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Catching Big Waves - a trader's journal of surfing the the markets
In the spirit of our March Trading Journal contest, I am asking everyone to spend a few minutes and share their journaling experience.
A) What are the top five benefits you have seen as a result of regularly posting in this journal?
B) What are the top five problem areas you have identified as a result of regularly posting in this journal?
C) Were you initially reluctant to start this trading journal? If yes, why?
D) How do you feel, overall, about your journaling experience?
E) Would you recommend to others that they should also start a trading journal?
Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. I appreciate your posts, and I hope you have benefited from your journal. I also know that others will benefit as well, just by reading about your own experiences.
I agree with you on a lot of it, but I feel it has more to do with mentally conditioning my own future than multiple realities. I took your comments and re-quoted above to show where we have common beliefs.
Where have the monkeys come from recently? Do you know @iqgod?
A) What are the top five benefits you have seen as a result of regularly posting in this journal?
1) Broadcasting my inner thoughts about trading, my wins and losses, my struggles and victories, has made me more accountable to myself. I can't hide, I can't ignore reality.
2) It made me feel judged by others, and so I had to watch my behavior closely, which lead to being more conservative.
3) I can go back to where I was months ago and re-read what I posted, see the chart patterns I was looking at, see where I made entries and exits, see what I was thinking or feeling, and learn from myself.
4) I feel I am surrounded by a support group that wants me to succeed, shares thoughts along the way, offers heartfelt advice, is cheering for me.
5) I get to receive feedback, it is a journal that talks to me. That outside input has caused me to think in directions that may never have appeared, and I feel has caused me to learn things at an exponential pace.
B) What are the top five problem areas you have identified as a result of regularly posting in this journal?
1) Confidence in my own analysis. I KNOW I am a good chart analyst, but yet not strong enough to follow my own advice as closely as I should.
2) Lack of patience. Dropping trades too early.
3) A desire to trade profitably so others can see it. I wanted to show that you can trade profitably, but sometimes found myself attaching to that in a different way, wanting to perform for an audience. Trading does not work like that.
4) Wishing I would take the plunge and become a full-time trader. I discovered tarding and thought I would jump right in, and then got nailed. And then thought I thought I would overcome, and got hurt more.
So then one day, out of nowhere, ten thousand hours into it, you start to realize maybe, you're getting it?
But then you are scared, or scarred, or a combination of both.
Today I am the trader that I thought I was years ago. But back then, I had no fear and no reason not to have it. Now, I have an incredible amount of experience, but still have some bad memories. I went all in when I knew nothing. I know a lot now, but have frightened away the "no fear" guy I once was.
5) I was studying so hard, working so late, obsessing so much, that I was ignoring my friends and family. Starting a journal began with charts and setups and philosophies about trading, but shifted into life, and emotion, and insecurites, and acknowledging personal issues. And reading my own comments showed me that I needed to get back to the rest of the world. A really weird and unplanned benefit of my journal, is that by getting more in tune with myself, I have gotten more in tune with those around me. My friends, my co-workers, my wife, possibly even my dog. Journaling not only made my trading improve, it made my life in general better.
C) Were you initially reluctant to start this trading journal? If yes, why?
No, but I did not realize I was starting a journal. I had been trading for years, losing my ass mostly, but staying at it regardless; relentless, tireless, tenacious.
Then finally, I started to not just maintain (a.k.a. not lose money), but actually build. It was a huge breakthrough. And around that time, I discovered futures.io (formerly BMT). I had searched so long, so hard, and got nothing other than more and more questions, more losses, more torment... I knew first hand how much it sucked to be a trader searching, begging, praying for any glimmer of hope, any answer that would turn things around. I felt like sharing my newly found secret with the world, hoping that maybe I could reduce that pain for someone who was feeling like I once did.
But within a very short period of time, I moved from feeling like I was helping, to feeling like I was being helped. And have been journalling ever since.
D) How do you feel, overall, about your journaling experience?
Trading is a very personal experience. It involves things anyone but a trader would never believe. How do you become profitable? Oh my God, how much time do you have? lol!
