I ran across this tidbit in 'The Disciplined Trader' by Mark Douglas, and for a moment there I thought I was reading a Spyder/JH book <I> There is another characteristic of our nature that supports our need to learn. Whenever we learn a skill, the steps involved in the operation of that skill drop down to an unconscious level of operation, so we are then free to learn something new. To learn a skill, we usually have to break the skill down into a series of small steps and concentrate on each individual step until we can put all the steps together into a series of effective movements. By concentrating on each small step, we narrow our focus of attention to the point where we are oblivious to anything else going on in the environment. For example, think of a time in your life when you were trying to learn a new skill, say, in some sport, and while you were trying to put all the movements together, someone was attempting to get your attention on some completely unrelated matter. In such a situation we would find it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to stay focused on one without destroying our concentration on the other. However, after we have successfully made the skill a learned resource, we could easily perform the movements while focusing our attention elsewhere. Without this characteristic of our nature, where our skills drop to an unconscious level of operation, we would find it nearly impossible to move beyond the performance level of a typical infant. Just think what it would be like if we had to concentrate on all the movements necessary just to pick something up the way a typical infant does. We didn't always have the eye/hand coordination that we take completely for granted. We had to learn it. We learned it because we were attracted to things in the environment we wanted to experience with our sense of touch. <B>As we learn each skill, we can automatically access the series of movements to execute the skill so we don't have to concentrate on any of the individual steps, which then frees our attention to explore and continually expand what we can become aware of.</B></I> May this be the week that course monitoring becomes unconcious
Your performance was a fluke and is not repeatable or doable with a live account. How could it be, right? I'll post my NK chart in a little while. Then we just need to persuade nzbryant to post his HSI chart occasionally and we're set for global domination. Welcome to the dark side. Nice to have someone else in this timezone.
Nice work. Good to see individuals applying these lessons in various markets around the world. Just an FYI for you, check your FBO definition. FBO's (for the purposes of this Journal) occur when price Fails to Break Out of the Right Trend Line. What you have marked on your chart as an FBO is a Volatility Expansion. Keep up the excellent work. - Spydertrader
Anyone trading now, market is trading as wild as it would during normal trading hours lol... Trading where I can since I did not log on until midnight and most of the moves already happened. Channels still looking good as some volatility expansions popped up and worked as support for move to get out of a short I had on. I hope Monday is as exciting as it seems overnight is shaping up to be.
The follow up chart... Note to self. A volatility expansion is not an FBO..... I now see my mistake. The actions from an FTT relate to the SAME channels in which it occurred. My fake FBO was in a different channel set completely. What I had was a Breakout on my yellow lines and should have held until I had an FTT in the red channel, which was expanding due to volatility. On the upside, I was catching most of the FTT's today and didn't go too nuts with the lines. I'll try this a few more times this week on the DAX, SPI, etc. If I get some consistent results, I might put 1 contract into the water. I agree with Optioncoach, it's all fine with lines or a paper account, but holding on to a real trade is a completely different story. I've taken to deleting the P & L columns of IB to try and minimise the emotions. <a href="http://imageshack.us"><img src="http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/8488/spifollowupbg1.png" border="0" alt="Image Hosted by ImageShack.us" /></a>
Mischief: 1. 1 contract is small enough to not break you but real enough to force you to concentrate. I am more focused with real money, even only $50 a point. 2. On yor other question, perhaps if you had multiple contracts, you could have taken half off at the lower trendline after getting in on that FTT since that trend line is a target. If it breaks through, you still riding half the position lower, if it reverses, at worst you can get out on the move back higher and still take more profits. If you want to wait it out you can set the stop for the remaining half at your entry to give it more room. Thoughts?
Today's Nikkei. Beautiful. I need to get more red tones for my trendlines. Just for fun I practiced a "You're going to do WHAT?!" long trade and washed 10 mins later - I was never upside-down (best was +40) and did use a stop to exit which was prudent given the day's context (orange channel). The increasing red PR volume was a very clear clue that I was "wrong" at +20 points. It is important to learn and believe for yourself that your mistakes will make you money if you do what the market tells you to do in a timely fashion. This is the hardest thing for many people to accept and do. My annotations on the volume were eaten up by Quotetracker - I overloaded the permitted no. of objects I guess.
My annotations on QT disapear when they want to. Seems to be associated with clicking the mouse on one of them and all of a sudden they are gone.
Not a bad idea. I remember Van Tharp saying that scaling out cuts down on long term profitability, but this method is completely discretionary. If I had 3 contracts (for example), I'd bank 1 just to show a profit and let the others ride. I'll be on 1 contract for a little while yet though. I've traded mechanically for quite a while, but this is my first effort at discretionary trading.
I have heard so many opinions on scaling out. However here where you have a target in sight, you can take a piece off and let the others run. For those times where it bounces back you reduce what you give back and still bank profits. With 1 contract I think you have nothing to feel bad about taking that profit cause it matched the rules. Once the breakout was confirmed you possibly could have gone short again with a tight stop if it moved back into the channel. Entering the short again was still profitable based on the chart.