This journal is intended to document my EUR/USD trading.My style is very short term, I hold trades from a few minutes to a few hours using 1 min and 5 min charts. My setups are strictly defined and described in my business plan. Money management rules limit the amount of risk to 0.85-1.5% of the account value. I actively trade around the London opening, normally don't take more than two trades per day, some days I don't trade at all. So far my biggest struggle was following the plan to the letter. Temporary lapses of self-discipline and mistakes cost me a big chunk of profits. My main goal is to become more consistent, eliminate mistakes and show a full commitment. Hopefully a public journal will help me to achieve this goals and share my journey with the ET community. I will try to post all the trades as close to real time as possible. Your constructive criticism is welcome but if your only message is that TA doesn't work please stay away from this thread.
When I started to trade, I learned a very good lesson about consistency that is still helpfull today for me: I had to change my believe from good or bad, related to the outcome in money, too following the rules of my system. I had to reward myself for following the system no matter what the outcome was in regards to money. I could only do that, by giving up money goals in the short term and start setting goals about not making a mistake on my trading rules. The goals I set where personal things I loved to do or hate to do. For example: If I follow al my rules today, I will reward myself with a new book I want. Or If I do not follow al my rules, I will clean the garage this weekend. Simple but effective...
what are yours rules? what do you mean consistency? follow your rules? or judge the market consistently based on your criteria? people always think they can do it consistently, but their understanding to consistency is vague! market has lots of angles or faces, which side would you hit? it is impossible to be consistent since the market is not consistent in its behavior. people often twist the facts to fit their "just can think so far" capibility. losers fight to lose winners win to fight "the art of war" shunzhi if the rule will make you lose, forget about it. if just for the sake of keeping your rules, there is no sense in trading, better go to casinio. their rules are strict and direct, you donot need set rules by yourself, you just play and the results are so consistent: lose lose ... in a row. consistency means you do not twist the facts and observe and think objectively. you do not over generalize an individual case into a general case. you do not assume the market always has some traits you know. I am discretionary. I change symbol frequently. I sometimes day trade, sometimes swing trade. my rule is I do not touch market behaviors fundementally I do not understand. I try hard to touch those most likely predictable behaviors. just in real life, try best to avoid dealing with people whose behaviors are hard to predict, such as holigan bahaviors, michevious, childish, ... I like gentleman. I know they are polite, they will not argue for subtle things, they understand respect.... in a hooligan market, your stop loss frequently get token out, you play the rules, but the market take advantge of your rules, so there is no sense to play with them. what my point is: do not try to be consistent, learn to adapt. try to make the market follow rules are foolish. most people over-generalize the market, try to use a set of rules or a model to fit the market, of course, it looks so nice also scientific. but in reality, it is not feasible. that is why computer could not replace human traders. I once have an idea to program my trading rules and ceriteria , then my computer do it robotically, late I realize what a fool I am.