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any benefit to tracking trading moods?


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any benefit to tracking trading moods?

  #11 (permalink)
 Itchymoku 
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kickmic View Post
I believe the OP is trying to see patterns in his/her decision making??

I am sure journal-ling moods is beneficial - particularly if you start to see links to foods, sleep, exercise, time of day you trade etc that are impacting moods

In addition, check the article which explains how we all suffer from decision fatigue. I can't paste links, so Google "Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue?"

Also, Dr Andrew Menaker has some brilliant material in the form of webinar recordings available on his site which you can start applying immediately to improve your self awareness and maintain optimum mood state

I guess so. I've kept the same system for a while and it works but it has some problems. The biggest problem is that if my first trade of the day is a failure it usually gets me down for my subsequent trades. When I get a failure to start off I'll try to cherry pick to make up for it which frustrates me because it causes me to do worse but I've learned to let it go because I usually do well in the end. I notice patterns where when I have losing days I feel less excited about trading and vice versa. Sometimes when I do exceptionally well for whatever reason I'll stop wanting to trade so I can hang on to that great feeling as if not to mess it up with a losing day. I'm aware of all these caveats, but charting them makes them crystal clear and has helped me eliminate them for the most part. I guess part of my problem now that I've achieved some level of consistency is that the problems persist and I've seen them, come to understand them, but I can't get rid of them. One would come to think to just learn to live with them if I'm making money, but my OCD has me thinking that I should be able to always strive to do better.

I'm not a perfect trader and I don't think I'll ever be, but what I strive for is daily consistency. Often times I'll do really well one day and for the next two or three days I'll have losing days or break evens where I almost lose all of what I made the first day or leave a little profit. What I've learned through this process is to not triple dip because often times I'll double dip if the signal is still valid, but tripling dipping often always leads to disaster where I'll end up stopping for the day. I know the most popular piece of advice for this type of problem is to increase my stop size, but I've experimented with it and it hasn't worked any better. I'm learning that if I make a losing trade because the market doesn't want to go my way that I should wait for the market to play the entire leg out and wait for another leg because I'll have a higher probability. These things many people don't talk about but I'm finding it's crucial to trading, taking fewer trades by increasing the sample size of viable data to trade with. I assume the market works like this because other big players also get frustrated when things don't go their way so they'll step out and thus the market will continuing exhibiting the same behavior until some time has passed. The behavior I'm referring to is when the market rotates back to the mean after it breaks through the previous level.

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  #12 (permalink)
 Itchymoku 
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What I do when I track my moods is I have a page where I have a chart with the month's days going along the x axis and an arbitrary scale for my aptitude to trade going along the y axis. I started out with the first day of my mood being ten so I'd have ample room if my mood went to zero so I don't have negative numbers. Each day I graph if my mood increased or decreased and why it changed or stayed the same. I also have started charting my mood before the trading day as a continuation of the night before as vegasfoster has suggested.

R.I.P. Joseph Bach (Itchymoku), 1987-2018.
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  #13 (permalink)
 
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 kickmic 
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Itchymoku View Post
...biggest problem is that for some reason my first trade of the day is usually a failure and it gets me down for my subsequent trades...When I get a failure to start off I'll try to cherry pick to make up for it which frustrates me because it causes me to do worse...

this IS lack of belief in your system (its okay, normal stuff!). Get off live and into sim. As long as you take sim seriously, record groups of twenty trades at a time... what you are currently doing is placing a lot of emphasis on recent trades. The point of groups of trades is it highlights that one, two or three trades are irrelevant. Assuming you can produce sound consistent results in sim, 5 or 6 groups of twenty 20 trades will really help you move away from outcomes of recent trades.


Itchymoku View Post
I'm not a perfect trader

irrelevant as has nothing to do with making money


Itchymoku View Post
... I assume the market works like this because ....

I'd want to catch myself having any thoughts related to knowing why things happen - it can lead to market biases - your job is to expect the unexpected - so you must always operate from a place of having no opinions etc

Honestly, do the groups of 20 trades at a time - that's the best thing you can do to help make the mental shift to thinking in probabilities (which currently you are not doing)
In addition mental prep should happen prior to every trading session see webinar by Menaker

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  #14 (permalink)
 Itchymoku 
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kickmic View Post
this IS lack of belief in your system (its okay, normal stuff!). Get off live and into sim. As long as you take sim seriously, record groups of twenty trades at a time... what you are currently doing is placing a lot of emphasis on recent trades. The point of groups of trades is it highlights that one, two or three trades are irrelevant. Assuming you can produce sound consistent results in sim, 5 or 6 groups of twenty 20 trades will really help you move away from outcomes of recent trades.

Thanks for your input. I'll check out the webinar and follow your advice. I read similar advice in the book "trading in the zone" by Mark Douglas which was great. Do you use the DOM at all in your trading?

R.I.P. Joseph Bach (Itchymoku), 1987-2018.
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  #15 (permalink)
 Itchymoku 
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A problem I have with journaling online to the public with my daily trades and system is that when people give advice I'm always hesitant to give my rebuttal if I disagree as to not step on their toes. I'm sure they've come to learn how to trade one way that works for them and I don't want to get into some long argument which inevitably ends up in an exhaustive feat of proving myself with statistics. I always fear that this will happen and try to avoid it at all costs despite how many friendly people I find on here. I guess to some degree a level of balls is necessary to discuss anything. Could I be wrong? Well, yes and no... and here we go...

re-edit: I guess this is why most of my threads are very open ended and almost rhetorical

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  #16 (permalink)
 
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 kickmic 
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Itchymoku View Post
Thanks for your input. I'll check out the webinar and follow your advice. I read similar advice in the book "trading in the zone" by Mark Douglas which was great. Do you use the DOM at all in your trading?

I dont use the DOM. I have pretty unambiguous reasons based on price action for entering and exiting as I don't want to be thinking too much when trading. Having said this, its natural to develop some feel around speed of moves and changes in bid/ask for fine tuning entries and exits. BUT this fine tuning is not the be and all of consistent trading - its just something that develops with experience.

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  #17 (permalink)
 
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 kickmic 
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Itchymoku View Post
problem I have with journaling .... my daily trades

maybe just journal after each twenty -as one days trades is statistically insignificant

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  #18 (permalink)
 Itchymoku 
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kickmic View Post
maybe just journal after each twenty -as one days trades is statistically insignificant

how bout a hundred

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  #19 (permalink)
 
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 shodson 
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Anybody every try to correlate lunar phases to trading results? I've seen some studies that show markets tend to be more volatile around full moons [citation needed]

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  #20 (permalink)
 
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 Massive l 
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I've had some of my best and worst trading weeks/months during negative moments in my life.
Better to be safe than sorry though so I tend to not trade or at least trade small during those times, which
hopefully are past me.

I enjoy stats so I think anything is worth tracking and taking a look at.

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