Finally Turning the Corner, tha "its 80% Psychology" thing...

February 24th, 2020, 07:37 AM

High praise from my side to Al Brooks work too.

Personally though, I've went through lot of youtube videos and other sources for getting better understanding of psychological aspect of succeeding in trading. But your real introduction to yourself only starts when you come to terms with both winning and losing, identify your personal limits on it and also your personal goals and expectations.

When I was in Uni, we did one project where a very lengthy questionnaire was developed for computerized execution of risk appetite as well as savings expectation and real achievable over 12 years projected period. Results were surprising, almost no one knew exactly how much they were ready to risk. They also didn't have much clue about how much they needed to save.

Point here is its very difficult to identify yourself with any -established - if this happens then you feel this or you feel this if this happens-, including general psychology wisdom. What you may experience, start expecting and achieve would be very unique to you. Also, psychological impact trading may have on you also differs from what it may have on others. You may derive pleasure from it whether you make money from it or not, you may feel stressed out whether you make money or not. Therefore I like that you are including some kind of monitoring in this, I'll sub and follow.

This is very interesting topic and deserves lot of investigation. So thank you for making this thread.

February 24th, 2020, 07:38 AM

goodoboy

Hello TropicalTrader,

I agree on the take the manageable profits, however with taking profits per trade comes risk per trade.

Can you please explain the follow as it pertains to your trading:

1. How much do you risk per trade?
2. What is your thoughts on Risk vs Reward per trade? Do you prefer R:R < 1 or R:R = 1 or R:R > 1 trades?
3. Do you stick to risking 1-2% of capital per trade?
4. Are all you trades exit at 5-10 ticks regardless of risk?

Thank you

So here's how I'm doing it and this is not advice for anybody here, my risk tolerance is quite high. I'm also not trading with all my funds in the trading account.. I have a plan to lessen the risk in a while. I'm going to answer in a different format for simplicity.

My daily limit = 10% of my trading account balance
My per trade size = daily limit divided by 7 trades
My entry methods

A) All in , Scale Out
All In with 3 positions, Stoploss 9 (on Dax, using FX broker with 0.7 point spread)
First Scale 6.5-7 points (when I get the scale, stops are adjusted to 4 points behind breakeven, now risk is out of trade)
2nd Scale 9-11 points (sometimes I do this manually, othertimes preset for 9)
Runner: this depends on where I think the next move is to, usually I take profits between 20-30 points on the runner, but sometimes earlier if I'm going for a smaller target

B) 1/2 in now, 1/2 in later

1/2 in with a wider stop (around 15 points)
If it goes in my favor, then I nab some profits and don't sweat the smaller size. If I take some heat of 7-10 points but think my stop is still good, I'll enter the 2nd half and then average out the stops, this is for trades that I think have a higher-then-not probability of working but I'm nervous to get with full size on it.

C) All in, 20-25 point stop

This is for days like today and yesterday when the volatility is high. I feel more comfortable getting in with a larger stop in this environment. I trade less on individual renko sequences and more on impulsive waves.

Sometime later this year I will switch to only risking 5% of my account as my Daily Risk Limit.. For now, I'm cool with it, I don't often lose more then one day in a row.

February 24th, 2020, 07:52 AM

Adolpho911

I still read trading books, but never on technical stuff. Except just now I found Mind over market, volume profile FT71 and convergent. I know they gonna be my last stop! 😂

Nice! I really needed FT71's materials to get some things straight and it helped a lot to hear about his journey trading other traders to trade with his money. It's nice to know that some people get how freeking hard it actually is to become an elite trader with all the hurdles to overcome.

They have a special right now at Convergent, until the end of this month you can get quarterly beta membership for $199 which comes with trade the news, pretty epic value.. I found the webinars in the members area to be extremely useful.

PS. I also really like Merritt Black's vids on youtube. He helped me identify my weak points so I could work on fixing them. I agree with his philosophy of "context is king" and using the profiles to determine context.

February 24th, 2020, 08:17 AM

My New "Baseline Trading Approach"

So where I've been at for the last month or so is in a grey area around "religiously trading my setups which are written down in front of me" and intuitively reading flow and making trades..

