Covered at 941.75 - despite DBV, wasn't comfortable holding through much more heat. Any intraday guidance would be much appreciated.
Covered at 950 on a record day. I know I didn't apply the PV relationship correctly. I know I didn't stick to the mechanical diagrams we delineated yesterday. I know I didn't operate on the correct fractal. I was using the micropore. At no point was I fearful or agitated.
Here is the log. As can be seen, I didn't use most of the volume vocabulary we listed. I imagine this will be another 100 point day, which would enable a boot-camper who's following the rules to double up on his contracts for Monday. Meanwhile, I clearly need to do a lot more work on the basics, and won't be using any more real money until I have the principles securely in place. The fault is all with me. I think you've done an incredible job reducing everything to it's simplest, most straightforward terms, appealing to my learning style, and adopting a complementary teaching style. I think my cross-wiring has to do, not so much with any 'CW' background, as with the haphazard and unstructured adopting of SCT information from a number of disparate sources before we began this process, creating my own mental connections, rules and habits in the process. I hope that my slow and stubborn reversion back to a correct SCT path hasn't unduly influenced any other beginners, or, perhaps more importantly, would-be beginners. I also hope that I haven't limited the potential of this thread, and held back others from progressing as fast as they could. I think another fault of mine is a propensity to work on autopilot. My brain has been hibernating for longer than I'd care to admit. Most of my professional, even academic life, everything always came a little too easy, discouraging any real intellectual work. The hibernating mind emerged from it's cozy cave, hoisted the back pack, and felt it could climb the mountain trails in walking slumber. I obviously have a lot of work to do this weekend before even contemplating going live again. <img src=http://elitetrader.com/vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=2129084 width=800>
I'll be doing lots of drills between now and next week, in an attempt to blowtorch the faulty connections and set up new ones. Furthermore, I'm at work for all but the last 90 minutes of RTH on Monday and Tuesday. I would therefore encourage anyone following this thread to post their charts and logs, so Jack has something to work with. Ten days gone and the clock is ticking.
I'm caught up since my last post. I think you did a great job in the discoveries you are going through today. At this point we have 10 days to work with. For any trading method, the crucial element is "knowing that you know" as the current bar is forming or completed. The convention for most learning traders is to put in time watching a display that they thought up for observing the market. They do this and that and either run out of money or quit because they become crosswired. Here in boot camp there are several defined components and we drill to put them together in a cohesive way. The components are: 1. Charts and their annotation, 2. Doing a routine (MADA). 3. Logging the routine's results 4. Trading using the Action part of the log, and 5. Debriefing. When a person does drills after trading hours, the relentless passage of real time is off the table. Real time moves very slowly and it is very difficult for a person to slow down to the market's way of passing the time. The slowness is what is relentless. A person has to do rows of the log in tempo with the market. Putting the five parts together hasn't happened as yet. The good news is that the five parts are there, known to exist by some sort of definition and understood to have an interconnection. By the numbers, here is what we need to do. The routine (MADA) is difficult to do because it is unfamiliar and it is mechanical. To do it, the annotations need to be at a minimum level. We have the vocabulary for the log and the log. But the vocabulary is not available for two reasons: it is on paper and not in the mind and, second, there is no connection of the vocabulary to any other components in any way. The best news is that if the D and A columns could be done, then the trading platform could be used in relation to SCT trading. The platform is working and it is being done using an assortment of things from your mind which, naturally, always override the bootcamp activities. As expected you trust your "system" of doing things and SCT is just a collection of items that came from an assortment of places. All of 2007 was spent as a remote syllabus for learning SCT in a planned and organized way. It had superb support for those who put in the work or started at any time along the way. Boot camp is going along quite well simply because we both are getting the job done and there are no deadlines for accomplishing anything. I like the drills because once they get underway, they gradually pull things together. Annotations build from adjacent bars and each bar takes forever to be completed in real time. I could write a book on what a bar is. That is a threat, of course. when you are going from bar to bar pulling a cover off from left to right, you get to move faster in annotating even though it is awkward and you can cheat alot if you want to fool yourself and keep learning more slowly. But if you did do all four components thoroughly and awkwardly (there is no prize for not being awkward) for 10 days, you will find it has been like taking a full four course load for a term of college in the Freshman year. I speak of a person who is purposefully learning and making sure that each false step is covered and corrected and understood. Naturally, you would do a distribution of the usage of the V vocabulary and the P vocabulary and determine the cross corrolation and the statistical significance. Maybe not. Do a day. Bar by bar. You may or may not do a row for every bar. Doing a row for each time anything changes is a good minimum for doing a row. But for most people they can't remember what is written on a row at first. If you can't remember it is probably because the time goes by so slowly. Annotate. Complete a row of the log. Here you USE MADA. Do another row and you have established the BINARY part of SCT. Near the open, you enter when