I feel like journaling has become my rock. I have something very tangible, I go back a re-read my own posts wwithin a few days time, just to make sure I am getting what I am saying. "Gary, are you listeneing to this guy? You should."
E) Would you recommend to others that they should also start a trading journal?
Yes.
And be honest, don't be afraid, don't feel embarrassed, don't feel like you are the only one who has committed such a "sin"... Trading will expose every single tiny flaw that was ever even slightly planted in your subconscious mind.
Sharing that with strangers is not normal. But, if you want to get through this, you'd better get in touch with reality. Getting out of the vacuum of your own thoughts is possibly the best thing you can do.
Trading should have an apprenticeship program called Traders Anonymous;
"Hello my name is X, and I am a, uh, Trader? Well, maybe not quite yet, but I believe I am? No, not really, that's not entirely correct, not yet anyway. But, I want more than anything to be one? Right? Well, now that I think about it, I'm not sure, it seems so incredibly hard, I've lost so much...OK, let's get down to it; I want to make a shitload of money! Am I at the right place?"
An online journal gives you feedback. Makes you accountable. Brings about a synergy that possibly cannot be duplicated alone in a room with your charts.
If you want to increase your odds, learn yourself. But if you keep that process to yourself and no one else, when it comes to trading, no offense, but sometimes you lie... that is normal.
I used to keep all kinds of trading journals in the form of written trading plans, written diaries, spreadsheets of trades, spreadsheets of where I planned to be in my trading, spreadsheets of infinite exponential growth potential. Looking back I see that a lot of that was nothing more than clever propaganda. They were wishlists, fairy tales about my perfect trading life to come. It was just me and my dream of becoming succcesful. I could tell such beautiful stories to myself, often to provide the comfort I needed after yet another defeat.
I did not allow myself to believe the truth sometimes. The truth was that trading is nothing I thought it would be. It is not entirely math and indicators and setups and probabilities and chart patterns...more than all of that I have found it to be a journey within oneself, and that can be a dark, ugly, scary place sometimes. And lonely. And deceptive.
When I got out of my private journals and went to a public one, for me it was like no longer being in a deep dark labyrinth of personal challenges. There are still challenges, there probably always will be, but it is like the they have been moved outside, into the light, and there are other traders out here with me, offering encouragement, advice, and just taking away the feeling that I am in this alone.
Exponential growth is the holy grail of most traders. I have found it on a psychological level by posting here.
My goal of transitioning to being a full-time / primary income trader carries a strange mix of emotions. Unlike other goals I have set in the past, where I focused on only how great it would be, when it comes to this trading goal I find myself being incredibly cautious. I am not fearful of trading itself, but I am somewhat of trading as my only means of supporting myself.
Trading effectively is a very delicate balance. Small things can make a big difference. It feels uncomfortable to realize my trading income relies something so intangible. If I don't NEED to make money, it is much easier to make. That pressure is removed, and that small change provides a small advantage. The trading I do today is like a side job. I could even afford to lose a little, and call it a “hobby” instead. I used to do a lot of offshore fishing, that was nearly as expensive as poor trading.
My beginnings in trading were painful enough that I have a hard time shaking off some of the fear that was burned into me. And really, I am not sure I want to eliminate it. Having some level of fear in trading I believe is a requirement, but training that emotion to be what I want it to be, and not be what I don't want, how do I expect to shape the behavior of fear when I have not perfected getting my dog to walk on a leash. Fear is a far less understood creature.
As my trading account balance grows, it does not bring with it the confidence I would have expected. Instead it seems to bring out more of the fear. I want to hold onto those winnings, and with every major increase I become more and more protective.
I was more willing to trade 5 contracts when I had less to lose. In the past I have watched it rise only by additional deposits, only to fall again, like filling up my gas tank and in no time was back on E. Just getting to where I stopped the outflow and started to build felt like it took an insane amount of work for so little of a reward, and that feeling can keep a trader cycling for infinity if they are not aware of it.
