Ripley, I won't add much to your journal. I want to direct your attention to something we have discussed before. You are too focused on counting the money and not focused enough on the story the market is telling you throughout the day. Have you noticed that you when you are up a bit, it becomes fairly easy and quick to lose money back? Do you understand why this is? Consider that when you give money back, and because you are so focused on $$, that your trades following a loss are based purely on the idea that you want your money back. This is a poor approach. It is ultimately futile and will lead to a lot of greys and ulcers. You will soon want to focus more on hitting the ball consistently. It is a lot like golf. You want to maintain the same backswing speed and strike through the ball at the same speed every time. The main things that change are your clubs, your positioning and inclination. The swing should remain the same in most cases. Putting what you are doing in golf terms, you focus in the morning on your smooth swing which produces results for you. When you lose on one swing, you start hacking at the ball as if the golf club is a baseball bat. You lose focus and get emotional, I'm sure. This will completely cloud your judgement and will prevent you from having any flow whatsoever. I propose you take a different approach: Play your plan to build a day. Once you get within distance to your goal, give yourself a loss limit of $200 or whatever is acceptable. So let's say you are up $1000 after the morning and you want to continue trade... tell yourself that you are willing to risk $200 to see if you can improve on what you have. If you go through the $200, then you are done for the day and you bank $800. If you find that you can't stop once you lost the $200 limit, then you have bigger and more urgent issues and have crossed the line from being a trader to being a gambler. That's a whole different ball of wax. Good luck.
Thanks a LOT FT71... I think it helps me out a lot. It just so happens that my daily target is +$1,000. And for some reason or not, I think I could get away with risking a bit more after I reach that point. But, it usually won't work out. I should stick with -$200 like you suggested. Thus, I need to stay consistent with my trading at all times. Never deviating from my risk/reward etc and stick with my trading plan at all times. Just trust in my edge and believe that the law of higher #ers will work in my favor. You are right in that I need to quit focusing on $, as in I need to quit checking my P/L after every trade. I have my trading day broken down into front nine and the back nine. I should only check my P/L after each round. I should just trade away staying disciplined and focusing on my trading plan at all times. Great suggestion. Thanks a LOT.
Day 6 DiSAPPOINTING.. # of Disasters: 1 On a day when DOW went up +170 points, I should've hit the ball out of the park. But I didn't and I was barely profitable. But I did keep myself in the game the whole day, and thats what matters. I do have a lot to work on. I have to be at my trading desk at 8 am, and not at 9:26 am...
Day 7 FEARFUL... # of Disasters: 7 I was up +$ 91 bucks today. I also moved around my stops way too much. I should not even touch my stops. If you have to move the stop around to give it a bit more room, then that stop is too close and you should come up with a new stop rather than moving the stop around. I should only get in with LIMIT ORDERS. Only LIMIT ORDERS at all times. I must overcome FEAR. You cannot trade right with fear of losing, fear of being wrong etc. You have to let go of fear and just let it rip. # of Disasters must be "0" everyday.
I have no fear and neither should you. Execute your plan and stick to your rules. You can do this Ripley.
Thoughts: Without discipline, it is only a matter of time before you blow up. With discipline, and without a positive expectancy system, you will eventually grind out your account. Slowly but surely, I need to limit my losing days, or try to finish positive everyday. Simple as that...
Day 8 PATIENCE is the "KEY"... # of Disasters: 4 I need to quit taking every trade imaginable. I need to NOT TAKE TRADES. I should only take the best trades, and I should not jump in on those trades. I need to be patient, sit back and only enter the trades when they come to me rather than chasing after them. I need to work on my winning percent. DO NOT under NO CIRCUMSTANCE should a trade get past your business man's risk. NO NO NO... # of Disasters must be "0" everyday.
Higher probability trades. Prices are falling down hard, and you want to get in on at the market... but the prudent thing to do would be to wait a second, and go in with a limit order rather than going in with -3 pts right off the bat. Those little things that takes a lot of patience out of you.
Am I reading this correctly. Your starting capital is $9,000 and your profit target is $1,250 a day! Well there lies your problem. Your daily profit target is 14% oy your total equity. That's just plain stupid. You're taking too much risk to be consistantly profitable. You'll have one big loss and wipe out 50% of your equity in a session. Set yourself a semi realistic profit target like 1% of capital per day. That's still a massive 250% per annum. Your can make $1,250 a day on a hundred grand but not nine grand. You have to have realistic expections. focus on breaking even and learning to read the market, then worry about making money. There is no other way. Runningbear