Hi - just wanted to post that I feel your pain. I had two terrible days in a row Monday and Tuesday - both due to a few losses clouding my judgment and then a series of essentially "out-of-control" trades that snowballed and led to heavy losses far beyond what I want to honor as my daily loss limit.

Reading your posts it strikes me that you are an emotional person (I am the same). I think this can be a great advantage if mastered because I believe it gives one greater access to intuition. However, unchecked, emotionality will cause us to do exactly the opposite of what is called for at times when our emotions have gathered too much energy.

I wish you luck in your trading - I hope you can find the balance between intuition and emotion.

Hi @Surly,

Thanks for the encouragement.

I have been tracking your TST Combine journal and wish you all the best.

I think both of us are very near to the goal of consistency. Stage IV traders?

Maybe a trader intervention done by ourselves as both mentor and mentee may help.



Regards,
IQGod

How to make trading go from the most exciting profession in the world to something similar to your day job (yawn) ?

Simple.

1. Look at the risk part first and only then focus on the reward.

2. Practice, practice, practice - how many trades did you practice today - practice for love, practice as if today is your last day on the planet - since the back of your mind knows that it is in sim it will not treat the trades seriously - that is a free chance to hone your technical skills which will be needed sharp when you go under the fire on live.

3. TAKE the trade when the time comes. DON'T miss out.


To take the trade when the mind is under fear of losing remember this statement (taken from the rendering of the Bhagvad Gita, the greatest trading book ever written)

EGO: BIG SALE!! EVERYTHING MUST GO!!


And the last part is where I failed today. My ego had become sore red after two days of consecutive losses (which were due to EGO too - stubborn holding onto losing trades). I'll keep that in mind the next time.


I had given up doing my homework yesterday evening and was dejected due to the losses yesterday. Perfect judgement. Zero execution.

However on the daily I observed hurriedly that the important level of the pinbar extreme of 5 Oct 2012 i.e. 5818.35 had been exceeded and a strong uptrend day was on cards.

DAILY CHART: NIFTY (index)

[img]https://nexusfi.com/v/79wd6z.jpg[/img]


NIFTY: M2 the first hour

At point 1 the huge bull bar was in place. However I wasn't convinced that these were strong buyers - reason being that the market was almost vertical at this stage on euphoric bullishness and thus this behavior is unsustainable. Hence I waited.

I was itching to buy for any damn reason. But this came forward to me as an unplanned knee jerk reaction on my part (seemingly same as yesterday and the day-before's overtrading overdose) - hence I hastily stopped myself and stood on the sidelines.

However I completely stopped placing any orders at all - the deer response. Deep freeze. This time however the deep freeze was resulting in being out of the good trades I could see unfolding before by very own eyes.



[img]https://nexusfi.com/v/hm8fbs.jpg[/img]

The pinbar was utterly fantastic but at this point I had not been watching the chart and was running errands. errands seemed a riskless haven and were actually pleasurable. Back of the mind knew that I was not running errands but running away.

[img]https://nexusfi.com/v/uk79wd.jpg[/img]



More learning. I learn't a lot about myself in these three days.

iqgod 

Hi @Surly, Thanks for the encouragement. I have been tracking your TST Combine journal and wish you all the best. I think both of us are very near to the goal of consistency. Stage IV traders? Maybe a trader intervention done by ourselves as both mentor and mentee may help.

Thank you iq - yes, looks like we have somewhat similar trading styles and also somewhat similar patterns of mistakes.

I am still bringing way too much drama to my trading - it still has too much of an emotional charge. I am striving to grow most consistent in my trade identification and then also take fewer trades. In my combine I am now going to approach reaching the profit goal by trading with increased size so that I can reduce the frequency and number of my trades. We'll see how this goes...

good luck in your trading.

iqgod 

I was itching to buy for any damn reason. But this came forward to me as an unplanned knee jerk reaction on my part (seemingly same as yesterday and the day-before's overtrading overdose) - hence I hastily stopped myself and stood on the sidelines. However I completely stopped placing any orders at all - the deer response. Deep freeze. This time however the deep freeze was resulting in being out of the good trades I could see unfolding before by very own eyes. The pinbar was utterly fantastic but at this point I had not been watching the chart and was running errands. errands seemed a riskless haven and were actually pleasurable. Back of the mind knew that I was not running errands but running away. More learning. I learn't a lot about myself in these three days.

I can totally relate to these sentiments - if we could only be so understanding and objective about ourselves in the moment! I often see myself making decisions in the moment in ways that I know are counterproductive - but I don't always have the objectivity to stop myself.

onward and upward!

I was bearish till last Wednesday.

I had not noticed that the market had exceeded the 5 Oct pinbar high on Thursday and that should have made me bullish.

But I kept thinking 'This MIGHT be a bull trap. I must not buy now.'

The market posted all time highs that day and still I persisted with my bearish views.

Actually my VIEWS were bullish finally but the child in me was obstinate at not having rode the trend and hence I held on to my losing positions (learning this because I am journalling this....). (more on these trades, later)


So on Friday I was the same obstinate child while the market climbed to its former bullish glory and a bull market has probably ripened to take off (albeit without me).

Yesterday I shorted and was pleasantly rewarded for 'being right'. (more on this trade too, later)

Today I shorted again and was stopped out two times for a loss (trading range) and finally sold correctly into the bear breakout but missed majority of the bear trend and got a small pie for moving my stop too close which was then taken out by a small pullback. (Fear, note how this was greed two trades earlier!)




The mind played today on two things ... 'not knowing' what was going to happen next (fear) and greed (knowing technically what was going to happen next but fear mixed in - not giving it back).

Followed my plan so should be somewhat ok to digest these learnings.

Entered the second time after getting chopped once.



HTF charts for reference, observe the bullish signs everywhere