I have fought very hard to see a regular rise in my account, and I have seen that not having the patience to allow it to build slowly and methodically can have a severe negative outcome. So fear keeps me in check, but I just want to get it where I control it better. I believe fear can transform into respect over time, that is one of the ways it can be tamed. Building confidence through a repetition of success is, to me, the obvious process through which that occurs.
I imagine my piggy bank experiment seems silly or even immature to someone on the outside. But I have really struggled with finding a way to become more detached from the money itself and instead focus on the repetition. I start to laugh at myself almost every time I say that may be the best thing I have ever done in my intense training to be a trader, and yet I still believe it.
I said to another trader recently, “Forget the money, and trade”. As with nearly all the posts I make on futures.io (formerly BMT), my journal or someone else's, my advice also serves as a reminder to myself. Possibly it is more that than anything. Most likely, I have remained on futures.io (formerly BMT) with this journal for very selfish reasons. It has become a vehicle through which I can communicate with myself.
If I may talk about things from my own perspective.
I found that emotions, say fear, was applied in a generic overall sense.
This made it difficult, for a long time, for me to see and understand that the fear was actually of quite a specific thing.
I wasn't aware of that so wasn't able to see where the fear was manifesting from and of, only that fear as a whole was
here, and even when I began to start to pin point it origins, I did a good job of masking it !
I wonder if your piggy bank idea is intrinsically tied up with this "fear" thing, but in a positive way.
If I may explain my thinking here:
Some sort of catostophic loss or major change may linger in the memory.
The fear is of that specific occurance again.
The piggy bank , amongst its many functions, may be related to helping the fear "thing".
It (the piggy bank) is your way of saying to you that you can build from scratch, from the smallest, one incriment at a time.
There are many interelating things and the seperation, imo, is the difficult part:
Namely that as you said, and I've mentioned this elsewhere I think, that fear is also an aid.
However where it isn't, then we need to find the specific thing that the fear (or emotion) is actually about.
We as traders, also have this odd relationship with uncertainty, as you've also mentioned.
That relationship is, imo also remarkable.
Oddly remarkable and remarkably odd.
It opens our awarness to a multitude of things, not least to that esoteric side that is then mirrored back to our trading.
ie: we then have a different perspective/relationship to loss and gread and fear etc..because we have a diffrent perspective of ourselves.
This is not a ramble I'm making here, but it is an attempt to try to give my perspective on what are very difficult and complicated things.
We begin to see the mirror that trading is of ourselves, but we can only see the reflections we are aware of !
To protect our "account" is the realistic sensible and mature way to trade.
So we take the correct measures in terms of leverage and loss ratios and all many of means.
Ultimately though, imo, non of it really matters in the sense that we are not the money we make.
At a very deep level there is a glimmer of that honesty perhaps.
The greater it shines the less we are affected by the fear that kept us in darkness.
In other words, the fear is of our most worst thing happening.
But so what even if it does (of coarse we don't want it to and take account and put in place those things that we can), but so what if it did ?
It happened before and yet we are here, more than the total sum parts of who we were before, with even more awarness of the nature of that fear.
I'm not reinvoking some mantra of "our failures make us better".
It's about "now".
It's about, and as you're seeing, "being now" in peace, with peace.
"As my trading account balance grows, it does not bring with it the confidence I would have expected. Instead it seems to bring out more of the fear. I want to hold onto those winnings, and with every major increase I become more and more protective."
So we protect.
But we are not, interestingly, protecting the money.
Imo we are protecting ourselves from feeling the fear of that loss.
The two are not the same.
We need to get specific and read between the lines of the play that we ourselves have written and act out.
I mention often that contradictions are many.
I see it in the sense of where opposites belong together.
One needs the other for something to be revealed.
The confidence you speak of that you expected with an increasing account I would see as mis-placed.
In the sense that it's not about having more money to give us the confidence to trade more size or feel better , or whatever. Rather it's the confidence in who and what we are in spite of the money, without the money.
Seems like a contradiction ?
Perhaps they are just opposites that one needs for the other to be revealed.