What happens is when I'm in the zone and seeing things clearly I'm often reading the flow correctly.. When I'm a bit off or I take a couple of losers that weren't part of my written down trades - then I can get a bit cranky or judgemental on myself for not "sticking with the program" .

I went away for the weekend into nature and did not bring any laptops lol.. I received an intuition to try this approach for a while.

1) My "Baseline Trades" are 8 setups I have written down in front of me at all times (and I read before starting and again during trading)..
2) IF my Current Daily Drawdown is <= -30% of Daily Loss Limit THEN Only Trade Baseline Trades

This gives me the opportunity to make discretionary trades but if I'm not doing well then I need to stick with the structured trades.

February 24th, 2020, 03:54 PM

Yep, I bought a quarter

February 24th, 2020, 05:51 PM

Big Mike

Many years ago when I first accepted the vast importance of psychology, I started to develop a combination trading tool that used emwave type inputs and combined it in a traditional trading indicator on a time series chart.

I actually had plans to market such a device with a trader here in the community which was a personal friend of mine.

I never followed through unfortunately.

Sent using the NexusFi mobile app

That's really interesting Mike, did you end up using the tool in your own trading for a while?

You could have advertised it as a leading indicator, lol.

February 24th, 2020, 06:37 PM

TropicalTrader

After investigating many dozens of teachers and strategies over the years, I feel so much gratitude for discovering those listed on this page. Many others have helped in small ways but each of these people have helped me hugely.

My favorite trading psychogist is Dr. Andrew Menaker. (I love Dr. Brett Steenbarger too, but I relate more with Andrew because he's a full-time trader) His webinars have helped me tons. I've listened to each one of these on youtube at least 5-6 times and will continue to listen often - plus I will take his paid course after I've earned the funds from trading and personal coaching one day when I'm hitting big goals.
[yt]https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=andrew+menaker[/yt]

My 4 Favorite Trading Mentors (alphabetical order)

Al Brooks (Price Action Trading)
Merritt Black (SMB Futures)
Morad Askar (aka FuturesTrader71)
Steve W (Paracurve)

Immense thankyou mentors. And huge thanks to Big Mike for this epic community and all of the effort to make this a ridiculously amazing forum.

Books that helped me bigtime:

*The Chimp Paradox (we also conveniently forget that we evolved from monkeys. when you get mad and revenge trade and blow up your account, its your monkey at work.. understanding this deeply really helps)

*Mindset by Carol Dweck (you can look on youtube for Mindset book summary to get the main points)

*Trading in the Zone by Mark Douglas (This is a very comprehensive book that I have listened to a few times and will continue to listen to every few months.)

*The Power of Habits and Atomic Habits (learning how to build consistency starts here imo)

*The Talent Code (get into the heads of peak performers, what really makes people great)

So much to like on this post. Great share. Thank you.

February 25th, 2020, 05:16 AM

Pacha

Everything change for me once I learned how to control my emotions while trading.

Was there a certain technique that worked for you to control your emotions ? Or a bunch of things?

March 3rd, 2020, 07:08 PM

I'm with you all on mentors and coaches. I've been in Merritt Black's chat, which I loved and listen to Mark Douglas on youtube, among others, but sometimes you need a one-on-one. I have a great system but was having some blocks (when you repeat behavior in spite of yourself) and also needed a sounding board. I'm working with Robin Dayne (RobinDayne.com) who's coached the best of the best, and she is most certainly helping me! I'd recommend her to anyone struggling with psychology, or even those in need of a little strategy tweaking, or both.

March 4th, 2020, 05:49 PM

bandtasia

I'm with you all on mentors and coaches. I've been in Merritt Black's chat, which I loved and listen to Mark Douglas on youtube, among others, but sometimes you need a one-on-one. I have a great system but was having some blocks (when you repeat behavior in spite of yourself) and also needed a sounding board. I'm working with Robin Dayne (RobinDayne.com) who's coached the best of the best, and she is most certainly helping me! I'd recommend her to anyone struggling with psychology, or even those in need of a little strategy tweaking, or both.

I'm way too familiar with the repeating crappy behavior part, lol. Is there a particular category that's helping you?
(ex: mindset, rules, visualization process, accountability)

Finally Turning the Corner, tha "its 80% Psychology" thing...

Discussion in Psychology and Money Management

Finally Turning the Corner, tha "its 80% Psychology" thing...