I was supposed to read them? I was just looking at the pictures. LOL, I bought a book 10 months ago, am on the 4th chapter now, just lack any desire to reread the same old crap that is just rewarmed up for the upteen time. It is like playing Pacman a million times and a book comes out on how to play it better.
that's all I ever did, just look at the pitcures, especially that one where if you bought way down at the bottom and sold way up there at the top, you wouldn't have to scalp anymore. I mean to tell you, it was a beautiful picture. and I lived through a few of them without ever seeing it.
back then we were trading wheat. It was up one day and down the other, and I couldn't figure it out to save my soul. Nobody traded Oats, because they were not cool, just for small timers. Come delivery time that old jagged wheat chart had some blood on every peak and every valley from some trader who was stupid enough to take a position. And over there in oats, it was smooth as a baby's bottom. I don't think it had a single down day for the whole season. Just straight up, usually a quarter or a half cent a day. I know I wasn't in, and don't know anybody that was.
Handle, You're right in the sense of no one knows the outcome of a trade will be but you should have a strategy where the odds are more in your favor.. I'm not saying 90% of my trades are profitable.. In fact, most of my trades are losers because of my impatience, overtrading and so forth.. What I'm saying is I can spot trades where I know 90% of the time, it's gonna work.. unfortunately, I'm so impatient that I trade other crap setups instead.. and what I'm asking for help.. I have no problem in technical stuff, it's the mental where I'm horrible at..
OT, but Oldtime's Wheat and Oats story made me recall a guy I used to know at RJO. I had some desk space at 555 W. Jackson and traded downstairs from their Ag-desk. There was a guy there who loved to short calls on Wheat. He was always wrong, it was uncanny. Literally the moment I would hear him cry-out "WHEAT!" I knew it was time for the short squeeze and would buy fives. By the end of the day it was usually good for ten to twelve cents.
Actually, I learned the right way, I learned how to trade long term stocks/commodities first then out of boredom, went on to day trading S&P500/IBM/ES. Yep, I have done more of my share of trading all the grains including Oats/Wheat, and all told 42 future markets even now. But always have done best for trend in Rough Rice and Coffee as far as grown markets. Starting this past September I have increased trading in longer term Commodity spreads, found a certain pattern I liked, backtested it on some markets over 30 years and now happily trading it. Very very slow way of making very consistent profits. When you get trading down to it is boring, you are doing well. I have developed multi frames now for day trading, but just love scalping 30 second/one minute bars as I find this much easier to read price action in ES. It is very much like fishing, most of the time you get little ones and just waiting for a decent catch a handful times of the day, minimize losses due to rules, keep checking where the little guy is going to get screwed and play the other side when the stops are hit at right time of the day. And if you can keep your losing percentages way down, you can average down on each trade, so even breakeven trades can be good sized winners. You do enough backtesting, going back years on tick data, you can see so much and be better prepared. It is all just a numbers game.
Handle, Glad to hear you're doing well.. I respect anyone who can trade this for a living.. Its the hardest job I've ever come across..
Do you get in on the close of the bar or on trendline bounce? If it is trendline bounce, put in orders and walk away, if it is the close, walk back to your office a few minutes before the close of the bar. I think it comes down to you have greedy tendencies which will turn you into a poor chap. What I do now when something is screaming to take some emotional setup, I do it in SIM, they generally still all losing trades but not coming out of my pocket any more. Long ago I did this, I called it the "Double Whammy", If I did some trade that was not my setup and I lost, I made a check out to a charity for that same amount and sent it off that day. Really quick after a few days I did that less and less. It seems as humans, we sometimes don't learn a lesson unless it really hurts our bottom line.
You're mired in a gambler's mindset. Every trade is brand new, anything can happen, and there's a random distribution of wins and losses among the trade setups that constitute your edge. The fact that you FEEL 90% certain about the outcomes of technical setups in an environment where 90% win rates belong to professional institutional traders (HFT, iBanks, hedge funds that blow up every few years and start fresh, etc.) tells me that you suffer from confirmation bias; you remember the setups that work and conveniently forget the same setups that fail. There was a setup where I got trapped into losing trades a couple times and I was ready to place a filter on this pattern to eliminate it from my trading plan. But I've learned that stats derived from actual research reveals the market's reality, and prove or disprove the "reality" manufactured in my mind based on a few personal experiences. When I did the research of the outcomes of every appearance of this particular setup over a period of months, I found that it had 55% success rate and when a contextual filter was added the success rate improved to 65%. Yet in my mind it FELT like a 90% failing setup. If you really want help, do the work: 1. Do you have a trading plan based on research and hard stats (demonstrating an edge) that precisely describes the setups, what triggers a trade entry, and how the stop placement (or averaging process) and profit-taking are to be managed? If no, do the work and put a real plan together. If yes, 2. Have you practiced applying it in a simulated account until the simulated results approximately match the profits your edge should be producing based on your research? If no, practice until you can follow your plan. If yes, 3. Seek help from a professional trading psychologist, because you've made it clear that you're not trading in line with your plan. I don't think your problem is impatience; I think it's that you believe you can predict the market based on selective after-the-fact cataloging of price action.
<B>You're mired in a gambler's mindset. Every trade is brand new, anything can happen, and there's a random distribution of wins and losses among the trade setups that constitute your edge</b> Most of what you say makes sense, nodoji. However "random distribution between wins and losses constitute an edge"? This is double speak TAese at its finest-- how can a random distribution be an edge? surf