I was trading since I came back, still felt easy to get into my old behavior pattern. The problem is that I cannot always behave as I planed. All the stuff I see from books and webinar are not translated into my actual trading strategy. It's like knowing what to do but act otherwise.

I found in the psycho part of futures.io (formerly BMT) that many others have the same problem of following one's own trading plan. I believe that one article mentioned in the thread gives me a really good hint. The problem may lay on the trust issue of trading plan. According to my own experience, I build my trading plan base on information from books, webinars and my personal exp. But the part from my own exp is small compared to the whole plan.

Once I have built my trading plan, I'm eager to use it to make money. So there is many emotion issue at the very beginning of executing my plan. The more important issue is that as the bigger part of my plan comes from others rather than my own idea or exp. So actually, I do have trust issue to this plan, even I consider it my own. The essential problem is that I have not really tested it yet.

Consequently and subconsciously I would rather trust my intuition and passion rather than my trading plan. So even the content in my trading plan seems logical and reasonable, it will not get practiced.

Once I noticed this problem, I began to comtemplate the possible solutions. I need to reconstrut my trading plan, not to bring the whole plan at once, but build all action guide one by one. During my real time trading or sim trading, I will practice the listed items once the market offers the proper opportunities. The trading plan would be building while testing, with the conscious awearnesss of what I'm doing and to achieve, the trading plan will not only be written on paper but also in my trading habbit~

Hope this works~

How time flies, it's has been a quater since my last post. For some unknow reason my connection to nexusfi.com (formerly BMT) is not stable and I have just bought a VPN to get here.

I will put some some trades that I made in recent days.
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20150202 TWTR 5min
1st trade(blue arrow): spike down since the open, a standard bear flag to touch MA. But the bear flag turns into a bull flag and break upside, stopped out.

According to the trendline I have drawn there, my entry could be considered as a false downside breakout. Once the price came up from the downside breakout, it should go higher, as it eventually did, but the tricky part is that it hasn't jumped up directly but made another down bar before going up.

My setup was valid and reasonable, lesson learned.
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2nd trade(blue arrow): misguided by the green hammer just before my entry bar. The hammer shows bull strength that I expected so I entered. There were almost bull bars all the ways up since previous low. I though the price should stand above the MA, and make another move up. Stopped out.

Actually, the moving up trend was not strong enough to continue. reasons: big downside trend just before(lower high to a higher low); bull bars were not in good shape in the recent bull trend, hint for weakness; entry price may form a double top with preivous lower high. Not a good entry.

Entry, Stop, Target
First entry was just below a bear trendline. Not a good entry at all.

Just after my first entry, price moved down. But I was still pretty sure about the upside movement. The second entry was near the MA. As this chart shows, after 2 entries on the long side, I had a clear stop and target.


Exit
I was scared that the downside trendline could be the resistent area, so I got out. The price eventually got my target before hitting my stop. But I am not regret as my entry was not very sound.

1st trade: stopped out. Bad entry, I cannot remember a reason to enter.


3rd trade: exited earlier. After my entry, the price moved down just 2 point above my target, but retured to upside, so I got out early. Not good entry at all.


SIM 1st trade: stopped out. Chased price movement.


SIM 3rd trade: My target was too far, the price moved down again after a lower high. Got out after the two bar reversal bear setup.


SIM result

Progress I made since last post (October 29 2014)

1. Now I take much less trade than I used to.
2. I learned to take losses, not revange (still a little afraid of loss).
3. Much calmer when dealing with a losing postion.

Entry:
I found that the entry of a trade is very important. A good entry can provide more profit, less risk and brings less stress when managing the trade. The key, besides techniques part, is to maintain a stable mental status. I was and am still a little unstable. Any price movement can easily get me into a trade without any good reason. That's why I usually use the word like 'expect', 'hope', 'think' in my trading journal. It is really hard to tell the different from what I want to see based on greed and what I want to see based on logic reason. Especially the results of the two different directions are not garanted. Sometimes eagerness to win can be satisfied, and logic analysis is proven wrong.But at last, the logic analysis way is the only one to constant profitability, the other way is to blown up an account.



Target:
The target is also important, I'm always afraid that the price gets really close to my target but doesn't fill the order and come back to entry price or even stop. Sometimes I make a safe choice, the price exceeds the target, others times, it missed my target.

