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Been looking at historical charts today in light of a couple of things I learned this last week....I've learned the market is far more generous than I have realized...It only asks two things in exchange for its gifts....patience and discipline. Discipline to wait for ideal conditions and patience to allow the gift to arrive on its own terms....instant gratification is a rare thing in this game....it happens to be sure but more often than not, the old adage that "good things come to those who wait" is certainly true....
I've been measuring time today...from start to finish, using a way to determine swings and targets, anything from 5 mins to 5 hours is necessary to realize the markets gifts....average looks to be about 50-120 minutes....far longer than anything ive ever held before....last week I held trades for 25-65 minutes without to much stress...this next week, I am going to see gifts in my account and I am prepared to wait for them....
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, Leonardo da Vinci
Most people chose unhappiness over uncertainty, Tim Ferris
I felt like I was on a roller coaster today. up down....long stretches of sideways.
First trade was a premarket 78% PB. I got filled and about 20 seconds later my stop got taken out....some stupid t hing abut Iran going to stop its nuke program...yeah right...anyway, that one cost me a bit...I had my catastrophic stop in and was moving it to the correct location and it just got hammered. Then watched the Iran euphoria cause a 60-70 tick dump in a few seconds....just watched it go...
Then fat fingered a limit order short as a market order long....dont ask....finally got the short order in, and price stalled out....then I hear things in my head from some dumb webinar I went to that said to have a time stop as well, so i stopped myself out....then a different voice said to me, you dummy, the reason for the trade is not over....nothing changed except time and time is irrelevant...so I shorted again and held up to the inventory number....stopped out just before news and watched it take off without me....damn and damn again.....I did get short after a bit and got a nice trade out of it....
Then I waited again, got short at the break of support, stopped out when price finally reacted to the FOMC announcement, reversed my position and realized I dont do reversals....and watched it run almost 100 ticks without me....
Somethig is seriously wrong here. I have developed the ability to hold through the chop like I ever thought I could, but once a winner gets going, I have a terrible time with it.....got half the equation correct....mental demons...they can be terrible. Completely rational person doing completely irrational things....
On a side note, I traded today with almost a naked chart....basically fib levels, levels from yesterday and S/R. I dont feel like I did a bad job of reading price action today, I did do a terrible job of executing and minimizing mistakes and not holding trades longer.....the long at the end was a valid trade.....I should have recognized there had been almost no pull backs today and just gone with it.....only real target was HOD.
Another thing thats been happening lately is winners into losers...at least trades I've had green on. Some of these trades have had as much as 25 ticks of profit and I held them to full stops since the premise of the trade was supposedly not over.....this causes me some grief....and I'm not sure what to do about it. I refuse to go BE to soon as I have been BE+1 hundreds of times only to see it go my direction a few minutes later.....what to do?????
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, Leonardo da Vinci
Most people chose unhappiness over uncertainty, Tim Ferris
Platform: Sierra Charts, Investor RT, Ninja Trader
Broker: VanKar
Trading: NQ
Posts: 520 since Sep 2009
Thanks Given: 583
Thanks Received: 1,248
"Completely rational person doing completely irrational things...."
That statement sure summarizes a lot of my trading days....
My only comment on your frustrations today is that about a year ago you struggled with going for larger targets, you then switched to smaller targets for a while and had good, if not even great, success. I understand your desire to go for the larger targets, but not every trade is meant to go for the gold, but a lot of gold nuggets can eventually add up to a lot of gold.....eat that elephant one bite at a time. You control your losses so well, you are going to come out way ahead in the end....
My focus is on:
1. Avoid the opening chop.
2. Honor stops
3. Ensure reward > risk on all trades
