Inadvertently miscoloured the gaussians for the last traverse... here's the corrected version. <img src=http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=2250501>
I feel as though I've learnt more in the past two days of sim-trading than I did in the preceding two weeks of paper-trading. More involved, more real, no place for operating provisionally, more engaging and surprisingly... fun. I worked out why logging felt uncomfortable. I'm accustomed to expressing my thoughts freely and precisely. Lacking a market vocabulary of sufficient breadth and depth was the main reason the logging felt stilted and contrived. I realize why the pigeon-holing was necessary initially, to force me to focus on the right things, and let the perceptual learning take place. But it had come to feel stale and inadequate, the recognition of which provided the impetus to develop and refine the existing vocabulary. I'm understanding more and more why Jack said I was short-changing myself by letting the information cluster just on the chart. I also noticed that more than 'a few noobs got blown out today'. I got to settle into a rhythmic way of working, and Ninjatrader's static super DOM, with the only two buttons that are necessary after the entry - Reverse and Cover - fulfilled it's role admirably. It's interesting to note that when appropriate Analyses did not occur and the respective Decisions and Actions did not take place, blind subservience to the letters under M would have prevented this. I was stunned to discover that I'd been using the tentative, second-chance decision-making as a cushion, beneath which the habits of CW were still embedded. They permeated the whole of Monday's session. Tuesday's intermittently, and it was only today that they were completely dismissed. And it suddenly becomes evident why it's so crucial to eliminate the irrational emotional responses that tend to be activated by the spatial operators. It's not simply to enable effective trading at beginner and intermediate levels, but also to enable and inform the critical learning strands that come between traverse and tape trading. By relegating the spatial operators to their primitive survival role, the entire process is jeopardized, and progress is - in some cases irremediably - halted. Closing thoughts... while the non-stationary window is great for precision, it had been clouding my macro view of WMCN, and I found that intermittently switching up to an expanded view, and considering WMCN from the perspective of the slower fractals helped immensely. It's also astonishing how fine the line between half and double the range can be, when you're trading reversals.
Quick clarification to the above, although I'm using the static superDOM for order entry, I'm only using it for order entry, with the trade log overlaid. The only two necessary buttons, with none of the distraction of running P&L totals and chart markers, only a colour and a number to indicate direction and number of contracts.