As I say, these are dificult things to deal with and talk about, so I hope my perspective on this all is taken in the spirit that's it's given. That being that it's only what I understand for myself, yet, and in terns of your comment about the Journal maybe being a selfish thing ? well I understand that, or at least I understand that it can seem like that but being selfish is maybe a much misunderstood concept (something for another post maybe..)
Just to say that your Journal, imo helps not only the author. It has helped me to take a deep breath and post in it and in doing so, is helping me...
What ever we think we know, or come to understand, is never fixed.
We plateau and then move on, sometimes slowly and some times at great spead as realizations abound.
Yet we will again reach another plateau and again move on faster or slower.
Somewhere along those many and less travelled roads we do realize there is no destination.
The arrival is not the point of it all at all.
Yes it's the journey for the journeys sake.
All the better to be here and now so that we don't miss any or all of it.
And we can, imo, be here and now, with or without everything or anything we naively think or believe we need or represents who we think or believe we are.
Indeed that may well be the only way we are here "now" in the present moment.
This puts to rest all fear and takes us beyond even the need for confidence.
Hi oggod, Well, ur thoughts go out as vibrational wave forms. They continue to go outward the more u think the thought, peristant thought form vs a random thought..Ur mind does pick up on other peoples thoughts, u think ur alone up their? Sounds funny, but were finding its true. When u get junk in ur head, usually when ur not concentrating on something, ur actually picking up on thought waves of others.
I did an experiment w/ my wife, grand kids, & some friends. Simple one. I had us all take turns, think of a color, visualize it, see the color real clear in ur mind. Then had everyone write down the color that came to their minds...works best w/ little kids, not skeptical & theirs minds are open. & the person thinking the color also wrote it down prior. It worked! Almost all 5 people had same color written down, & the one who got it wrong said "I was gonna put that down" Then we went to #'s 1-10 and it was amazing, worked the same.
After we were serious, we'd pick a # 1-100 and nailed it! thats not coincidence.
It quit working after it turned into a guessing game, but I pick up on my wifes thought all the time & visaversa, little things, or subjects. Its always "wow" "Howed u know..." but it is the mechanics of our minds.
So the monkey comes from out there..whoooooo Hey, I heard that !
Hello Gary,
Multiple Universes theory sounds pretty crazy I know! Actually so it goes, a multi universe creates one reality from multiple probabilities. The most probable outcome becomes our reality when we observe it. Theirs a infinite # of probable probabilities but only few ever get close to being formable. So the one we believe to see is the outcome we experience and the ones that got away keep coming back until we can believe to see it, then we say " I made it" or "I did it" lets do it again..but as soon as we observe & choose to see the nxt probable outcome that does not favor us, it becomes our reality. Both probable outcomes are always a believe away.
This whole idea is both new and ancient, its simply a vision of mind, body, spirit, and soul, and a new understanding of how the forces of purpose, creation, & transformation within each of us, when used consciously can transsform our dreams into realities.
This is really amazing stuff, I go into it and use techniques ive read about and actually see results the nxt day, then I get chills sometimes knowing if I didnt meditate for a result it never would of happened.
Remember? the world used to be flat. Just call me CrazyBill. I might make that my handle?
I have spent most of this Saturday morning studying my trading performance for the month of March. I have gone through various phases where I will want to know my performance numbers, and then not want to know them, believeing each direction gave me something that I needed at the time. An example of that is setting a daily monetary goal. Very bad idea for me, but I used to hae one. Or, focusing on percentage winning trades meanwhile missing the big picture.
Coinciding with the start of my daily change collection, I have decided to start a new grading system for my trading. NT performance reports contain some interesting information, but not exactly the way I want to see it. So I have exported information from my laptop and desktop, combined it in a spreadsheet, re-arranged it, added a couple calculations, removed the stuff I don't really care about.
More important to me than percentage wins, is how much did I make versus how much I lost, or "Profit Factor". I see that is some NT reporting, but it does not calculate on the Performance Summary tab, which is where I think it should be.
Another added ratio, is not the "average" win to loss ratio, but the largest win to largest loss for a given period. Different market conditions suggest varying ranges for this, but my goal is to always have my ultimate profit targets larger than my ultimate single loss.
