From momo, When "True Direction" is staring you in the face, just don't fight it. If you find yourself saying I just think that the move has gone to far without me, that if I get in now I won't make anything. This is fear speaking to you, don't listen to it. Take a look at your charts and look to the most unrealistic place that market could go in your mind. If its another 20pts. higher than where you are currently and market has just cycled thru only 2 maybe even 3 Stoch/RSI oscillations wait for the next pullback and jump on. It took me a long time to get thru this stage, great advice.
I wasn't going to respond to this post but I feel compelled to do so. Is this post supposed to be constructive? Even the very best traders make bad choices and bad trades. A good trader will always make good decisions that outweigh (not necessarily outnumber) the bad. Furthermore, what separates a good trader from a great trader is how they handle bad situations. Yesterday afternoon was an example of handling a bad situation extremely poorly. Today I handled every bad situation in the right way. I cut my losses to the point that there were no losses. You try to condemn me for trying these trades, but nothing clarifies market action for me like being in a trade. You say that I ignored discipline. Not where it counts. As soon as I realized that those trades were wrong, I got out. Period. Eventually, I could have kept doing that until I did pick the top. Is this the best possible strategy? No, but it will work. You seem to think that discipline is the answer to everything. Well it is not. A trader with excessive discipline isn't going to have the flexibility or the creativity necessary to be truly successful. Discipline also has a habit of squelching intuition. If the only place I exhibited discipline was in cutting losses, I would still be very successful. If this wasn't a good day, please feel free to post the link to your journal so that I may see what qualifies. When you first started posting to this journal, you appeared to have some intelligent things to say. Now I realize that nothing you have said has contained any original thought, nor have you contributed any personal experiences. I'm really getting tired of listening to a bunch of stuff you've managed to regurgitate from the various trading books that you've read. It's painfully obvious to me that none of your comments stem from true personal experience; what worries me is that others may not notice. I'm also irritated by the fact that your posts are never well explained, and there's always just enough ambiguity to protect yourself from embarrassment. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to be a jerk nor is this a personal attack. It's just that I'm being extremely honest with this journal, and I'm exposing my personal feelings and flaws. I want people to make contributions. I just want them to contain creative and original thoughts or personal experiences. I certainly don't want the patented responses that I can get out of any trading book. Please don't feel like you are being singled out either, this is meant for everyone and I hope that you won't take it personally. If I am overstepping my bounds as an ET member with this request, then so be it. In that case I will just discontinue this journal. In conclusion, I would like to thank everyone for their support and cooperation in this matter. Thank you.
dbphoenix wrote: "If you could study your posts as if someone else had written them, you might find the experience enlightening." I think this comment is helpful. Being objective about our trading is probably one of the most difficult things to do. If you think db's comments are bad, annoying, or whatever, you should look at some other journals that have gotten trashed. There are lots of immature, stupid posters on ET. DB may be annoying or whatever, but I think his posts are genuine and not stupid. Don't give up on your journal because your getting comments you don't like. Give up on it when it is not helping your trading.
There have been days, weeks and months in my life where I feel something is wrong. I feel confused or anxious or just some unexplainable slight pain. They eventually go away and in hindsight, these were times of growth. I trust that this is just such a period for you as it relates to your next step in trading.
My comments have been general because your posts have been general, and their ambiguity matches your own. If you want something specific, then you're going to have to be specific yourself. You chose at the beginning to say nothing of your methodology and I defended that since your psychological problems could be addressed without regard to the partituclar strategy you were employing. However, after all this time, you continue to whine about your guts and your lack of discipline and the general fog in which you find yourself during the trading day. You want specific, then be specific yourself. What exactly is your strategy, if you have one? Do you have any sort of plan, or do you just make it up as you go along? What's the expectancy of your strategy, if any, and how did you arrive at the figure, if you've bothered to calculate it at all? My personal experiences? Yes, I've had discipline problems. And I got over them. So what? You, on the other hand, seem content to wallow in self-pity over your inability to control yourself. Another waste of time.
I looked at each of your trades on 7-25 on 1m charts and if you are selecting these trades primarily based on tape reading alone, that's some damn good tape reading on 7-25. All of the trade executions occur within just a couple points of an exact high/low reversal on the 1m chart. As far as the comment from a poster on this thread, I think it was Momotrdr, about the need to find trades with the trend, this is something I too have been considering adding to my trading. I play reversals almost exclusively. But, I play them because I have a feel for them. We all know we should play what works for us. (and with your tape reading of reversals, looks like AT BARE MINIMUM scalping reversals for you is something you have a feel for) Sorry if I have missed it in this journal but have you tried or do you practice trend following trading ?
