I am trading ES and probably get 2 or 3 trades a day and i find myself getting very distracted during the waiting, sometimes even missing trades because of it since i often leave my desk to do something. It sometimes results in me running out of patience and taking on trades that i shouldn't take on. I tried playing some games but i am not really in to gaming. I do play some guitar and also work on and off on automated trading but nothing to serious so far. What do you guys do to keep yourself entertained without losing to much focus?
Find a method, with more trades ?? Then reduce your trade time to maybe 2 x 2hour windows, when condtions are best for your method ideally. Get Android Tablet, Google Chrome Desktop remote, so walk around more with tablet watching market so not so stuck to your desk ?? I trade via a tablet, while going out for walks, cuing for 1hour to get into tesco's these days LOL
Alarms, when the price reaches certain level ? You probably can set those on mobile apps as well, so basically, anything you want while wait. Me - i would be drawing. Gaming. Reading. Now moved to holding time of 1 week ~ few months, thus waiting became the ally.
I don't see how i can automate my current strategy. I am watching different instruments and levels to decide if i should place a trade or not. I am slowly learning how to automate but it isn't something i can spend 4 hours a day or so doing.
The problem with alerts is that i am watching different instruments to decide if i should a place a trade, most of my trades aren't based of certain levels but more related to how the ES is trading in relation to those other instruments.
I am spending some time working on a new or automated strategy but it isn't something i can do for hours and hours day after day, i get to bored. Mainly because i already have a profitable strategy and don't want to start all over again. The problem with looking at the market remotely applies to what i have described before, i am watching to many things at once to display on a tablet screen. I have done something like this on a laptop with moderate success, unfortunately i was still missing to many trades because i couldn't get all the information on one screen.
Is it me, or you just said yourself, what is the problem, solution - different strategy,>new instruments,> larger time frame,> less action = more free time.