Actually of possibly least importance to me is my win percentage. It has mostly to do with the number of times I will get in, get out, get back in, as I firm up my decision to participate in some trades. I may go +5, -3, +1, -2, -5, -2, +40 in the course of a trade. NT calculates that as 3 wins and 4 losses. I see it as one win. I was thinking about it, feeling it, changin my mind, then finally agreeing to commit. Sure it cost me 8x in commissions (a place where my trading could greatly improve), but when I do go for a winning trade, I could typicaly offset $50 per "trade", (not per entry), if I absolutely had to. But I could use some improvement there.
Anyway, one of the attached PDFs shows what my score summary looks like for the month just ended. I traded 80% single contracts, 20% two contracts, but the 2nd entry is more often than not just "trading positions", where I step back out of contract #1 early and then ride #2 for the move. So, despite the occasional 2nd entry, it is my version of one-contract trading.
After commissions, the amount does not really seem worth the time and the risk, and there is where the concern about the move to full time comes in. I will need to step up to greater size, eventually.
The second PDF attachment shows a breakout of trades where I was only in with one contract versus where I added-in / traded positions. Even though my add-in entry only accounted for 20% of my time in the market, it contributed more than 50% of my bottom line. That is slightly higher than the norm, but not unusual. (The separation of contracts was only exported on my desktop, so the numbers don't line up between attachments)
BTW, the way I track is just by changing my ATM bracket from 20/20 to 12/12 before I take the trade. When I am in one already, the switch in ATM has become second nature to me, just in case I do add. I used to have an ATM name for about 30 different setups so I could sort and analyze, see if divergence was better than breakouts, etc.
So effectively, my leverage comes twice as fast as I step up, and may explain more the fear I have been referencing lately. When I go up to 2 contracts as a "standard" entry, it really means, occasionally 4. 3 becomes 6, 5 becomes 10, 10 becomes 20, maybe only occassionally, but if I expect to keep the numbers I am obtaining I cannot remove that part of it.
I am looking for any feedback on the two performance summaries that might suggest where I am in the trading process. Not for a starting trader, obviously, but for a profitable one. Ignore the dollar amount, that is the easiest of all adjustments in trading. According to my broker's rules, I could make that much and more in a day!
I have no idea how many, or who even, but I know that there must be full-time profitable traders that have at least glanced at my journal a time or two. If you are one, how does this performance compare to yours or others who trade as their only source of income? I just typed earlier this morning about how my journal had been brought out into the light where other traders could see it. Why sit here and analyze myself all alone?
Let me just share w/ you what I have discovered about fear. This has really help me over the past 2 weeks.
Its not out their, this really makes sense! What if that "fear" that u are feeling isnt fear? U just think its fear!
I know..it feels like fear cuz ur hands sweat ur heart beats, feeling in ur stomach validates it. Trust me, I know!
But "what if" that over powering feeling is "ENERGY" ? Energy that is so powerfull it scares he crap out you..haa haa Yeah... Think about that for a minute....
If u can harness that ENERGY and know its not FEAR You will control your emotions and see whats actually happening w/ PA and swing structure overall. That energy you will control, it wont control you and blind you until ur out of that trade & see it has it was, price action.
If u had an uncle that took that fear away, remember, fear is a lie, and ur uncle had an endless source of $$ so u have no concern but to win for the sake of winning and thats it! FEAR is not in your world, no room for it, better yet, no time for it!
Next time ur in a trade live and that "LIE" comes up..and it will! KNOW that it is actually total ENERGY! Knowledge is power, and that knowledge will empower you my friend. Everyone feels that sense of energy when we step outside ourselfs, whether its over a ledge, stepping on stage for the 80th time or 1st time, approaching a really hot chick, back in the day. That energy is our gift. When we are sipping coffee on our couches or just flipping thru charts were in our "comfort zone" its when we step out of that zone we feel it..ENERGY
Tell ur self & know you are experiencing energy and thats all it is, embrace it, welcome it, you are on the right track when you feel that energy. Believe this to be true and fear will fade. Fear is make belief.