AFterburner, First of all, I highly recommend you not give up on your public trading journal. If you do...at least continue it elsewhere so that you have more control over the feedback or no feedback at all. I have several trading pals that are doing exactly what your doing with their journals...however...not here at ET... http://www.livejournal.com/ http://new.blogger.com/ If the two above don't seem good... use this listing of Web Blogs (Journals): http://www.lights.com/weblogs/hosting.html Heck...you seem to be making good money...get your own website (their cheap) and treat it like a Web Blog... lots of choices for you to continue what you stated in your first post here in your journal. Now...I've only suggested the above for traders that don't need any feedback for their journals. This is what I first thought you were doing because I thought your journal was about accountability... However...if you need feedback or are searching for such... to start a public journal at EliteTrader.com you will get just that...lots of tips, sugestions, critisms...some comments you will like and others you won't like. Those you don't like...say your peace and then put them on ignore (although ET's ignore feature is inadequate). With that said...you seem to have said your peace and I highly recommend you continue your journal... either here or elsewhere because I truly feel you have a discipline problem in your trading while trading multiple contracts and you need to keep posting those feelings and emotions to show that part in you that's in denial on some days eventhough you may embrace the fact on other trading days. Remember this...you have not clarified what so ever what your trading plan is to us reading your journal...if you have...I missed it. Therefore...when traders express themselves in your journal...its via their own trade methodology (how they trade via comparing your broker statement to their own charts) especially when we are clueless about your trading plan, strategies, methodology or whatever. Further, if you think I'm defending DB in this post... you will have missed the point or points. I do agree strongly with you about something you did say... Traders that consistently post critism should also post their own trade journal for review... maybe DB already does this and your unaware about such...maybe his journal isn't posted at ET... (By the way...my trade journal isn't posted here at ET and I'm more than happy to send you the direct link to such to keep things fair. In fact...I like how you post your journal and will be incorporating that style into my own journal for next week.) Remember this...we don't know what your trade methodology is (besides some hints)...therefore...reponses in your trading may sometimes seem ambiquous or philosophical... not quotes from some trading book as you have dangerously implied. Also...you know say you want people to make contributions when in the beginning... I truly thought this journal was about accountability and you mention nothing about soliciting constructive comments. You've been here long enough at ET by now to know that had you said that in the beginning (you want comments)...your journal would have many times more comments than it currently has. Simply...I have not seen one patented comment from anybody in your journal so far when you said the following... Please don't feel like you are being singled out either, this is meant for everyone. AFterburner... you have a good journal here...better than the rest that hid under the accountability theme. However...if your truly looking for constructive comments...your going to need to provide some in-depth info about your trading plan to prevent ambiquous or philosophical responses. Here's a cold hard fact based on my personal experience with knowing tons of successful traders... If you have a discipline problem while trading multiple contracts... It's extremely difficult to fix this problem alone. Your going to need lots of feedback... often its the feedback you don't like or the ones that make you uncomfortable or the ones that seem abrasive... are the feedback that would have kepted you in the game if your pockets aren't deep enough to survive a serious drawdown. Simply...do not underestimate discipline nor assume it stifles intuition... the two go hand to hand and are very synergetic upon each other... that's one of the difference between good traders and great traders. This next comment is an abrasive reminder to you... You broke your discipline via saying you were not going to trade. You also broke your discipline via increasing your contracts prior to a designated date Face the above fact...embrace it and do not embrace the fact that you did the following after breaking discipline... Today I handled every bad situation in the right way. I cut my losses to the point that there were no losses. You try to condemn me for trying these trades, but nothing clarifies market action for me like being in a trade. Here's a discipline exercise I use often myself when I break some important rules in my trading plan... Make one trade per day only...cherry pick the trade...no matter what the outcome of that trade...your trading day is done upon exiting that position... Do this for a designated period of time...analyze your trades based on what the market does for the next 15mins after your exit on each trading day. Think very carefully about this exercise...it has a deep-seated purpose. NihabaAshi
Oh? And where's yours? This entire thread could be summed up as follows: 1. Develop a plan with positive expectancy. 2. Stick to it. I would be happy to commiserate with AB if he were making some effort toward self-control. Otherwise, commiserating becomes enabling, and there's enough of that on ET as it is.
I would like to apologize for lashing out at dbphoenix yesterday; I overreacted. I was upset that on a day where I was overcoming some issues that I have struggled with in the past, he chose to focus on the negative. I am actually a little suprised that his post angered me as much as it did. The purpose of this journal is still accountability; I guess that's what he was trying to do. However, to label my trades as bad simply because they were countertrend is unreasonable. I wish that dbphoenix would clarify and expand his ideas though, because if I have to draw my own conclusions about what he means, I'm likely to get it wrong. In the future, please don't leave any room for interpretation. I'm too busy to have to ask you what you're talking about, and I certainly don't need any extra drama. On a different note, increasing my size to 10 was not an issue for me. I would agree with what people had said about this if I had jumped right back up to 15, but I didn't. I was planning on increasing to 10 on Monday anyway; doing it on Friday was just a symbol of my confidence in myself. Also, deciding to trade on Friday was the right course of action for me. I'm a fighter; I don't like to shrink away after I've been beaten. I prefer to work through problems and overcome obstacles instead of just analyzing them. If I wasn't like this, I probably would have quit trading a long time ago. If people think this lacks discipline, fine. It probably does. I think I'm a better person for it though. In conclusion, Thursday and Friday were emotional days for me. I'm trying to be so honest with this journal that I don't filter things out. I'm being a lot more open than I had originally planned, and because of this I'm likely to be defensive when I feel criticized like that. Anyway, at this point I would like to move on. Let's just let what happened go; I really don't feel like talking about it anymore and I hope everyone else will respect that. I want to be fresh and ready to trade on Monday so that I can concentrate on what's really important, the trading. Thank you.
Hey Afterburner, Looks like you are doing pretty well. What time frame chart are you trading off of? Do you base most of your trades on tape reading?