out. In and out. ROFL. Anyhow, I stopped cuz it wasn't making much sense. Hopefully on Monday there will be more action. Not enough momentum on Friday. how about u? how did u do?
Simply clarify what defines a trend for you and make sure you're trading with the trend. Also define what would cause a trend to be on its last legs -- only take "reversal" postions at that time.