OK, here goes......

Big Mike 

A) What are the top five benefits you have seen as a result of regularly posting in this journal?

Insights from others, knowing during trading that my results are not just in sim but public, regularity with logging, and it helps the process, and lastly it is actually a great way to keep my notes easily accessible, backed-up and online.

Big Mike 

B) What are the top five problem areas you have identified as a result of regularly posting in this journal?

My psychological weaknesses at executing my trading plan - although that could be broken down into taking bad entries, taking good entries but badly, and missing entries, as well as holding my stops too long or keeping them too tight, all due to impatience or otherwise, fear.

Big Mike 

C) Were you initially reluctant to start this trading journal? If yes, why?

No I'd done another journal previously.

Big Mike 

D) How do you feel, overall, about your journaling experience?

It's good but doesn't bring as much feedback as I'd expected. I put that down to either (a) my style is boring or (b) nobody's interested when you're losing.

Big Mike 

E) Would you recommend to others that they should also start a trading journal?

Yes, in every case.

Didn't get much done today - got started late, really late, had to sleep, had to do more work solidifying the psych stuff I'm implementing and then when I did get started, I didn't recognise that the trend had reversed rather than just gone sideways so I missed a couple of great opportunities - a bit of downer after all the psych work which really boosted my confidence.

I include the mark-up but I didn't get time to write out the notes on individual setups - mostly in this case, why did I miss them!

Despite the psych work really giving me a buzz and making me very optimistic that I'll turn my trading around, I feel like I totally botched it today. I made only one trade for a small loss and missed at least 2 good profitable setups. I tried to work out why and I realised I made a bit of stupid mistake.

Not only do I do psych work now to prep myself - a 'mental work-out' - but I also analyse the day since the start of the European session until the point 'now' at which I am about to start trading, by going over each setup and looking at exactly how it played out.

So I psyched myself up and got ready to trade and felt really in the zone, but then spent 45 minutes going over the day so far from 06:00am to 11:30am and going over each setup individually to see how I would have traded it and to get a better feel for the day. Now I found that really difficult and felt that I would have foobarred several of the setups - and that took it its psychological toll. I no longer felt in top form.

I guess I should have recognised that and taken a step back but I didn't and I went on to try to trade an unusual situation (for recent days) where the market just turned around and trended the other way.

So I need more breaks to sort my focus out intentionally - today I didn't do that, I just forgot or something. So I need to set my alarm to force me to take a break every 45 mins regardless of what is going on. I shall actually take a break after each setup or two setups if they are close together, and if so, I'll reset the alarm - but if I don't get to take a break, the alarm will ring and I'll force myself to take a break. Short break and then back into focus and start trading again.

ps the one trade I did take I let it run too far against me after the initial push retraced. Didn't do what I'm training myself to do, to visualise the exits I want (profit or loss) so I take them instead of letting them take me.

What am I meant to do today? Somebody, give me a volume profile chart for the 6E. This is crazy. And this is after deleting some of the S/R lines. Damned consolidation.

Let's just hope that the market doesn't go up. There's nothing up there for it anyway, just a pile of resistance six foot deep.

Here's a second screenshot with a big S/R area marked on it.

6E Future with Profile

Thanks for the chart!

After that, it looks like it's going to go down now anyway.

I suspect it's not as interesting as ES right? The benefits of trading multiple instruments, I guess.

Adamus 

Thanks for the chart! After that, it looks like it's going to go down now anyway. I suspect it's not as interesting as ES right? The benefits of trading multiple instruments, I guess.

I don't trade ES before open (9:30 NY time). No Volume.
If there is no action in one market, then this affects mostly several other markets as well.

In the end ES is waiting for an up move like 6E (which doesn't seem to come) or for a turn at the top.

Let the market tell us what to do.

11 setups, I got 9 of them, but ruined my day getting whipsawed by the lull in the market before the US Factory Orders came out after the US open. Crazy stupid, just carried on taking signals despite my rule to stop trying to trade a setup after 2 failures in a sideways or consolidating market.