you know the dominant trend. you will have point 1 by then and you are heading to point 2. Say you make up 10 file folders, one for each day. Four log pages (blank); a chart for each day. Some note paper. Could you do 10 opens and get into the market for each of the 10 days? Do do this you need to have the vocabulary sheets out and you need to use on each row the symbols that go into each column. What happens about day 4? You will get an urge. You can follow that urge. Don't use an eraser. Take out a new print of the chart and take out a new sheet of the log. Staple the first pass that was not complete under the new sheets you are starting over with. This gives you something important. In component 5 debriefing which happens at the end of the day, you can debrief more cogently. All these things contribute to one topic of SCT: DRILLS. You get the 10 days done as far as getting in the market. What is next? It is to go from point 1 to point 2 on a dominant traverse. Do this 10 times for the 10 days. It will take a few bars and a few rows. you have all the time you need. What is the consequence of going from point 1 to point 2? You make money. you did not have much variety in symbol usage BUT you used those symbols over and over. They will begin to stick. And you will notice your speed picks up. It is like shearing sheep with a Sunbeam. You know more and more about how hard to sit the sheep down on his spine and how often to use the 3 oil squirt can and where to put it down so you can get it again. How long does it take before you just fold a fleece together to tie it? Stuffing bags with shags is no fun. The lanolin really feels good on your hands after a while. Do point 2 to point 3 for all ten. By now you will be getting "neutral biased" and you will see more vocabulary working for you. The fourth 10 day cycle is more diverse. Go for the FTT of the Channel on all 10 days. Some logs will be a sheet long others will be two sheets long. After you do your first reversal on a day, do the rest of each day as a completion of the day. You have 50 or more pages done and you have learned a Vocabulary for Volume and a Vocabulary for Price. Next post is debriefing.
As a restart for bootcamp in terms of trading, the debriefing will focus on bean counting first. Review the Action (righthand side of the logs in order and add a contract every time the cummulative points reaches a number that is 40 points greater (let 2,000 dollars represent 1 contract margin in ES). When traders are longer in points than 1 contract margin, then add accordingly. For boot camp purposes carry forward the left over points made which are not converted to contracts. This drill of bean counting is to get familiar with what the market offers daily in terms of a given skill level and how to do the P/L planning for a business plan. The plan will have break poiints as contracts are added and skill levels increase. At some point capital has to be swept out of accounts and used in PVT, then SR. Bean counting is just debriefing warm up. Go through the logs and compare where weak trading happened as compared to the chart annotations. This is a timing study for you. The impotance of timing comes down to two issues: false trades you take corrective action on and poorly executed trades. False trades for beginners are usually related to failures of dominants to develop after a post FTT retrace to the RTL where BO occurs. Poorly executed trades will be on one side or the other of optimum. Some people will be premature as a rule and others will be lagging as a rule. So far, the boot camp trades have not been associated with SCT and on the otherhand are associated with a ruleset attained in another manner. This trading that occurred is a "reaction" type trading almost totally linked to something that does not occur in annotating and does not appear on logs. The trades were all "reference" type trades. People who become traders following an informal route are largely "reference" traders and another characteristic they have is NOT adding contracts from profits. These people always "REFER' to whether the trade they are in is making money or not. NEOXX uses "HEAT" as a measure of the referential way he "SEES" things. So far he is only getting more oxygen. The drills on 10 days this weekend will begin to interconnect and he may be able to enter on a dominant trverse and thus stay net positive all of the time. This doesn't mean he will shange from sympathetic to parasympathetic. All it means is he will have no "HEAT" to think up as his tries to sit through a nondominant (point 2 to point3) and then finally be on a dominant going to an FTT if the channel is a simple one. The two days where information was posted on trades, all the posting was in the fight or flight context. The cause of this fight or flight is NOT "knowing that you know". To know that you know is difficult. You have to: Annotate Do a routine Log the routine Reach closure on the routine by filling in H in the D column as a consequence of "knowing that you know". Repeat. This has not been done once as yet. This weekend it will be done over and over as a drill. If the drills are completed then it may be possible that the parasympathetic feeling of "knowing that you know" may occur. If we get that rolling, then we can get some biofeedback UBS's hooked up as a way to stay on track while trading. Once the feelings of support, comfort and confidence set in using SCT, then the CW feelings of fear, anxiety and anger may be used a warning signals thata person does NOT know that he knows. When this occurs, then a correction of annotating, logging and doing the routine has to be made to get back on track. So far the log being done that reflects the trading is only using entries and exits and is not dominated by holds and reversals. there is one vocabulary for SCT (not being used) and another Entry/Exit vocabulary that is being used. Debriefing to see the two vocabularies is easy. Basically, debrieding can't be done for SCT as yet since we haven't gotten rolling on SCT because of fear, anxiety, HEAT, etc.. What we did do though was "set the table". For the weekend we can put out vocabulary sheets, print 10 days of charts, print 50 pages of blank logs. and set up some file folders. we CAN do the bean counting an find out how beginner trading in SCT goes in a very nice market.