It's definitely about habits. My good habits made decent money for me today. Then my bad habits made me lost money. I'm still up for the day but I was up much more earlier. If I can get rid of all of my bad habits then I will be very consistent. I have a few edges that work like clockwork. Steady gains everyday. But then these evil bad habits tell me to go take these bad trades. I realize when a trade is planful well thought out those are the trades I should take. The impulsive trades are ALWAYS ALWAYS wrong. Eliminate the impulsive trades and my P&L will shoot up. But it comes down to habits of ALWAYS ALWAYS executing on your good trades and don't listen to the impulsive ones. I know what to do but I'm still not doing it consistently! That's what frustrating. I know where best to enter and where best to exit for my particular niche. Yet, I'm still taken over by bad habits. Maybe I should take up meditation to STOP myself before I execute. It's like being an outside observer that would coach myself before I do a stupid move. Like I should double check, 'Do you really want to do that?" If it meets all of my criteria then go execute that trade. If it doesn't then stay out. Instead of letting the "automatic" mind take over. Keep doing it over and over until the "automatic" mind is only filled with good habits. Maybe I should put post it notes on my monitors to remind me everyday.
I totally get your point. I've been there done that. After a big gain, I would take a big hit. That's last year's issue. I don't think that's the real issue at this point this week. I was just flat to small losses a few days then I get all worried and concern. Today I trade smaller than my max size and well within my comfort zone and I made decent money. So that helps and makes sense. What got me was the stupid trades. They creep up. Getting rid of the stupid trades by itself will result in a huge P&L improvements. Keep doing what's working and stop doing what's NOT working.
what a ride! I was up $800 then down to flat then now back up to over $1K+. whoohoo! If you are in control and plan your trades then it would be fine. My mistake(s) was always same bad habits that have bedeviled me for years! The call of the countertrend. Over the years I have controlled to have lesser and lesser damage. But it's still lurking... Luckily it didn't hurt me as much as in the past. Because I got out fast enough. And I was able to recover and made it all back and some. I'm not sure what in my psychology that makes me so afraid of a supertrend. Just ride it. I even shorted but I covered too soon. Maybe because in the past I have shorted near the bottoms and got whipsawed due to the buy-the-dip crowd. So I'm afraid/traumatized of shorting on trendy days because I'm afraid of the rip up. Eventually I did caught that last reversal move near the close of trading day. So made back all of my losses on YM and more. But i would have made so much more money if I had kept my shorts. Much much much more! The other mistake was that when I finally did caught that reversal I didn't hold longer. I mean I made nice comeback. Hold onto winners and cut losers. Same principle applies. holding a few more minutes while it was still zooming back up would net an additional $1K! damnit. But the hard part is to figure when is a supertrend vs a choppy trend day. A lot of important lessons today. I realize that in markets, there's always another opportunity. If you missed a bus then there's always another bus to catch. This morning I was thinking to myself it's Friday and things seem slow in my NG. I still ended up making decent money on NG. My bread and butter go to instruments. And then all of sudden a bunch of actions in the index futures NQ(which I made money) and YM(which I lost then came back). My other mistake is look at the bid/ask instead of the chart. Just thinking the price is "low" instead of waiting for my exact reversal signal to enter. Prices are never too low to short and never too high to buy as Livermore said. Don't give up yet... Stanley Druckenmiller said as long as you are clearheaded you can always make back your money and some. In Market Wizards, he recounted coming into Oct 1987 crash he was SUPER LONG. Then that Monday he got out of all of his longs during the bounce and shorted. So he was in the worst possible position coming into Black Monday. But by the end of Oct 1987 his fund ended up positive for the month and for the year too if I remembered correctly. I had 3 small losses days this week and I was about to give up. But last night I told myself you've come this far. Farther than anytime in your trading in terms of consistency. In the past, I would make a lot then lose a lot. It was very erratic. Now I'm more consistently profitable. You gotta push further. Correct your mistakes. Identify good opportunities. Etc. But I'm not optimizing the opportunities available. On a day like this I should have been killing it! I'm sure some of you killed it! Next time...
Yea nice sell off today.. I made $1600 and I was done for the day because it's Friday. Next week might be interesting.. Let's see if they want to continue selling this market.
MarketAddict, congratulation on your trading success. Can you share some of your trading secrets with other forum members? Which strategy you are applying when trading? What is your historical performance?
You and other people might not believe me because there are a lot of cry babies out here. But I only use regular support and resistance.. Horizontal, channel and trend line support. I look at the 4-5 min for the bigger view and use the 1 min to enter.. I dont take every signal off support and resistance.. A lot of days my winning percentage is low but I will still come out with a green day.. and that's because I let my winners run. That's my secret.. But you can't look for a runner on every trade. You have to know when to hold for a runner and that comes from back testing.. The pic below is a trade I took yesterday.. Crude had a nice 5 min channel and then I took a long off my 1 min chart..
Kudos MarketAddict. Your trade is strikingly similar to another -- (this is a compliment!) https://www.elitetrader.com/et/thre...own-is-a-bad-idea.334476/page-19#post-4909359 Multiple entries follow there, w/ Volpri going thru the thinking that made the trade. Your entry here could go into that discussion, as well as the "Bottom Fishing" discussion.