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During the weekend, i have been reviewing my notes from when I first started trading.
There is just too many to review. Also being a perfectionist I feel like I need to thoroughly test every indicator that I have written down.
In my current trading, I barely use any indicators and my method has become a lot more simple. However, I am always looking to see what I can improve on my trading.
I feel like there is always something to test, backtest, review, read, listen, learn, etc regarding the markets and I am wondering if this ever stops? I'm exhausted.....been a student of the market for 8 years now.
Of course I can tune out by simply putting my mind to other things such as playing a video game instead, or going to the gym, but the hard worker in me feels like I should be pushing.......
That being said, I feel like
My trading has gotten a lot better and I've started getting better mentally. I just wanted to say that I feel slightly overwhelmed with the constant research regarding the market. Should I just delete the notes I have written down from years ago or just leave it in some tucked behind folder and never look back.
Sounds like you would benefit from a vacation. Add a little variety to your routine. Get a hobby. Help a neighbor or provide some other community service.
In other words, find new ways to spend time away from the market. This will help you renew and refresh your perspective and positive energy.
Well said.
Market is always there!
But there ARE times to NOT trade.
One step back can turn negative into gaining trades.
All starts within one's head.
I would not make money if I stopped doing research. It is a vital component of my strategy, however if you don't know what to research and how to take advantage of your data, you will find it useless. Maybe that's your case.
I monitor at least 30 trading metrics but I don't make daily notes on a journal. I like to work with data because it makes you look at your trading objetively.
My key metrics are:
Win rate by strategy and instrument: Tells me whether my strats are in good shape.
Profit factor: Tells me how I manage my risk and whether I hold on to losers as much as my winners. Pnl by longs and shorts: Many times, you lose money going short or long, it is important to know what side is optimal to manage your positions
Daily pnl bar charts: Useful to set daily loss limits
Pnl by instruments: By knowing which instruments bring me most profits, I can take larger positions more confidently and simply scratch losing instruments from my list.
Best times to trade: Days and hours where I am most and least profitable.
Best strategies: For advanced traders, it is useful to test new strategies. I tag all my trades and know what strategies bring me most profits. For beginners, it is essential to know whether your strategies are working at all.
It is doing research that you find what works and what doesn't. You can then use this data to adjust your trading strategies very much like adjusting a race car. Tweakning constantly for optimal performance.
There are tons of tools to help analyze this stuff. Check out trademetria if need one. I am the developer.
It is very hard to both trade the markets quantitatively/systematically and intraday trade them unless you have resources of a dedicated research partner or entire team. Because as a day trader, you will be spending your energy trying to extract the rhythms of the market while as a quantitative/systems trader you are looking for the elusive persistent patterns.
I have found that as a discretionary trader, creating notes and stuff on the market is valuable for creating feedback loops. However, to actually develop that concurrently with your day trading is going to be very difficult. This is somewhat an example of an impedance mismatch.
This is a difficult one. But, it sounds like you need to focus your energies better. If you want to use indicators or whatever then those would probably best be used as distinct and separate systems. You also mention "being a perfectionist". This might represent that you internalize your wins and losses. This is valuable and maybe even required to become a great discretionary trader. It is something I've seen lacking in most system traders. However, both an internalizing and externalizing perspective can be valuable. For example, if you develop a system, consider it an experiment or prototype, and it loses money then it doesn't have to kill your confidence because you can externalize that as a "system b failed" versus you failed as a trader.
I understand you - you love what you do and you are driven to always improve. It is who you are.
Think about where you were two years after you first started trading. Think about where you were two years ago compared to where you are now. I imagine that you learned a lot more between the periods of raw beginner and trader for two years, than you did between the years of trading for six years and now.
There is a law of diminishing returns.
There is a point where a commitment towards improvement in one aspect of your trading will result in a deficiency in another - a deficiency that did not exist before the commitment to improvement. The result is the attempt to improve on the deficiency created after implementation of the previous commitment to improvement. As the cycle continues, returns continue to diminish until the trader feels...a little overwhelmed.
Feeling overwhelmed is the negative affect of always feeling you have to be working toward improvement, and in time it will effect your trading. Therefore, I recommend you commit yourself to improvement by not endlessly pursuing the commitment towards improvement. You have reached the point where you will be the most successful student of the markets through your on-going experience as a trader.
