All traders have to do only two things, the rest is optional: (1) enter (2) exit ! Today i'm evaluating my performance with this slide.. (attached) May you'll find it useful to think about too.
Actually , all traders need to do only one thing, PRESERVE CAPITAL. Without that one thing a trader won't be doing anything.
OK, I just meant to draw attention to entry and exit style and temporarily forget about anything else. Also, you mean a winning trader must preserve capital. As you know most traders do not preserve capital, they lose it. Also, back to the slide now, I find that the fear of being at one extreme drives me to the other. Example: the feeling of missing out sometimes drives me to fit the market into my entry criterea, rather than sit back and wait for clear signals. At the end of each day I make a note of the best possible trade of the day, per my methods. The signal is always super clear, and lately I've been missing that one but entering five others that are questionable to begin with...
LOL BFD! we ask for utility you give us shoal,,, bwaaaaa:-/ give us somethin' we can bait our hooks with cum monday morn..
If you have developed a system with true positive expectancy think of the system as your employer, you are instructed to do what it tells you to do when it tells you to do it. If you don't do that then you are simply a lousy employee and should be fired since it will be impossible for your employer to make any $$ as long as you are working for him. If you don't trust your employer (system) to correctly instruct you for success why are you working there? All signals are super clear in retrospect, it's while they are developing in real time that we percieve fuzzy edges and try to "think". The signal is never saying this is a winning trade, it is only saying this market movement has potential. Your job description (responsibility to your employer) is: #1. to enter into the stream of potential market excursion that the signal identifies . #2. capital preservation, if the signal's indicated potential favorable movement doesn't continue and reverses against the signal (not you but the signal, keep yourself out of it) follow whatever your employers (system) rules are for closing the trade. #3. capital apprecciation, if the signals indicated potential continues, follow system rules to exit. Do you have a sustandard employer? Are you a substandard employee? Banjo
I wish my employer (system) would give me some vacation days. But, no! It expects me to take every trade, every time.
We both suck No, really, beautiful analogy. However, some of the methods i'm using have discretionary entries and/or exits. Let's get concrete. Here's one with a mechanical entry but discretionary exit. It enters on 3-bar pivots when the previous high/low is exceeded. That's pretty specific. Roughly 25% of these entries have the chance to earn 7 or more points on the NQ. Almost all of these good ones get moving right away, so that stops can go to b/e after 5 bars. Still, to be very successful, the bad trades need to be cut off sooner. So there is some discretion involved... I might wait for the 5 bars, or I might cut it off after two or three. Using a mechanical stop and exit with this method produces mildly positive results, but not enough to warrant the risk and trading time. You might say it's a "substandard employer". At least for day trading, this seems par for the course... talent is needed at some place in the method.