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On Sunday night when I started the chart analysis for the week, I left the broken upward trednline. I changed the color to red now, but it was a green line Sunday night. Notice how well it performed, again. I have not taken that trade at that specific point yet, but it is a very familiar occurence to me.

I'm not touching it right now, not my time of day. But I would tend to buy here instead of sell. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow.


Net for the day +7 ticks. Never really "traded" today.

I decided to go for the penny, but counting commissions it was basically a wash. No penny in, no penny out.

Quoting 

To be “happy”, we must have a purpose, we must feel we are delivering on that purpose. Having goals makes us feel alive. Reaching our goals gives us satisfaction. To me, that is living.

Gary, I like this one

Like, you, I did learn and accepted some fact in life. After a business failure I realized that I got one life on this earth. Only one chance to live an happy one. So my goal is to be happy

Sure, I struggle a lot on my trading career that does not go like I want, but still the goal, the project to go there make me happy.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts

Martin

GaryD 

Underthinking it. And overthinking it. I has to do with something beyond math and risk. The answer is not necessarily in things that we can touch or feel or analyze by numbers alone. But, it can help be profitable, possibly more so than anything else. Since FOMC is coming and there is nothing more to do... My issue is not profitablility. That may be the confusing part. It is breaking out of a pattern that I formed intentionally to start a new habit, i.e. be profitable. So now I am profitable, but do not necessarily enjoy the limitations that I boxed myself in with. Maybe like training wheels. I did not want them, but needed them to stop falling down. At some point, I want to remove them again, and am wrestling with how to do that correctly. I want to keep what is good and shed what I am feeling is too restrictive, but have no experience with how to perform such delicate surgery on my psychology, and so I am pushing myself thorugh various exercises, testing some boundaries and then thinking about it more.

OK, you have shed some light on this for me, I think. You had a goal to be profitable, and now that you are profitable, you dont like the set of rules you created for yourself to get to profitability, because they are too confining? Seems to me that if you achieved your goal, enjoy you success, and make new goals.

In your training wheel illustration, when do you take them off? The when is a gradual process. You have the training wheels as a backup, to help you not tip over, but you take them off completely when they become a hindrence. ie, you can't lean to turn the bike. Once free of the training wheels, do you give them a second thought? Now the goal should be to mountain bike, or the tour de France. With those type of goals, would you think of training wheels again?

Sounds like you need this guy. Get their information package...it might be just the thing you need.

I went through this myself a few years back.

Entrepreneur Coach Chicago, Entrepreneur Coaches Toronto | Strategic Coach

Its just a link...I dont work for them or anything. I found them when my parent company had them on the program and I attended his program. It was very interesting.

I took a trade a few months ago while I was doing other things in the office, closed profitably, and then noticed it did not show in my account. The trade was a limit buy that I just set by right clicking, turned up my volume to let me know if I got in, and went about my work. It turned out I had taken it in simulation and didn't realize it as I never opened the Chart Trader window, and placed the trade on a 30 minute chart instead of my normal execution chart. Apparently the charts all default back to sim.

I just realized the sim account will accept $0.00 as a starting balance and I reset mine tonight so it will trigger a margin alert in the future.

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There is a local DB in place at significant support

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A breakout below the local double bottom could signal a significant continuation. But until then I am staying with a long bias. Equities are going to be on my watch today to see where the decision falls regarding the FOMC meeting yesterday.

Crude caught hold at the 127 external and the prior BOP on a 240 minute. The BOP is strong, but I have not seen much strength to the 127 other than as a profit target. I was surprised it held where it did, after breaking the local DB and with the heavy inventory increae. But I was also surprised the ES has yet to break it's higher 382.

Siginificant support by confluence is all the way down into the 99.30-99.90 area, but possibly 101 was enough to be a bargain. I was up on the day (short trades), and then instead of walking away tried to make another run late in the day and gave back my winnings. It was nothing to do with trading really, it was me feeling out new position sizes and getting that brief glimpse of making some money, which typically means I will not. -65 on the day after being up roughly the same. I was 2-4 contracts all day, so not a huge loss, but it was not good trading. The move was the break below support, and I should have shut down. It is still so perplexing to me how well I trade on 1 contract, and how it will not re-create any higher than that. I do not understand what is changing in my head, but absolutely feel a change.

Still net up for the week so far, and plan to finish the week at 2/2 trading, unless I max down for the week. If I do, 1 contract is my scarlet letter again. If nothing else, I just to want to keep putting myself in that space and trying to pinpoint what happens inside when emergency stops go from $300 to $600.

What is the most confusing is the dollar amount is not that significant. I have had loans with interest payments that ticked away faster than that. The very first loan to not renew on me was roughly $11.8M with Colonial Bank in Orlando. I think when they shut off my interest reserve it was $13k+ a month, and I sent the check in for 3 months before they swept my CD and I realized I was getting screwed. I fly back to DC tomorrow night. That is $300. I had dinner in San Francisco a few years ago for roughly $300 for me an my wife. I've stayed in rooms that were more than that a night. It is not a large amount of money. Why does it get inside me so hard that it can shift my behavior??

I will try to answer myself over the new few weeks, as that is my current #1 goal; break out from being a 1 contract trader.

No rest...

OK, I just brought up a comparison between my past career and current aspirng career that dealt with math. That speaks my language. I had a $13k a month interest payment on a development loan, and it ticked away at me constantly. And that was one loan of many. How did I sleep? How did I not change my mind about the deal over and over?

There is no scalping in real estate. I had to commit to a deal, a belief, a statistically proven direction, experience, the numbers had to work; or we made no offer. Why chase a deal with more risk than reward?

You don't. In real estate, anyway.

Maybe I wanted to trade so badly, I needed scalping to keep me entertained? How could I base a trade on longer terms knowledge if I had none?

But I have a lot of long term knowledge today. If I scroll back through months of SR levels, they are tight. I fell I know CL very well.

My questions may be closer to an answer with that. And my frustration of=ver the past few months even has been to combine the two versions of trader that I believe am today. Hard core scalper, and detailed swing analyst. RARELY I will take a swing, and only if all the world is right; beautiful 5WM with volume and a reversal, on any day but Friday, for example. But there is where the real R/R is. 3/1, 5/1.

I think (someday should edit) that I will combine the two soon, and obtain the synergy I have been believing exists.

I'm going with this. I am onto something;

I approach chart analysis with the analytical mind that spent weeks building spreadsheets to prove a real estate deal would work out and meet our minimum cas-on-cash return. WEEKS. And got nothing for it if we decided not to make an offer. My experience, my lafelong success, says STUDY, PATIENCE, ANALYZE.

Meanwhile, I took trading up as a Hail Mary pass when I first discovered it. What I discovered was something similar to being dropped into the heart of Jurassic Park.

Rule #1 = do not get killed.
Rule #2 = See if you can figure out how to come out of hiding long enough to find someway to eat, while living by rule #1.

So I study as an analyst, and trade as a survivor. And THAT is my frustration. Finally, I at least know what I am dealing with. That is more than half the battle.

That actually made me a little tired to think thorough. And the whole time I have a live trade on, just sitting there, stop in place, ignoring it. Like I should.