Anyone has a trading rule or sees value in having one that requires a trader to be in the market every day? I've noticed that most of my bad trades happen after a period of inactivity. I tend to make poor decision regarding trade size or risk after being on the sidelines after a few weeks. The problem usually goes away after couple weeks of active trading.
If you are daytrading, not sure how you wouldn't be trading at least 1 time per day. If you are swing/position trading then that's a different ballgame altogether.
everyone has strategies that are so incredibly different. I'd advise you to learn what level of trading you feel confortable with, and where you find that you get the best results. Personally, I will only do 1 or 2 trades a week. But I'm also probably not a "trader".
There is no logic in forcing a trade for time's sake when your setup has not been triggered. That is unsustainable practice, and emotional trading is suspect as the reason.
Are you seriously asking this question?? YOU TRADE WHEN YOU GET A SETUP...PERIOD. If you can't control yourself from making a poor decision then increasing your trading frequency is the worst thing you can do. Trading is largely about discipline. If you see a trade that fits your criteria, you take it, if you don't, you sit on your hands. While sitting on your hands, you can strive to find more opportunities or you can patiently wait for your next trade. But forcing a trade arbitrarily will only do more harm to you.
Part of my trading plan is a rule to paper trade for 1 day if I have been away from trading for a week or more. Andrew
Thats a great idea, I never used to paper trade and I paid a lot of tuition to the market needlessly. Of course paper trading doesn't include the emotions of trading, but it gets you engaged and focused on setups and exits.
I dont think you should have a rule to be IN or OUT of the market at any time, I take a position in the market 99% of the days but the bottom line is i am not going to create a rule forcing me to do something. As others have mentioned, if your system says you have a trade, take it, if not dont try to force anything. I know for me anyways during times of extreme inactivity, such as September of this year, i used to have a tendency to try to do something, just to try to make money, I now have an old blotter as my dektop background of a day where i lost 20k trying to force a trade and averaging it down into oblivion, it serves two purposes, tells me not to average down and not to force trades from the beginning.