Try to use use POP's rule #1 and #2, your position will be big only when you are ahead and that should help to control your emotions and scale out losers and keep the loss small.
NoDoji, With all due respect Maâam, and from a dumdass Redneck You are a really good trader (I donât use great because it has an egotism attached that I no longer harbor) I think you are getting in your way Maâam (aka what Austin posted) IMHO Take a couple/ three of sheets of paper and label them The way I trade What I believe My internal conflicts And list everything you can think of under each.. Then compare to see what is â in conflict with what â thatâll show you were the work lies Youâll need to de-energize the stuff in the way and implant new beliefs that support where you want to be I called them my gremlins Hope you not think my too looney Ma'am Redneck
Redneck, thank you! And I'm going to take your advice. LoveTrading, I definitely feel more daring once I have a profit under my belt (for example today shorting HANS while it exhibited none of my short signals). Hermit, I just read this while eating strawberries and laughed so hard I almost spewed them all over the screen.
Donna: How do you find your picks? I miss so many good trades during the day, I was thinking of buying Radarscreener by Tradestation. You can search by indicators, it gives you a realtime alert, according to criteria entered. Stoch, MACD etc. What do you use? Thx Paul
Paul, I have TradeIdeas on my platform, but I never use it. I imagine I should, but what I do is I look for stocks trading near 52-week highs, or that are testing major resistance on a run up from news and I short them. So I get a lot of signals from the hi/lo ticker, and from some web sites with 52-week highs. I also have a watch list of momentum stocks that I know quite well and occasionally trade (such as AAPL, POT, DRYS). I realize that my signals work on any chart in any time frame, but I prefer certain setups because of their high probability. Stocks that hit highs and pull far from their periodic moving averages tend to pull back quickly. There are some great long opportunities, too, but it seems that the pullbacks happen more quickly and are therefore more gratifying to this ADD trader.
PowerEtradePro. They don't call it TradeIdeas, but it's TradeIdeas. I found using it to be too distracting. I prefer to just have a basket of stocks to watch and wait for the setups.
I never knew you kept a journal here! Since lately I try to avoid ET as much as possible no surprise.. A brave thing I tell you... a public journal. One benefit I have gained from ET is knowing I am not alone in the emotional battles of trading. Have you attempted the Douglas exercise of 20 trades in a row, taken no matter what?? I can't get to 5..! I think it has to be one of THE best exercises one can try as banishing you mental expectations and forecasts are key to emotional freedom, which is in turn the key to consistent profits. Not mentally accepting the cost to see if a trade will work is at the core of my trading troubles, next to impatience. After your winning streaks the only reason I can imagine you lose is great setups simply don't occur that often and when you don't maximize the ones you get it becomes complicated to remount without falling. This happens to me so often I am close to simply accepting it as the way I am.. forever.. but then I would have given up.. This is THE only explanation. Consistently trading only great setups is bound to produce great result even with not so great trade management as such trades tend to work immediately. I once knew a guy that traded quite often without stops and was simply brilliant.. My trade management has not changed much in the past year yet my results suffered badly as I became very unselective (that a word?). It is simply amazing how good set-ups work.. No set-up no trade! I'll be watching!
That is a worthy challenge that I've contemplated for the past 2 days since I finished the book. If I get to 6, promise to manage 10, which will compel me to go straight to 20. You are my brother from another mother. I am STILL laughing at this one, Rashid My offering is ready! (Or is it, "I'm offering already!")