Happy to help. Don't get me wrong, I plan to continue posting regularly intraday, just not every time I reverse. At least not until I've addressed a few things. Btw, what's the rationale behind your green trendlines?
Update (n.b. the auto-numbering went awry... no black p3 there) <img src=http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=2247279>
At first, after I read this, I couldnât think of anything. Then I had a thought, wrote it down. Then another, and another, and before I knew it, Iâd filled half a page. First came a sort of reluctant perfectionism, which I suspect was fostered at med school. Having all the answers, all the time. Making sure everything fit into a framework. Together with an inescapable attachment to presentation and aesthetics, messiness was out of the picture from the get go. Then came the âcorrectingâ and âoperating provisionallyâ. On the wards, after newly assessing a patient, it was frequent practice to list differential diagnoses, a list of possible conditions, allocate a provisional diagnosis which could be treated empirically, while running all manner of tests which would provide a definitive diagnosis. I understand that in the states, the investigations come before even the examination! Then again, maybe thatâs just my ill-conceived stereotype of the culture of defensive medicine spurred by an increasingly litigious culture. In any case, it seems old habits die hard. Which leads on to defensiveness, the next obstructive quality, and I mean this in two senses; creating justifications for everything, and also the absence of a readiness to admit mistakes. Then a dreamy idealism which again causes two problems. An incandescent long term vision at the cost of achievable short-term goals, and an oppressively exaggerated imagined burden of social responsibility. Performance anxiety from learning in the search- I mean spot-light, under the glare of many eyes, some supportive but others malign and rooting for failure. Self-concept. Doctor not trader. Studying for years to become something, working through rigorous internships, taking scores of postgraduate exams⦠Iâd drastically cut my shifts but had not changed my mindset. Failure to attach sufficient importance to money, seeing it as just a means to many ends, and thinking of itâs attainment with a sense of detached inevitability. An imperfect understanding of the material, which I had blamed, in part, on variations or inconsistencies in terminology. Incomplete use of MADA, in particular allowing newly forming bars to colour the result of the prior MADA cycle. Intractable difficulties with logging, and again, laying blame for this on a system, which I had unconsciously labeled as restrictive, mechanical, even constrictive, rather than recognizing any personal deficiencies. The list is long, yet I suspect itâs far from complete.
They say admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery, and now that I have my list, I can begin to address the issues. Reverting to EOB monitoring will remove any perceived sense of urgency. Real-time gaussian annotation will facilitate MADA. Both should help to separate Monitoring from Analysis. I won't act until I have a letter in the Action column, and by substituting sim-trading for papertrading, I can eliminate acting provisionally and refamiliarize myself with the order entry system. 'Eraser' - and the currently illegible mess it produces - should cure my fear of messiness. Real time EmWave monitoring will help me maintain coherence, though I'll drop back to level 2 for this. I'm finding level 3 much more challenging, and in practice sessions on the games, even at my most relaxed, I get predominantly medium coherence. Up until now, I've been using my 'backup' computer almost exclusively. I'll switch to the Dreadnought in preparation for the real thing. Thorough debriefing and continued chart study should help to shore up my understanding, as with accepting and learning from every mistake. I need to establish some short term goals and think of myself as a trader. While accepting and welcoming a social responsibility, there's no need to magnify it to uncomfortable levels.