Not too happy with my trading today. The only thing that saved me was that the market went in the direction of my bias. Otherwise some of the trades were not by the rules and I kept the last trade beyond a reasonable stop loss.
A thought has crossed my mind and it has nothing to do with my journal. What is the chance that one can use someone else's trading strategy successfully? I mean; If I am a successful trader and I spell out my strategy to you, are you going to be successful? My gut feeling is that the answer is NO.
My personal experience says "No". I was unable to trade the profitable strategies of people whose trades I could follow every day. I didn't trust their systems. I got a free swing trade setup from Pristine every Monday for almost a year with a description of the setup, the entry price, stop and a 2-tiered profit target. I didn't take a single trade because I didn't trust the system. Once I had my own profitable system and taught it to others, none were able to trade my system because they didn't trust it. Someone here on ET was posting (maybe still is) excellent swing trade setups with entry prices, stops and targets and I'll bet you not one struggling ET-er traded the calls and made the profits off them. It all comes down to trader's mindset. Until you've attained a trader's mindset (read Mark Douglas's books), there's a 99% chance you'll fail even if you have the Holy Grail of Trading in your hands.
If mindset is the most important aspect of trading, how would one explain that in the Journals forum has 145,366 Replies and 74,498,926 Views and in the Psychology forum there are 10,472 Replies and 1,546,671 Views in the top 20 positions (based on Views). That is almost a 13:1 ration in favor of the Journals in the Replies tab and 48:1 in the Views tab. Shouldn't the ratios be reversed?