The pro's would have got a good 41 pips out of the market today, I scraped thro with +5 after getting whipsawed for 13 pips. After commissions that would be -$35. Also got some serious slippage today, although I don't know how realistic that is in the sim account.

I also made a major error drawing on my S/R levels - which I would have done quite well considering the consolidation and the large number of S/R lines from recent days. I included an intra-day line from the 27th and that cost me at least 10 pips because it made targets closer on one trade and my entries later on a couple of others.

On the positive side, I'm really benefitting from the new mental approach. As you can see I fearlessly traded 7 times in an area of consolidation - taking every entry. Kind of ironic.

So I forgot that rule.

It looks like I now have to focus on the technical aspects again, rather than the psych aspects, in terms of where the bottleneck is. Just got to keep the psych stuff in place and make it second nature - it's taking quite a long time to go over all the new material I produced before I start trading - should only take me 10 minutes (as in "10 Minute Toughness")

The stops are still a bit of an issue, let several of them take 2 or 3 more pips off me than I should have done. The short trades are the worst, with the stop needing to be a tick above where the candle reaches, since my candles are printed by the bid.

A massively active day for YTC PAT trading - I counted 15 setups before I started and 12 after.

My trading was rubbish. I could sit here and find reasons why - in fact I know already - but I'm not going to run through that here. In fact I could cut and paste exactly the reasons from previous entries here. On the other hand I'm also not going to try to pull some white bunny out of the hat and pretend it was a learning experience. At best, my poor performance might give me something to inspire me not to trade so badly again.

I let several positions retrace into my full stop when it was clear from the PA that the trade was a goner.

I let the market madness get into my head. At one point I put on a good trade, but put the stop right at the ask. Crazy. First up I wasn't structuring my trading, my breaks and my focus work like I did yesterday, I guess I was getting all emotional about the bear trend from yesterday, being bitter and twisted that I wasn't going to catch any of the big sell-off, making myself impatient and getting the analysis wrong. It was too busy for me with all the volatility and the feelings were too strong for me to step back until I'd made a couple of bad trades. I did manage to tear myself away from it and regrouped successfully but the problem with the stops remained.

All the good setups though were before I started so I really only missed one solid winning setup, all the rest was just crumbs and bones from the feast earlier (yeah, still having problems accepting it)

I would have lost $223, the "pro's" would have probably come away at B/E.

Need to focus more on stops, do more visualisations of me managing my stops well, and work out some kind of mantra to help myself accept the lost opportunities instead of dwelling on them negatively.

After yesterday's bad trading, I figure today I made a major step up. I have decided that I must be "conciously incompetent".

This is a logical deduction from the obvious fact that I am not conciously competent, and neither can I claim to be unconciously incompetent anymore.

I am in fact being half serious. After doing the pyschology stuff last week, I'm now acutely aware of the emotions I'm going through when making a trade and so can deduce what the emotional factors were behind the errors. Of course I've known for months in hindsight what the technical correct actions were, but now I'm beginning to understand why I couldn't take those actions at the time.

Today I was running scared in the afternoon, unable to pull the trigger.

A couple of things to work on here - the mental / psych stuff had worn off by then. I started at 9:50 so by 12:30 I was in need again, plus already my decision making powers were depleted.

Also, I was scared, obviously from yesterdays choppiness which cut me to shreds. Some beautiful trades today that I missed. I guess I'm not the only trader who got hammered yesterday - everyone on the bottom of the trading ladder must have been feeling trigger-shy today, which is why the market behaved so nicely - nobody was second-guessing it the whole time.

It also makes another point - often the trades that are hardest to take are the good ones. If you think you can't do it, you can't do it. It's the same in the rest of life too. Better not try that - so don't. Try visualising doing it a couple of times though and then try.

Don't try this at home though - and remember what I told you - I am conciously incompetent

I'm no expert and a still working on issues of my own, but something that is making things better for me; why don't you trade off the TTF (3 min) only for a few days. Don't even look at the LTF (1 min). You may be surprised.

All the best,
Ward