Good job today. I've been following your thread and I want to say good luck on your current combine.

Quick question, but do you have a few setups (that repeat over and over again), that you take? Seems to me that you are over-trading (32 trades)?

Congratulations on the comeback trades on Wednesday.

Like many others, I have been inspired by your posts, and I feel for you during the rough patch you've encountered.

Clearly, you're a good trader and can get through whatever your difficulties are, and be stronger for it. You will certainly succeed.

Everything you have posted shows that you can do so.

A quick update on Combine 3.

Still having trouble managing risk properly all the time. Something must give.

I've had 4 trades that have violated how large of a loss I'll allow for a trade. 3/4 were losers, and those 3 trades have cost me exactly -$5,000. I am down -$1,550 overall on the combine... you do the math. Today I had a winning day going in both markets, and decided to trade a 14 lot going in to the ES close. Nice job.

I've traded CL for several days now, and have had good success with it. There does seem to be a correlation between my risk control and my starting trading ES. It's so slow... I seem to not be afraid of it. I am for sure afraid of CL, and don't have trouble cutting losers because I've seen how badly it can burn me. Just a thought. It's probably deeper than that, and I can't blame my lack of discipline on the market I'm trading. I should be able to properly control position sizing and stop losses regardless of the market traded.

Combine 3 results so far:









I have plenty of time to pass this thing, despite my lapses in risk management. That's how good I am at making money; too bad I'm not good enough at not giving it back. Working on that... I have 16 trading days left. Just manage risk man. You're good enough to make the cut if you will manage your risk.

I will prevail.

Thanks for the update!

Good to see you're still kickin

It looks like the ES is mius 773 and the Cl is plus 773 exactly the same number for trade average !

Good morning Indextrader. I've been following you for the last 3 weeks. I wish you the best of luck, stay strong, keep focused and seek emotional detachment from your trading. Best of luck!

RoboVinhci 

Good job today. I've been following your thread and I want to say good luck on your current combine. Quick question, but do you have a few setups (that repeat over and over again), that you take? Seems to me that you are over-trading (32 trades)?

Thanks for the best wishes.

I do have setups, it's very discretionary, but I can label the trades a handful of things.

Overtrading has not been a problem as of late. Your coming to this conclusion from information on my stats is from the TST report. Those TST reports calculate the number of trades way differently than I do. If I get long a 6 lot, and scale out 2, then scale out 2, then scale out 1, then leave the last one for a runner. TST counts that as 4 trades. Not to mention if I add back a scale out, it only makes it worse.

This dynamic is also hurting my avg win: avg loss metric since the scale outs are going to be multiple trades in the eyes of TST.

I say all this to just answer your question. I don't give a crap about what the stats are at the moment, it would be counter-productive for me to care. I'm focused on initiating behavior modification, and that's it.

I had a negative event today that I turned into a real positive.

I entered long at an area, but it was one of those... "I'd rather get in a few points lower on a pullback, but I'm pretty afraid this thing will run off and leave me" kind of entries. So when price went against me, I added at the level that I really wanted to be long from. Turns out it was a great entry, and I only took $450 MAE on it, but I still do not want to allow myself to have that kind of behavior, so.... the positive thing is....

I immediately closed the trade out, logged out of all platforms, and removed myself from trading the rest of the day. Typically these types of decision snowball and lead to frustration, leading to more bad decisions.

Even though it was a breakdown in discipline to add to the position. It was a big discipline win for me to shut her down for the day upon realizing that I had violated rules.






One interesting find from drilling down in to the stats:

-$2,600 on one CL trade just now.




Had to stop out at a very bad location due to almost hitting TST DLL.


I now have 4 trades that total -$7,600

The other 78 trades I've made total +$4,210

Keep up the good work bud! You're really going places and showing marked improvement.

indextrader7 

-$2,600 on one CL trade just now. Had to stop out at a very bad location due to almost hitting TST DLL. I now have 4 trades that total -$7,600 The other 78 trades I've made total +$4,210 Keep up the good work bud! You're really going places and showing marked improvement.

I have two quick comments,

First, you are showing classic signs of loss aversion, in that you would rather take sure profits, but gamble on losses. This generally seems to come from not knowing/ understanding expectancy.

Second, RIGHT after you got stopped out the market ran for near two dollars, but the important thing to remember is that for the one time it runs for those two dollars, there are quite a few more times where it will just keep grinding against you, don't change your risk tolerance because of this incident. Don't tell yourself " I knew it all along" that's called hindsight bias, and people are very susceptible to it with events like these.

Tread lightly, because loss aversion and hindsight bias could arguably be the two most detrimental things to a trader.