Does anyone else suffer from trade filtering problems using a discretionary system? So often I get over eager in the am to trade ES and jump on half decent looking set ups that are partially clear only to be presented with really good opportunities slightly later on. By this time I have often had a couple of stops and become a bit too gun shy. It seems very hard to get the balance of aggression to jump on the trade when you get the setup but make sure you have the patience to wait for it. I almost feel if I approach the market in a passive way and allow the setups to come to me rather than hunt them I will do better. But this is so hard as you watch the moves you donât want to miss them so get sucked in and pressured to trade and end up chasing trends or trying to pick tops and bottoms. It seems to me there are 2 essential ingredients to successful trading and they are ability and confidence. I know I have the ability but I lack the confidence and this means I am often too late with orders. I get filled on all the damn stops as orders are put in so late and none of the targets are exploited as I wait too long for too much confirmation and then miss the trade. I think a lot of people have one or the other too much confidence and not enough ability or lots of ability with no confidence the results are as follows. 1. Too much confidence no ability = massive blow out at some stage. ( happened when I first stared trading on silver) 2. Ability but no confidence = slow and steady losses. ( 3 years on ES learning the game slowly) 3. Balance between the 2 = steady profits.( yet to be achieved but do not think I am far off) Any advice/ thoughts would be most welcome.
You and a few thousand others. It is really uncanny how similiar the learning curve is for most people. The only way out of it that I know of is an ironclad trading plan and the ability to stick to it. The setup(s) must be laid out to the smallest detail, entry, exit and stop.
Hi jwecme, You need practice, practice, practice. If you dont already have one, then get onto a sim and trade like your life depends upon it ... in fact your financial life does depend upon it. A sim is far from perfect, but it will show up the flaws in your logic and until you can master this stage you are not ready for the grand performance, namely live trading. Everything needs to be tested and tested again and again and if wishful thinking floats to the surface then deal with it. Good luck
man i suffered from this on and off for the past 20 years and so does every other trader. doubt and hesitations are such killers...and they are always one loss away if u let it get to u. there is a mellow balance that works itself into your trading though...if u keep trading. make urself keep trading. boldness might take u thru some caviler loss episodes and nail biteing, but u have to keep trading. dont stop at a couple of losses and let that "even up" trade slip away. it got so bad for me once that i couldnt hit the button to save my ass. i would make my son, who was 18 or 19 at the time, sit next to me and tell him what to execute for me. for weeks i just sat and told him what to do. it was pitiful. over time, i got back in the saddle again but it was tough so dont let alot of time get between u and ur executions. it was the stops that were killing me so i quit using them. oh i get some white knuckle moments now and then, but im always within one or two trades of getting even/into profits and not nickle dimeing my account and, more importantly, my confidence with piss ant stops. and forget the sim and testing. u sound like u know what ur doing and even if u dont, testing urself with a sim is worthless, even harmful. sims are only useful to practice and test your execution...not whether u can make money. they usually only set u up for a "long goodbye". suck it up and keep pulling the trigger, morning-afternoon-or whatever...a trade is a trade. afterall, losses are only realized at 4:15 on the es (if u are a daytrader) so dont start sweating until 330 or so. early on i read this somewhere and it always stuck with me "upon the plains of hesitation bleach the bones of the countless, who sat down to wait...and waiting they died" right or wrong u have to execute. pull the trigger ...or join the bone bleachers!
============= JWeCME; 1] Entry -ES is fun,gamebird /target shooting in America/Argentina is fun. For the most bang for your buck would rather rapid fire on gamebirds or targets in America/Argentina, than ES. 2] Now for sure some do great on rapid fire ES, trade contests are won that way some; but that rapid trading is not for me. If you enter a contest ,trade like real money/reasonable size. 3]You can do better than quote ''half decent set ups'' unquote. 50 day moving average can whipsaw ; but past several months polar bears are right to use it. 4] Dont like a simulator , unless you keep paper trades to study your simulator; in that case simulator =fine/ helpful. 18 year old son could be an excellent substitute. 5]Most all these posts are helpful, gun shyness/noise can greatly helped , by having many entry{WRITTEN} principles rather than too few. Can always modify, remove principles.Start with a single shot; even though we buy ammo by the box/case 5.5] Like to papertrade[or simulator] along side realtime trades; actually took a papertrade in last half hour this week. Usually dont even do that papertrade, much less realtime last half hour .Dont like to waste ink , even though the bank teller , she was kind enough to give me a free ad pen. Wisdom is profitable to direct Entered a short ES papertrade not to long ago, trends are friends, and it slowly started losing money, for some reason couldn't seem to admit it was losing money, said out loud' 'its not going down!!!'' Dont know what happened to that fun losing papertrade. Good thing had on a losing papertrade, jumped on ES long side realtime; didn't know it at the time , was UPtrend day.Not many of those
from the advice of an old floor trader--"never take a trade unless the 3 and the 11 EMA confirms the direction". Once I added this filter to my algorythm it seriously increased my profitability and added to my confidence on pulling the trigger.
=========================== ForeX; Thats sounds like a winner; that old timer was probably from the old school. His word was his bond; AND always get it in writing [plan] 10 ema helps, slower than 3ema; faster than 11, or 13 ema, all of them help Was studying some ma tests on cash like DIA,SPY, this mourning; interestingly 100 ma was better than 50 on DIA., end of day.....
Yeah, brilliant idea. But what if you happen to be "sticking" to an ironclad loser's trading plan. You'll end up like "most people": staying a loser. Thx.