My town is just couple of hours drive from WuHan, it is a small town Songzi, Jingzhou. are you currently living in WuHan or in the states?

Thanks for explaining your thought process for me.

I am doing a combine in topsteptrader.com, I have a journal detailing my trades only, don't have time for detailed record keeping so far, because Sydney is such an inconvenient place for trading US markets manually.

My exposure to trading is sporadic, it is an on and off relationship due to lack of success, and lack of right education, I would consider my experience in trading is still the beginner level.

I enjoy visiting your journal.

lux.lu 

My town is just couple of hours drive from WuHan, it is a small town Songzi, Jingzhou. are you currently living in WuHan or in the states? Thanks for explaining your thought process for me. I am doing a combine in topsteptrader.com, I have a journal detailing my trades only, don't have time for detailed record keeping so far, because Sydney is such an inconvenient place for trading US markets manually. My exposure to trading is sporadic, it is an on and off relationship due to lack of success, and lack of right education, I would consider my experience in trading is still the beginner level. I enjoy visiting your journal.

Thank you~

I'm currently in Wuhan.

Me too, learning by myself, accumulating experience by placing good and bad trades.

Still long way to go~~ Let's keep in touch, and don't forget to tell me if you started a daytrading journal~~

Good luck!

It has been 18 months since my first trade in the market. Generally speaking, I'm satisfied with the result, making small profit in stock trading, some loss in future trading, making progress in both mental and skill aspect.

Despite the financial impact from trading, my personality has been reshaped by day trading and my view of the world has been influenced by trading too. I'll go to these abstract idea later when I re-do my trading plan.

After all these good and bad trades, all exciting and frustrating moment, and all the learning from futures.io (formerly BMT) + self study, I feel the need to reconstruct my trading plan, shape my own edge based on my own personality and experience.

The new trading plan contains a plan for both mental and skill aspect.

In the mental aspect, I'll try to recall my mental activities during my most impressioned trades. Based on these, I'll reconstruct the mental process and try to find out the way to avoid placing emotional trades. The whole idea is to help myself maintain a sober mind during trading hours.

The skill part will cover some basic rules that I tested in my experience, some indicators, patterns that I encountered. The idea is to provide an excutable plan with some detailed description to guide trading. I'll also write some key factors that I learned from exp and other aspects, so the combination of these factors would help me identify possible tradable opportunities.

I've already finished a hand writing draft, I'll reconstruct and put more description into it. The whole plan will be done on Friday at the latest.

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1. Key words list

calmness - anxiety
decisive - hesitating
peaceful - stressful
exciting - frustrating
braveness - cowardly
fear - greed
flexible - stubborn
acception - rejection
prudent - revengeful

(to be added)

2. Negative mental activities(examples):

• greedy, eagerness to make money from the market
• hesitating before taking a trade, fear of loss
• stressful when holding a losing position, only focus on praying rather than analysing the situation
• frustrating after several consecutive losing trades
• revengeful after taking a losing trade which later being proving right, but lose due to early exit
• after a losing trade turns into a winning one, cowardly exit at break even or stubborn to hold till losing zone again.
• rejection of a losing day
• stubborn to take a with trend trade
• anxiety before opening
• anxiety and stress when paper profit shrinks before reaching profit target

3. Positive mental activities(examples):

• confidence to correctly read the market
• decisive to take a trade when setup formed
• brave to accept a losing trade
• prudent to take a trade when feel uncertainty
• flexible to close a trade or reverse based on analysis
• peaceful to hold a position, no matter win or lose, as the original analysis still being valid

4. Mental process in trading

• Before a trade:

1)General Emotion: how was the day? anything outside trading bother? what's the expectation for today? does the performance from previous days have a influence? etc...
2)Bias: any incomplete analysis before openning? any news set your mind to long or short?

• During a trade

1)losing position:
speed of loss: quick loss due to spike or slow paper cut with hope being destoryed bar by bar?
size of position: does the position size make the loss emotionally painful?
2)winning position
speed of win: spike win or slow trend win? any chance of adding position or take partial profit?
pullback: can I hold through the pullback? does the with trend traders show strong conviction?
distance to target: does the price pullback before reaching target? does it stall just few ticks from the target? Does my order get filled when price touched?

• After a trade:

1)losing trade:
can I accept the loss, financially and mentally?
am I eager to cover the loss without any pause time from a losing trade?
can I wait a fixed time or the strong setup to occur before taking another trade?
2)winnning position:
the efficiency of winning is good? how many ticks I have covered in a trend of X points?
am I satisfied with the profit?

-------------------------mental process during a trade----------------------


It is just like driving, anticipate the possible track and movement of other cars on the road, see farther and wider than just the vehicules around you. Do not overspeed so able to handle any emergency without taking a catastrophic outcome.

