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Good job on the work you have done thus far! This is a great place to learn and starting this thread is a good step in the right direction.
Like I said in my thread here on nexusfi.com (formerly BMT) almost 3 years ago "You can SIM trade until you are blue in the face, but this will only get you so far. I believe pain is a great teacher, and until you experience the pain of losing real money, you're only half way there."
I still believe this to be true, but you also have to be open to what "pain" will teach you, and learn how to make progress toward not repeating the same mistakes over and over. The common ones like exiting a position too soon, taking a trade far after you should have already been in it, not learning to be patient and really perfect a few entries, learning to be okay with watching price run away if you never got your entry setup, etc. The list goes on and on.
I agree with @liquidcci in that the emotional part of trading can be brutal. Prepare yourself to fully accept responsibility for anything that happens. You, and only you, are to blame. It is not your indicators, your internet connection, your wife and kids, your phone, your friends, etc.
Really focus on execution, forget P/L, only work on how well you executed your plan, and how it may differ from your SIM trading. From there, as many have said here, including @Big Mike, pick a particular weak spot, and work only on perfecting that area, and then move on to the next weak spot.
You should have a detailed journal with statistics tracking every trade setup, the ones you took, and the setups that came, but that you didn't take for some reason.
Fear, in my opinion is the number one reason traders lose money. Fear comes from lack of confidence, lack of confidence comes from a number of things including failure to plan things such as maximum daily loss, max loss per trade, how to tell whether you are "in the zone" or not, and so much more.
I would like to hear more about what you have done to prepare yourself psychologically speaking. This is tough, because I think so much of the learning comes only from doing it, experiencing it, and by it, I mean the emotions which comes along with trading cash vs. SIM. There is really no replacement for it.
As @ThatManFromTexas said, we have all seen so many people who can SIM trade themselves to retirement, but switch to cash, have a few losses, and then completely change everything from chart, to indicators, etc. This makes no sense, as the failure was not with the system, but with themselves, or better, their failure to execute the system properly.
If you will, tell us more about what type of journal and statistics you have now, as well as what you have done to prepare for the psychological war you are about to enter.
Gary
As consistently profitable traders.. "We get paid to wait, and we wait to get paid."
You've already got enough advice and seen the potential here with the amount of people who are willing to help you save yourself money and heartache, to more than pay for the membership.
But, no pressure.
As consistently profitable traders.. "We get paid to wait, and we wait to get paid."
There's much more than just indicators in the elite section. I don't want to sound like I'm just advertising for it, but if one is going to spend an extra $50 on trading education, the elite area is worth it several times over. You get access to all the webinars and everything on futures.io (formerly BMT). Perry's indicators are moving averages and actually more advanced ma indicators. If you see the webinar and thread you'll see what I mean. Plus you get access to Gomi's stuff if you want to see a free volume and market profile in action etc. A lot of FatTail's daily high low close level stuff is in elite along with a lot of his other work. If you like moving averages, there's a whole bunch of different type of MA's in the elite area. JMA's. hulls, etc. And it's fun to try out some stuff TMFT came up with lol. Anyways overall it's a paypal donation as a way of saying thanks to futures.io (formerly BMT), probably the best trading site for retail learners out there. But no pressure too. Have a good profitable live week.
I have been on an inner journey for 10 years. I have many thick notebooks full of my former mind's contents I purged while in 'sabbatical', if you will. I have fervently been watching my thoughts, reactions to them, their underpinning energy, and their derivation on an almost daily basis for those 10 years. So, having that contentious inner dialogue blathering about is nothing new to me. Self-deprecation owing to perceived failures is nothing new either.
I know trading will evoke more disturbing thoughts; however, an exercise I have been performing for years is to observe thoughts as if they are debris in a river passing along, with me on the shore, not TRYING to extricate myself from them--simply allowing them be/do whatever they wish, affording my thoughts the freedom I experience through its offering.
I realize we are engaged in a game of pursuit of gain while avoidance of loss. I realize it is a fantasy to have one without the other. All I can do is follow my plan and trust its framework will weather the crucible of live trade.
I have not compiled hard statistics of my entries. Perhaps I should as per your suggestion. Nevertheless, I do have a daily journal of my sim trades and thoughts for over a year. From that I have distilled my plan based on what has frequently worked in as many market conditions as I have been able to test in just as long a time.
Until you experience the feeling of clicking that mouse and then having your mouse hand start to shake violently out of control and your heart feeling like it is going to burst out of your chest you just don't know the feeling (good or bad) of trading IRM. At least that was my experience. I did lose some money out of my account capital and was smart enough to know that I was not ready and got right the hell out of there again. (been in x2 now).
I'd rather eat broken glass and wash it down with gasoline now than go back in there and lose any capital now. So it's mastery of the method before live trading. I have already experienced the psychology of it and know full well I can/might lose some trades. It's the cost of doing this business. PERIOD.
I'd say you'll want to be well capitalized to trade live because you will want to be able to handle a string of losses in a row and still have money to play at the tables. You dig? RM & MM are paramount. Trading is fairly easy RM & MM
is where the toughness comes into play.
If you are trading any more than 1 car on a 5k account YOU ARE OVER TRADING. 2% of 5k is not much room for error however it can be done with stellar RM & MM.
In the spirit of our March Trading Journal contest, I am asking everyone to spend a few minutes and share their journaling experience.
A) What are the top five benefits you have seen as a result of regularly posting in this journal?
B) What are the top five problem areas you have identified as a result of regularly posting in this journal?
C) Were you initially reluctant to start this trading journal? If yes, why?
D) How do you feel, overall, about your journaling experience?
E) Would you recommend to others that they should also start a trading journal?
Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. I appreciate your posts, and I hope you have benefited from your journal. I also know that others will benefit as well, just by reading about your own experiences.
