Welcome to NexusFi: the best trading community on the planet, with over 150,000 members Sign Up Now for Free
Genuine reviews from real traders, not fake reviews from stealth vendors
Quality education from leading professional traders
We are a friendly, helpful, and positive community
We do not tolerate rude behavior, trolling, or vendors advertising in posts
We are here to help, just let us know what you need
You'll need to register in order to view the content of the threads and start contributing to our community. It's free for basic access, or support us by becoming an Elite Member -- see if you qualify for a discount below.
-- Big Mike, Site Administrator
(If you already have an account, login at the top of the page)
@tihfa Your last two posts stimulate interesting thought. I wish I had a nickel for every hour I spent running down rabbit holes searching for what you've described. In an attempt to save you from spending your weekend ferreting out answers to irrelevant questions I suggest you view this nexusfi.com (formerly BMT) Webinar.
In your two posts there are several avenues for intense discussion and I'm up for that, but in this webinar I believe Denise identifies many of the limits of our humanity and asks me to consider these limits while searching for answers to problems or issues I may be having with my trading. It may behoove you to spend an hour and twenty minutes contemplating the task at hand and maybe in turn, rethinking the starting point of your journey.
thanks cashish for the link. i skimmed through it and i guess there is both benefit and drawback to my mental gymnastics.
the obvious drawback is that i always on instist on understanding "everything" in toto before i do something which means i will never take off and always keep finding excuses and distractions from starting...
i understood long ago that i do not have the psychological makeup for this trading (discretionary and perhaps even mechanic )and plan was to automate the stuff...yet i prefer visual chart scanning hours at a time rather than simply cranking code...go figure..
the positive side to never ending chart reading and playing with myriad of indicators is further understanding of price structure vs setup. the what, why and how. or so i think....
i found this summary off of a thread in 'psychology and money management section':
"Trading successfully using technical analysis based on charts must include a [REASON] to trade (setup/pattern/indicators); a [FRAMEWORK] : support/resistance lines, MAs, pivot levels, Bollinger/Fibb Bands...
And an [EXECUTION] Trigger ( A Strategy based continuation/violation of certain level/thresholds)...Of course last but most important is [MONEY MANAGEMENT] : this must be individually tailored for each setup. Could be $Stops, $Targets, MAs, Supp/Resistance, Swing High/Lows etc...
A reason, framework and money management aka context. If your reason is corrupt, like wanting to win, then you're already on the wrong foot. If you're just taking trades because of red of green arrow appeared you're already on the wrong foot. etc....
"
i;ve finished couple of weeks ago trend definition, rather coded it. (it took much longer than it should have )
it's been taking way to long to code everything. frankly, i am very disapponted with lack of urgency and enthusiasm. so basically want to start manually trading multiday swing/position trading. perhaps this will create some 'positive' excitement.
my goal was to create a supplemental income while changing my career. i have never seen myself doing trading as career. regardless in my case, trading is supposed to be a business, not a hobby or excitement type activity.
in order to accelerate everything i have started getting up early and getting into office couple of hours before everyone else to work on my trading. few hours of intense focused work yields more progress than weeks of inattentive sporadic work.
a lot of analysis and observations made over the months to manage entries, exits cannot directly apply. due to my day job (lots of meetings, phone calls) i cannot utilize more granular charts and lower times frames to confirm and to increase accuracy. this is where automated system would have been handy.
instead i will be going off of daily and weekly signals. just need to get going with some live trading.
challenge right now is position size, money management, trade management. things that i basically never paid much attention before other than everyone on different forums swearing by these being most critical part of trading.
my basic bread and butter type of trade is trend pull back, exploiting relative weakness within a trend. as the signals may appear at different relative weaker price levels i am trying to figure out whether to
1) go all in /all out,
2) all in then reduce position during drawdown /all out,
3) partial initial entry position (size depends on how 'relatively weak' is the price level; then scale in or average in,double up in drawdown (due to mean reverting nature of pullback type trade) /all out.
