I closed my Five-A-Day journal with good reason, it had outlived itself and never quite reached target.
Nevertheless, I made some good progress in there and wouldn't be where I am without it. It's time for a fresh start and here we are. I thought I needed a more formal method or approach but, after a weekend of thought and a couple of days back in action, I now know that I just need to be myself and fully accept myself. Only by doing that can I actually relax into the right trigger pulls and smile past the dumb ones.
I now have a much clearer understanding of the importance of using my own methods and not attempting to adopt anyone else's, and I think that's true for every budding trader - there are no short cuts and nothing suits everybody.
For too long I have been fighting the 'scalp versus position versus swing' identity issue, and now I know that for me it is irrelevant - so long as I am really being myself I can make any type of trade I want to, and make any mix during the day or week to best fit the prevailing market conditions.
Instead of getting massive angst about not holding trades longer I can just take the short term Sprints in parallel with working on just two larger trades a day, I'll get there if I'm supposed to. The driving issue is temperament not trade type, I'll probably still get the angst but maybe I've found the best way to handle it for me.
Self-awareness and screen-awareness - I have taken great pains to observe more of what I am really aware of and using that makes a positive difference to execution. I have yet again removed superfluous screen clutter - but absolutely maximised the presentation of great information.
Simple changes help - I have made a big hole on the main monitor for the trading interface, no more pushing and popping workspaces to get in and out of a trade. The latter is fine while analysing but no good when actually trading, and the change has really helped with a big jump in my focus level. I'm sure most DMA/Dom users wouldn't have had this issue, so I've been a laggard on this one.
I've removed detailed screen background wallpaper pictures, and replaced them with a calm sea-green mono-block, this has had a much bigger effect than expected. I've also got the music back on - not all the time, but when the mood strikes, both during and in-between trades. I'll try to drink less caffeine.
I have yet again examined and optimised all script code that I use, and also focus only on the instruments I actively want for execution or information. I no longer take an ES feed and I do not use tick charts - Ninja now runs with an average of just 1% cpu usage on my i7 and feels completely relaxed in action, helping me to be more so too.
I have edited the chart sets that relate best to my perceptual skills for the actual trades I take, even moved other workspaces into background folders so that I'm not even tempted to open them when I'm active - again making for a clearer distinction between the trader and the analyst, something I've always been guilty of blurring badly.
And I'm now happy that I can trade at any time and on any time frame, my personal life does not have to be restricted, destroyed or crushed to find trading time after all. Guess what - the trading time can then be at it's best too.
I am not yet a trader, I may never be one - but nobody will ever be able to say I didn't put up a decent damn fight.
I've had two great days back live - just being myself in action - but we'll see if I have anything really useful to say at the end of the month. Then maybe we'll see if Two Pints can make it into next year, after all this is April 1, but at least it's p.m. and not a.m.
And the picture? Well that's just pretty, with Harry's trendy thing and a few Luckynacci lines and such like on it. :)