5. Physical reaction under mental pressure

Breath - deeper and more frequently
Body position - twisted on chair
Body movement - stiff
Language - impatience
Brain activity - repeating worse case to make myself freak out

--> Possible solutions
1) define the worse case scenario before taking the trade(not the result but the worse mental situation)
2) define max pain (stop)
3) relaxing body exercise
4) put OCO orders and AFK for a while

No trades today~

1. key words list

buy, sell, target, proft, loss, scalp, swing, stop, performance, trend, trading range, choppy, continuation, breakout, pullback, confidence, pattern, strength, balance, indicator, probability, bounce, inside pattern, overlapping, trap, moving average, divergence, tick, market profile, triangle, point of pivot, resistance, support, bar shape, bar range, number of bars...

2. Time frame

The time frame makes great different in the way of trading, and it is a different between investor and trader.
Intraday time frames could be hourly, 30min, 15min, 10min, 5min, 3min, 1min. Once choose one time frame as trading platform, should not be attracted or influenced by the movement on the smaller time frame.

When searching trading opportunities, the smaller time frame contains more noise(relatively high percentage), also more opportunities, but it is super difficult to identify them in a small fraction of time. So focus on the opportunities on one timeframe, may use larger ones to identify market status and possible trend direction.

Also, trends in small timeframe could be trading ranges on larger timeframe, vice versa. So a spike + pullback or trading range pattern on one time frame could be profitable swing patterns in samll timeframe.

1)Market environment
For day trading, daily chart could be used to forcast possible intraday movement, like the trend direction, possible H/L, R/S levels, etc.

2)Trigger

Before openning ---> Key points ---> Possible outcome ---> Patterns on intraday timeframe

before openning, daily chart could release some possible key level or directional information like: R/S, trendline, daily chart pattern, MA, bull day or bear day... According to these information, a possible plan could be designed, once the market shows certain behavior at key level, the possible outcome could be formed during the day. The decision of which outcome to be true was based on the price action on key points. Also open to all possible market condition, as the market could be out of your imagination.


3)On trade
Once the price entered one possible situation, the objection of intraday trading is to decide wether the movement will continue to profit target, reverse or develop into other patterns.

4)Exit trade
>>Cool down (rest for several minutes before reenter)
>>Analysis
>>Search for recognisable opportunities rather than certain amount of profit (greed/unsatisfaction of profit)

3.Executable Plan

1)General Movement
-->Search for trading opportunites, analyse from larger to smaller timeframe.
-->Identify key points provided by bigger time frame --> possible range / position size / max loss / idea target
-->Prejudge: swing or trading range (possibilities of each)

2)Intraday Opportunity Search(swing)
-->Key point pattern / reaction
-->With trend entry (fade / jump into)
Few opportunites to catch a beginning of swing

3)Intraday Opportinity Search(scalp)
-->Momentum spike (not confident, need more exp)
-->Extreme of trading range
Many opportunites of scalp trade once market reminds in the range

4. Examples of tradable market pattern(intraday)
-->Swing pattern

1)Start point <---> Reversal pattern
Key level: R/S, Prior H/L, trendlines, round numbers
Pressure building: tails at top/bottom of several consecutive overlapping bars/micro double top/micro double bottom etc..

2)Continuation pattern
Pullback to: MA / Round number / Vwap bands / Start of spike or channel / trendline etc...

The pullback could be:
Quick <-- reach the point quickly and rebounce quickly, multi touch of key points but all fail
Slow <-- bad looking pulling back bars / overlapping / few or no breakout close / small bar size / large tails at one or both end.

Trading range: small range, pulling close the MA(on bigger timeframe)

Breakout pattern on larger timeframe: flag, converging triangle, wedge

3)Reversal pattern
= Start point +
Exhaustion of previous trend (overshoot, climax)
Not H1, H2, L1, L2, in strong trend (exception: double top/bottom)
2/3 bar reversal (strong reversal)

4)Stagnation / Pause pattern (temporary choppy movement before continuation)
-->often in reversal trends (existence of opposite trend before)
-->price reaches key level + false pullback/reversal (breakout pullback of trendline / stand above / below MA)
-->should not last very long

-->Scalp pattern

• -->fixed extreme
• -->bar close at extreme followed by opposite bar
• -->bar close at middle
• -->quick bounce at extreme

5. Summary & Reminder

--> General
Not many swing opportunities during one day (both start and continuation) --> Not over trade

-->Factors to watch over
Balance

• Bar number
• Bar size
• Bar shape
• Price movement
• Boundries
• Daily range
• Synchronization with index
• Always-in
• Local time

--> Trade the tradablem leave the rest
--> Keep eyes in big time frame to find right direction of trend, keep mind sharp before entering a trade, once entered, keep original plan, especially for winning trade.

--------------------------------------
Some thoughts about life style and attitude will come later during the weekend~