in every case so far: all out is the exit. Scaling out does not work out mathematically when trying to capture relative weakness to relative strength price movement.
all entry/exit levels have to pre-calculated managed through GTC orders, and nightly adjusted. i am preferring option 3 for my tade management.
hopefully this makes sense. if anyone has any comments or questions please let me know.
i am learning what was meant by people saying figure out trading "style" that fits personality and/or lifestyle....
most of my analysis has been attempt at perfecting entries, exits...i am recognizing now that if i am not doing automated trading i have to figure out how to swing trade with minimal to no interaction during RTH due to likely job interference.
so perfect stack up/cofluence of multi-time frame goes out of window...
likewise active trade management is out of picture as well so will have to widen my stops and figure out some sort of hedging....don't know anything about options, so that's not helping...
so far based on observations it seems that averaging in during further pullback within a trend is a solution for lack of intraday monitoring. obviously at some level there is a stop to close out all of position if hit or a hedge.
The confirmation bias is a tendency to seek information to prove, rather than disprove our theories. The problem arises because often, one piece of false evidence can completely invalidate the otherwise supporting factors.
Consider a study conducted by Peter Cathcart Wason. In the study, Wason showed participants a triplet of numbers (2, 4, 6) and asked them to guess the rule for which the pattern followed. From that, participants could offer test triplets to see if their rule held.
From this starting point, most participants picked specific rules such as “goes up by 2“ or “1x, 2x, 3x.” By only guessing triplets that fit their rule, they didn’t realize the actual rule was “any three ascending numbers.” A simple test triplet of “3, 15, 317“ would have invalidated their theories.
2) Hindsight Bias
Known more commonly under “hindsight is 20/20“ this bias causes people to see past results as appearing more probable than they did initially. This was demonstrated in a study by Paul Lazarsfeld in which he gave participants statements that seemed like common sense. In reality, the opposite of the statements was true.
3) Clustering Illusion
This is the tendency to see patterns where none actually exist. A study conducted by Thomas Gilovich, showed people were easily misled to think patterns existed in random sequences. Although this may be a necessary by product of our ability to detect patterns, it can create problems.
The clustering illusion can result in superstitions and falling for pseudoscience when patterns seem to emerge from entirely random events.
4) Recency Effect
The recency effect is the tendency to give more weight to recent data. Studies have shown participants can more easily remember information at the end of a list than from the middle. The existence of this bias makes it important to gather enough long-term data, so daily up’s and down’s don’t lead to bad decisions.
5) Anchoring Bias
Anchoring is a well-known problem with negotiations. The first person to state a number will usually force the other person to give a new number based on the first. Anchoring happens even when the number is completely random. In one study, participants spun a wheel that either pointed to 15 or 65. They were then asked the number of countries in Africa that belonged to the UN. Even though the number was arbitrary, answers tended to cluster around either 15 or 65.
6) Overconfidence Effect
And you were worried about having too little confidence? Studies have shown that people tend to grossly overestimate their abilities and characteristics from where they should. More than 80% of drivers place themselves in the top 30%.
One study asked participants to answer a difficult question with a range of values to which they were 95% certain the actual answer lay. Despite the fact there was no penalty for extreme uncertainty, less than half of the answers lay within the original margin.
7) Fundamental Attribution Error
Mistaking personality and character traits for differences caused by situations. A classic study demonstrating this had participants rate speakers who were speaking for or against Fidel Castro. Even if the participants were told the position of the speaker was determined by a coin toss, they rated the attitudes of the speaker as being closer to the side they were forced to speak on.
Studies have shown that it is difficult to out-think these cognitive biases. Even when participants in different studies were warned about bias beforehand, this had little impact on their ability to see past them.
What an understanding of biases can do is allow you to design decision making methods and procedures so that biases can be circumvented. Researchers use double-blind studies to prevent bias from contaminating results. Making adjustments to your decision making, problem solving and learning patterns you can try to reduce their effects.
) 
