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What is the single biggest area you need to improve as a trader?


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What is the single biggest area you need to improve as a trader?

  #41 (permalink)
 
josh's Avatar
 josh 
Georgia, US
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Salao View Post
I'm not the most experienced trader, but all those problems listed on page 1...I got 'em. My answer was 'misreading the price action'. My reasoning for this was that if you print out a chart at the end of the day and take a look at it, or even study it, the price action signals were there. All the information was there to take the correct trade. If I did not take 'the trade' or entered on the wrong side of the market it is because I did not properly interpret the price action at that time or I missed a critical piece of information. When I look at my losing trades at the end of the day I find that this is often the case. I have a lot to learn about price action.

But sometimes I wonder if fear, FOMO, or some other emotion clouded my judgement enough to make it difficult to read the price action in a productive way.

Your last sentence really says it all.

I think "misreading price action" is the "easy out" option in this poll. Of course, at the end of the day, you can always see how you should have done things, but this is with the benefit of perfect hindsight. Looking at a chart at the end of the day is a useless exercise, unless of course it's in the context of examining trades you actually took; even then, it's only a static snapshot of what happened, and does not bring along with it any real sense of order flow, momentum, and your own emotions and thoughts which cannot be simulated or reproduced. Analyzing your execution and yourself (in real time, particularly) are far more valuable than analyzing a 5-minute bar chart at the end of the day.

So, while we all can say we "misread" the market, misreading the market is usually symptomatic of the two biggies that we all dance with: fear and greed.

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  #42 (permalink)
 Grantx 
Reading UK
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josh View Post
Your last sentence really says it all.

I think "misreading price action" is the "easy out" option in this poll. Of course, at the end of the day, you can always see how you should have done things, but this is with the benefit of perfect hindsight. Looking at a chart at the end of the day is a useless exercise, unless of course it's in the context of examining trades you actually took; even then, it's only a static snapshot of what happened, and does not bring along with it any real sense of order flow, momentum, and your own emotions and thoughts which cannot be simulated or reproduced. Analyzing your execution and yourself (in real time, particularly) are far more valuable than analyzing a 5-minute bar chart at the end of the day.

So, while we all can say we "misread" the market, misreading the market is usually symptomatic of the two biggies that we all dance with: fear and greed.

Post trade analysis aka the curse of knowledge.
Your ability to reason through your past actions is compromised by knowledge of the outcome.
You overestimate the degree to which you would have predicted the correct outcome.
You underestimate the possibility that things could have turned out a different way.

With post analysis you most definately will not be accounting for the heuristic shortcuts and biases that your brain uses. All you see is a sequence of events which suggest causality. THats why everyone sits there in hindisght getting all confused about decisions that were made. You dont know yourself well enough. The fight will go on until you stop trying to figure the market out and start to figure yourself out.

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  #43 (permalink)
 
bobwest's Avatar
 bobwest 
Western Florida
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Grantx View Post
With post analysis you most definately will not be accounting for the heuristic shortcuts and biases that your brain uses. All you see is a sequence of events which suggest causality. THats why everyone sits there in hindisght getting all confused about decisions that were made. You dont know yourself well enough. The fight will go on until you stop trying to figure the market out and start to figure yourself out.

This is a seriously important post. Probably the most important thing I have ever read on trading.

Also, very hard to either understand or to accept.

Bob.

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  #44 (permalink)
 
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 Leon of Pizza 
St. Louis
 
Experience: Beginner
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I didn't vote, but would have gone for "breaking rules" because its close enough to my problem of scratching trades. And I have a rule against scratching trades...

I plan every trade. So if I change either exit - I log it as a scratched winner or scratched loser - not based on the trade's realized P/L, but on the original plan. I use those numbers and the regular W/L numbers to track my Managed to Plan ratio. I did 21% in Aug and that's 2 points higher than my average YTD. And it sucks. My W/L is consistently positive, so I see this low Managed To Plan (MTP) number as a substantial opportunity cost that I'm inflicting on myself. For Aug, it was a 27% dent in my profit. The sad irony is that the planning method is designed to negate the need to manage a trade on the fly. If there was a choice for "I'm a pathetic robot", I would have voted for that.

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  #45 (permalink)
fxFlux
London United kingdom
 
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Big Mike View Post
Doesn't anyone else find it interesting that "risking too much for account size" is in last place in the polls?

Mike


I know this was a while ago, but, I really don't like it when people say you need about 10k to start trading, when you actually probably only need half that. If I had a 10k account, I think I'd give up trading if my drawdown was >45% since that is a lot of money to me. So why not start with 5k and keep the other 5k in your bank rather than letting your broker hold onto it?

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  #46 (permalink)
TraderMichaelB
Tulsa + Oklahoma/United States
 
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I need to stop friggin' trading when there's nothing to trade (that follows my trading style). Stupid.

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  #47 (permalink)
Snowtiger
Bristol/London+England
 
Posts: 9 since Sep 2019
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I want to vote "overtrading" or more likely "something else".

I'm pretty happy with my trading in terms of return etc.
BUT I think trading needs to be efficient.
Sometimes I sit watching screens when I don't need to be. Sometimes I read too many reports. Like in the past, I'd use too many indicators.

Instead of screenwatching, I could be exercising (even while watching the screen), I could be working on my other business, or doing something else entirely.
I'd also like to improve the business side of my trading and the networking side.
I think these can be just as important as how you buy, sell and leverage.
In other words, particularly in the past, I'd like to be more efficient with my time.

Anyone else (probably those who have traded a while) feel like/have felt like that?

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Last Updated on September 19, 2019


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