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Catching Big Waves - a trader's journal of surfing the the markets
" I will follow my rules, I will take my stops, I will be disciplined and i will work with the market....NOT AGAINST IT! Professional mind control is the key"
The hotel I stay in when in Virginia has little booths with TVs in the main area. I checked in dropped my bags off, grabbed my laptop and headed to grab a booth, watch some Family Guy, and mess with some rules for staying in a trade. I had not even finished plugging in my computer when a cold Sierra hit the table. Bartender never said a word, smiled, and went back to behind the bar. Guess I have stayed here a lot this year.
Living in motels, airports and rental cars can feel detached from things. Having a wife in Orlando but not being able to go home at night gets old. I had a 4pm meeting in Boston today, then a 9am meeting in Virginia on Saturday, noon Sunday, 8am Monday... No chance to go home for about 2 weeks this time. And when I get back have to drive to meetings in 2 cities, 2-3 hours away...
I am hopeful I can make the switch to trading full time. I have not really gotten comfortable with more than 2-3 contracts. I get nailed once, then go back to 1-2, get a few good wins, step back up, get nailed once, back to 1-2... The math does not really get anywhere. If I would trade the same size every time, and if it was a size I was comfortable with, I do very well. Extremely well actually. But I don't want to trade full time at 1-2 contracts, and am not yet getting the hang of 3+. Its not that I don't have a few good trades, but they just don't come as easily. It is strange how the mind perceives things differently just by changing the contract size. As I step up in size, my average win size drops to below profitable.
I set a rule for myself this week, to hold until my stop got hit, went in two contracts, let go of the first at 20... broke the rule already, then exitted at an area I am programmed to exit at, despite my desire to stay in. I know I could get right back in, but that is not the point. My entry then would not register in my head as being "correct", and then the confidence falls apart if I take any heat.
I have found myself getting frustrated lately, and that has caused me to take trades that I would not take otherwise, and that causes losses. A few decent-sized. Pushing my comfort zone brings out this fight or flight trader in me sometimes. If I am out of the market, I can read it with incredible accuracy. With one contract, the accuracy falls, but only slightly. But each step up seems to reduce my clarity exponentially.
My chart analysis has been very good lately. I saw last night that the zone broke, and accurately marked where it would go to... but did not trade it as it was overnight. I entered it, sat there for about 20 minutes, went flat to go to sleep. Then this morning, saw the zone hold, and bought at the open. Completely against any short term "trend" indicator, but I saw the volume at the zone, and that is where the real move starts usually. And it did. And I was not surprised...
I am finding many of the best moves are occuring during timeframes I have nearly excluded myself from trading in. I am about convinced that I should take a trade, set my stop and target, and leave. Somehow have the computer email me when I am out again so I don't have to watch. I have lived chart analysis, and it is becoming obvious to me. But I prefer feeling more in control, choosing when it is good or bad, taking my cues from things that should be viewed as noise.
"I am finding many of the best moves are occuring during timeframes I have nearly excluded myself from trading in. I am about convinced that I should take a trade, set my stop and target, and leave. Somehow have the computer email me when I am out again so I don't have to watch. I have lived chart analysis, and it is becoming obvious to me. But I prefer feeling more in control, choosing when it is good or bad, taking my cues from things that should be viewed as noise."
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Act like a man {men trust themselves and then move forward confidently} and trade QM and swing that shit!
I had a program, when I used to trade forex that could send a text to my phone when a certain price was reached. I thought it would be a good idea to set my targets and stops.. and then walk away so as not to interfere with my trade. Sometimes I would walk out of the house and down my street...because even being downstairs..I would be too tempted to come up and look at it . I won quite a few trades...and the alert would text my phone if either my stop or my target was reached . The problem was, I had many trades where I would come within a few ticks of my target and then the trade would go on to reverse and I would take my full stop loss. Now, with Ninja ATM..you can trail automatically the stop, but if you disconnect from Ninja, you face not having a stop placed on the exchange.. (I've heard conflicting reports on this)so not monitoring with Ninja could possibly get you into trouble.
I use some software now that draws stop dots on my chart for trailing plus I use some moving averages that are customized as well. I choose my targets based on real time support and resistance levels..(which my charts draw instantaneously)but I will exit if either the stop trail dots or the moving average spine is breached. I do find 20 to 50 tick targets to be the sweet spot for me on CL. It's uncanny how it will hit my target almost exactly and then reverse. Of course if there's huge momentum, the price targets can be bigger..and in that case I will remove the target and just stay in untill my stop dots or moving average spine is penetrated. I've had some big runners that way. Now that I've gotten consistent..like you..I just need to up the contract size. But to pick a huge target and just walk away..when at any second something can happen..doesn't work well. Were you watching the other day when CL moved up 130 ticks in less than a minute and came right back down 100 in about 2 minutes? Supposedly Iran made a threat... Remember, it's traders and news that make price move..not just chart patterns etc.
Like I said before, if you can consistently nail 40 tick moves, and you can get your contracts up to about 5..you should do very well. I have a feeling that one day in the future after you have experimented with your different timeframes and huge targets, etc..that you will have an epiphany...and realize that you already had a great system .
I often think that myself. I think this is an excuse I am giving myself, a diversion, suggesting that if my target were 5x my stop, THEN I could up the size with confidence. But really, the charts I use are fine, the analysis is good enough.
The confidence disappears as soon as the stakes get higher. Intuition is replaced by fear or greed, and without having confidence in my intuition, I am better off not trading.
I have a fairly quiet weekend, spending time really digging into this issue.
You know what it is... I got into trading because I had lost a LOT of money in something else. My career was gone, and trading offered the possibility to make everything whole again. And so, because of the factors that motivated me to study trading in the first place, I have this idea that I need to make a lot of money.
And maybe I could, if I were not afraid of it. But I am afraid at a certain point, not at one contract or so, but definitely as it climbs from there. And I already know from experience, if I am scared I do not trade well. And I am not ready to lose a lot of money
I can make money, slowly, but the pace is hard on me. I was reading about how negative experiences make time feel like it slows down, while positive experiences make it feel faster. Somehow that plays into this thought process I am in.
I should finish The Disciplined Trader today, and while it is tough to stay with at times, it is an interesting side to look at.