I can deal with loss, and deal with missing chance to make more profit as I accept these as a part of nature of trading. Buy low sale high is always relative. No one can sell the highest ticks and buy the lowest. I think that admitting this is the prerequisite of making any progress.

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Now I'm also reading books about meditation and zen to help me reach a peaceful mind in life and trading. Some ideas are really inspiring.

Anyway, still long way to go~

1st entry, stop @top of signal bar.


3rd entry, reverse from the failure of 2nd entry(short @ the breakout of low)


Adding to the losing position of 3rd trade, at last, stopped out

Kind of missed mental peace. The first entry was classic, downside trend, short at a short start. After my entry, there was not enough momentum to the downside, so I exited.

The 2nd entry was a short below the previous lower low, got trapped immediately after my entry. A bad choice, the trend was downside, but there was enough sign of bull strength. My expectation of a downside spike (I think mainly generated by missing the target of 1st trade) blind my eye.

After the 2nd trade went wrong, I reversed to the long side(shall not do that, old bad habit, stopped out is much better), as the market took a choppy slow downside trend, I kept adding to my lossing position, stopp out at last.

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• Should be very careful after a failed trade (eixted without target being reached), the desire of proving previous trade/the judgement to be right will seriously influence my judgement and motivation of entrying the very next trade.

TWTR entry reason:
1.Downside trend
2.Two bar reversal @ MA
Target reason:
near but higher than the today's low for safty
Stop reason:
Entry setup high


Micro double top formed after my entry, price contunued moving downside. It is usually my weakest moment when facing a situation like this. Many times, I close my position with little profit as soon as I saw any price movement to my entry point. It's hard for me to look at a shrinking profit and keep calm. Always, as soons as I exited my trade with little profit, the price began to move in my favorable direction and lured me to enter again in a worse position. Sometimes I exited again with little profit but usually get traped and payed back previous profit and lost more. Actually, my reasonable mind knows that patience pays.


Result: I'm satisfied. I take this trade as a good trial to help me develop the skill needed for swing trade.

SIM Trade:

Entry reasons:
1. Trading range sign from the beginning of today
2. Price bounced up from yestarday's support level
3. Early sign of bull strength
I placed two targets, one for 10 ticks scalp, one for a bull trend reaching the top of today's open (potential double top 40-50% chance, or even breakout--little chance like 10%)

Scalp target reached but not sign of continuation of upside movement.

Really Trade

Entry reasons:
1.Downside trend
2.Micro double top
3.Failure of previous bull setup

Target 1:Market traded downside, just 3 tickes above my target but recoiled, formed a hammer with long shadow downside. I adjust my target for a 10 ticks scalp:

Target 2: Target reached


Over all movement of TWTR 5min chart. The bull trend after my trade was very good, but really difficult to catch at early stage.

The open of today suggested a trading range day. I wanted to take a longside trade around the openning low for a scalp.
Entry reason:
1. Trading range day / Sign of bull strength
2. Entry area is near the previous day low

The market went down very soon after my entry. I realized that the market was trending downside. By then I was taking a countertrend trade, the odd of break even was very low. But I was still confident about the trading range day judgement. Bull bars and bear bars have equal size, the downside movement shows a lot of resistance from bull side and has no hurry.
I added another 100 shares and exited at break even.

Later, the bull spike was strong, I watched it form and go up but missed the good entry point.

First short entry:
1.Double top with yesterday openning high
2.Building selling pressure all the way down from today high
3.Failed to stand above MA

2nd trade: The first trade got stopped out, just 1 tick above my stop. Re-entered again once the two bar reversal developed. Expecting an extended move down to the yesterday support area.

But there was not enough momentum driving the market down, still bouncing up and down just below the MA. I adjusted my target, put half above the previous low, expected another half get filled at my original target.

First target filled, price moved up, second target missed

Stopped out, second trade was break even.
I was not calm after my second trade, very regret that I should have exited all position at a better price. I took another two trades on the long side, there was not enough sign of bull strength, got out both trade at nearly break even.

One trade at FB, an emotional trade which I took after the failure of my second trade at TWTR. Got out once the price came back above my entry.

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Lesson learned:
Tails at the top of bear bars may not suggesting a building selling pressure. When there was an early bull strength(trend or spike) and then the price moved down, the up side tails may be caused by bulls taking profit but not bears initiate short.