try to just clear your head trust your indicators and use your gut...sharky

sharky 

try to just clear your head trust your indicators and use your gut...sharky

Thanks @sharky, I think this is what it comes down to....just trust your system and go with it....I did today....and while not actually trading. I marked them in real time.....very nice today....I'll post later.

Back to real trading tomorrow....

Here is my chart from today....I got the to computer about 6:30 and saw a trade a few minutes later....I am experimenting with widening my stops up a bit to give the trades room to work.....basically following the super trend indicator as the trail stop with a 20 tick target.

Most days this will work nicely if you are trend trading on CL...other instruments, maybe not so much depending on intra day movement....

Today was a good day. Feeling a little better physically although still recovering from the crazy flu my whole family got....right ear still jammed shut with crud though. No telling when that will go away. Constant ringing in that ear. Very distracting sometimes. Been that way for a month now. But mentally, feeling really good. Got my head cleared last night, went into the trading session determined to just follow the system.....golly that really works....

So the chart mark up is just some arrows showing where I placed my "orders" and the super trend is the stop placement with 20 ticks as the target.

I think the disgust I felt yesterday was really powerful. And @sharkys advice to trust the indicators and go with my gut is pretty powerful. Watched the movie Floored yesterday. One of the guys said if you think to much, you'll get killed. I think to much. At least during the trading hours. The time for thinking is after hours when you are reviewing trades and what went right and what went wrong. During trading hours, you just trade....take the signals, manage the money and go with it.

Thats my plan from hear on out.

aztrader9 

Here is my chart from today....I got the to computer about 6:30 and saw a trade a few minutes later....I am experimenting with widening my stops up a bit to give the trades room to work.....basically following the super trend indicator as the trail stop with a 20 tick target. Most days this will work nicely if you are trend trading on CL...other instruments, maybe not so much depending on intra day movement.... Today was a good day. Feeling a little better physically although still recovering from the crazy flu my whole family got....right ear still jammed shut with crud though. No telling when that will go away. Constant ringing in that ear. Very distracting sometimes. Been that way for a month now. But mentally, feeling really good. Got my head cleared last night, went into the trading session determined to just follow the system.....golly that really works.... So the chart mark up is just some arrows showing where I placed my "orders" and the super trend is the stop placement with 20 ticks as the target. I think the disgust I felt yesterday was really powerful. And @ sharkys advice to trust the indicators and go with my gut is pretty powerful. Watched the movie Floored yesterday. One of the guys said if you think to much, you'll get killed. I think to much. At least during the trading hours. The time for thinking is after hours when you are reviewing trades and what went right and what went wrong. During trading hours, you just trade....take the signals, manage the money and go with it. Thats my plan from hear on out.

I must say I find it awesome that you are posting your charts like that, it's partly why I joined this site. We all need accountability and I hope to one day find it intrinsically. This place is really amazing, it seems like traders like to share thoughts because we all go through the same process. Keep on persevering!

What the heck was I thinking? Yesterday was great for trading, today was/is ok, especially later in the morning. But somehow, I managed to mess it up. Biggest mistake today? I added a component to my trading without actually testing it real time. Big mistake. That component, while not significantly different than what I have had, was different enough to cause me hesitation and then jump to soon or to late.

I'll not make that mistake again. While I believe what I added has real value, I will not trade it until I fully understand the nuances of what it brings to the table. That may take a week or more.

For next week, I will trade what I know, and just watch the new until I am really comfortable actually trading it. Once it is grasped, I believe the signals will be very clear and very easy to trade. But for now, just watching it.

So the chart has some good trades but you will see where I screwed up.....pretty obvious....

And max loss ?

supermht 

And max loss ?

Today's chart does not reflect it, but generally I like to see $1000 a day in profit and somewhere south of that for daily loss. I try to quit in the $500-600 loss area....Most of the time, I stop inside this number because I know from past experience if I get down that far, it can be tough psychologically to come back from. If I get down early, I will generally try to come back, If I have some success and then a string of losses, then as the day winds down, coming back gets harder and harder.

So I try to win early and often and quit. This has been much harder than expected.

BUT I am in the process of realizing how much easier it should be. I've had some light bulb moments recently about just going with the flow.....today I did that early but I made a mistake in sizing after my first loss and one of my winners early had only one lot on and that kinda threw me for some reason. So a trade that should have gotten me back even, only cut it down a little bit. So I got back to even and then started trying to trade something I was not really familiar with. This was disastrous.

In all reality, my day should have been over in the first hour.....but I screwed up and lost money today.

Thank you

that is pretty high for me, I just start trading CL with small account, I have daily loss limit at $300. I don't have profit limit, but after 3 trades each day, I will stop trading.

I also trade pullback, but only when price pulls back and touch MA, I pull trigger, otherwise I will wait for second entry.

I've been thinking about some stuff lately and a post in @gordo 's thread started me thinking about another little important matter.

I have made some decisions about my trading this weekend. Mostly about focus and simplification of my life.

So I will be doing the following as an experiment this week:

1. My trade day starts at 30 minutes before the pit open. I can and will trade pre-market but not required.
2. My trading ends 2 hours later. No excuses and irregardless of P&L
3. I will use the next hour to do the following:
A. Enter trades into my MM spreadsheet
B. Review trades and enter a daily grade into my score card.
C. Enter the daily summary into my trade plan.
D. Complete journal here on BM....and post in @gordo's thread as my committment to the Big Mike Challenge
E. Quit all things trading related.

I will no longer be reading any other thread during the day. I have switched all my thread notifications to daily and will read them by email once a day and only respond to those that really interest me from my email client and not by logging into futures.io (formerly BMT).

The reason for this is simple. Trading and reading/studying about trading can be addictive. I do not wish to fall into the trap of abandoning my life for trading. The problem has been this, I currently don't have a hobby or interest outside of trading (except travel) that can fill the gap of a day with nothing to do so it has been easy to allow trading to absorb every waking minute.

But I have found something to do......I'm not gonna go into it here because it will offend some, but suffice to say, its important to me and to my family.

At the end of the week, if everything goes as planned, then I will revisit this and see where I am. If as I suspect, I reap very large benefits from this, then I will simply continue onward with the experiment except it will have become permanent.

So here's to a bold new experiment........

Sounds like a great plan ! Thank you for sharing
Good luck !