aztrader9 

No trading yesterday. Today I made back about half of my losses this week. So a net loss week for me. Could have been worse. Funny how things go, on a nice win streak and then sign up for something important and start losing. But yesterday helped clear out the mental funk I was in and today being a pretty decent winning day also really helped. I've had to redo some of my risk management to fit the program and I am still struggling a bit with the software but overall its coming together. Hopefully next week will be a good week and if I duplicate what I did today over the next four trading days, I'll be in good shape. Have a great weekend.

Sup, hope you remember the book I recommended you while you were at page 2 or three of this post ..... glad to notice the progresses......

quick question how did you get in touch with the prop firm , did they come to you or did you contact them ?

Pure curiosity ........

make a blast ....

gabga100 

Sup, hope you remember the book I recommended you while you were at page 2 or three of this post ..... glad to notice the progresses...... quick question how did you get in touch with the prop firm , did they come to you or did you contact them ? Pure curiosity ........ make a blast ....

was page 19 actually

gabga100 

was page 19 actually

I read the book and I confess I have forgotten almost all of it. I will re-read and post about it. I have been reading the New Market Wizards this weekend. My first take away...none of these guys seem to day trade except the HFT shops. They are all swing traders or position traders. No matter, what is good on a long time frame is good on a short time frame.

One of the big take away's for me was this: None of them cared about the win rate. They cared about how much they made when they won. Therefore, keeping the losers VERY small and the winners as large as possible was the crucial point they all made.

Another major point: Trade SMALL when you are losing or have no conviction about a trade. Those who require confirmation do not have conviction. Buy strength and sell weakness. Stop trying to pick the tops and bottoms. I dont do that anyway but still good to see the big boys play that way as well.

Lastly, I traded poorly this morning. I made money but not enough to satisfy me. I dug out from a $400 hole and finished +$280. Trouble was, I bailed on a couple of EXCELLENT trades in which I had called the profit targets exactly. Two of those were more than 50 ticks away.....its a shame I could not hold on to those. Try again tomorrow

Now to the last point from The New Market Wizards. I think I remember one of them saying if you couldn't explain it to a novice on Saturday afternoon, it was too complicated. So this weekend, I worked and worked and consolidated my entire trading plan, risk and money management along with my pre market checklist down to something that would fit on a https://pocketmod.com/ I added a yearly calendar to the back and will make a green dot on days I make my full profit target, a blue dot when I make money but not the full amount and a red dot on the days I am negative.

This exercise forced me to really think hard about my trades and which ones I really wanted to take. Once I did that, I realized I could be VERY aggressive on certain types of trades and had to be very conservative on other types. So going into today's trading, I thought I had it all down pat.

I promptly broke most of the rules both in terms of entry criteria as well as sizing. I further broke the rules in terms of targeting. Thus I began the day down $400. I then reset my mental state, focused and dug out of the hole all the while missing a fantastic sell off for which I had a wonderful signal and I also missed almost all the rally. But trading smart with regard to size allowed me to make a profit when it was almost certain I would end the day in the red.

Tomorrow, I will be a rule follower.

Cheers

Today was a bust. My trades FELT right but the results say otherwise. Some of it was due to poor stop management. But much of it was poor trade selection. Trading scared maybe? I don't think so. Indicators fault. No, although I hate them more and more each day. Just a losing streak? Maybe. Not sure yet. But will be really thinking about it today and tonight.

Is it reasonable to expect no losing days? No course not. Is it reasonable to expect no losing weeks? Again no. The best have both and more. I am not the best.

What I suspect is this; I am in a draw down period. Some losers, some winners....but more losers than winners.

My temptation now is to give up on my edge or try something different. But this time around, that temptation is met with resolve not to. I'm gonna work through this.

Sorry to hear about the tough day. Difficult week, with many professionals being off and signals potentially not behaving as normal. Do you still have a chance to graduate from the assessment program or is it off the cards? As far as I remember Patak required something like a 15% return over a 4 week period for a successful graduation.

aztrader9 

Today was a bust. My trades FELT right but the results say otherwise. Some of it was due to poor stop management. But much of it was poor trade selection. Trading scared maybe? I don't think so. Indicators fault. No, although I hate them more and more each day. Just a losing streak? Maybe. Not sure yet. But will be really thinking about it today and tonight. Is it reasonable to expect no losing days? No course not. Is it reasonable to expect no losing weeks? Again no. The best have both and more. I am not the best. What I suspect is this; I am in a draw down period. Some losers, some winners....but more losers than winners. My temptation now is to give up on my edge or try something different. But this time around, that temptation is met with resolve not to. I'm gonna work through this.

I can tell you from my experience in the past 3 years is that this time period is an unusual one. You are one of the only guys I know trying to make dough during this time.

Why not take the Holidays off? Take a break on the prop firm concept and trade when the market is normal conditions again.

Talked to my brother who was with me during the boom years in the mortgage biz.We went through times like this. When every thing you touch is a bust. Like driving a square peg through a round hole. It does not work.

He reminded me how I dealt with it then: Take some time off. Reset. A hard reboot if you will. I used to take LOTS of time off. About every 45 days to rest and recharge. Usually just a couple of days at a time but still it helped keep me from burn out and allowed my mind to process the last month or so of results and problems. Your mind works best when it has time to rest and process.

So I'm gonna take some time off. NO trading at all. No screen time, no journal, no peeking. While some may consider this time of the year to be 'abnormal" I believe that is just a mental construct to justify taking time off or to pass off bad trading. Now the holidays are a great reason to take time off to be with family and friends but NOT as an excuse for poor trading results. Today's price action gave many good signals and I suspect there will be more tomorrow and the next day. I just won't be around to see them.

I'll be back on Monday fresh and ready to trade.

aztrader9 

My temptation now is to give up on my edge or try something different. But this time around, that temptation is met with resolve not to. I'm gonna work through this.

Hold fast the helm, sailor!!

Your edge is more refined and tested than most. You've proven to us all that you can make piles of cash with it.

Now turn off that brilliant mind of yours and TRADE!! Let the market come to you. You know all the set ups...


Merry Christmas, AZ!!!

Well on super light volume today, I scratched out a small profit. Was up a fair amount then gave some of it back. Then I went on a streak of taking great trades, then getting out at BE. Was just not able to sit there long enough to allow the trade to develop.

Anyway, spent the weekend reviewing old journal entries. Discovered a couple of things.

1. My morning routine has been out of wack the last couple of weeks. I re-established that today.
2. I have been slowly complicating my system. My trading buddy told me last week to just go with the flow. I did that today and while the results could have been much better based on my entries, overall, I traded much better today. At least I gave myself the opportunity to profit whereas last week, I never really gave myself a chance.
3. I had quit using my trade log where I logged each trade manually. Started this up again today. It worked so well, I quit doing it.

Looking forward to the remainder of the week. I have a working order resting in the market right now but am probably going to remove it as the pace of trading has slowed to a crawl.

Hope everyone had a great Christmas....assuming you are in a part of the world that celebrates it.

Cheers

Yesterday was a wash....I traded a little to much but I did learn some valuable patience lessons. If you make the direction call correctly, take the trade and put your stop in the correct place, nothing good happens if you take the trade of early.

Today I followed the lesson learned from yesterday and managed 30 ticks of profit today on CL. I quit around 9AM my time and went to spend time with the family.

Tomorrow I will be looking to trade well, take my trades and wait.

I haven't posted a chart in a long time so here is what it looks like today with my 5 trades marked. I am not trading with NT now so the trades are marked free hand in real time....so the exact prices might be a tad off here and there but the essential part of the trade is there....