My One Year Journey to Break Even

February 3rd, 2013, 11:22 AM

I agree with you. Maybe I should have added that any target of 15t or less.

baruchs

I'm the biggest opponent to scalping. I explained why many times on this forum, still the more accurate definition for scalping should be "going for a small target". I don't think that you would classify as scalping a trade with 400 ticks target and 450 ticks stop.

Baruch

February 12th, 2013, 11:54 AM

Another aside for today:

I'm going through a bit of losing streak lately. The difference this time is the "lesson for the day" I have learned and employing.

During losing streaks of my trading in the past...I would start to blow stuff up and really make the losing streak a "good" one lol. The last two losing streaks including this one (approximately 8-10% draw down) are being regularly interrupted by just plain old stopping trading for the day. It's tough to end the day, multiple days, or the week with a red number but it is important to know when to walk away and come back the next day or the next week etc.

This lesson could have saved me thousands of $ but as I mentioned before I'm a slow learner.

Losing steaks don't last unless I let them permanently last.

More soon.....

March 11th, 2013, 10:55 AM

Another important lesson that took me a while to get and doesn't always stick but getting better is knowing when not to trade due to adverse market conditions.

This "rule" when followed probably saves (me) more money than profitable trades make (me) money.

Other folks have a different name for this rule calling it "only trade your specific setup".

It is usually a big victory (that doesn't feel like one) when the market didn't give me my setup or market conditions were not optimal and I walked away without taking a trade.

Very hard to do when all those around me are taking trades for profit and announcing their successes on their threads but I remember than my setup makes me money consistently and others, do not plain and simple. Repeat that 100 times....lol

More to come....

March 12th, 2013, 12:01 PM

I rarely post a daily/weekly update but thought this week so far had within it an important lesson.

I've been pretty tired this week and in some cases noticing myself distracted and even nodding off in front of my computer. Additionally, I've missed limit order fills by 1-2 ticks for trades that went on to win big. This implies tentativeness and lack of confidence in my trading lately.

The upside is I've realized this and instead of taking bad trades after missing out on the good ones, I've just packed it in and decided not to trade. A common pattern I've been able to overcome (trading "psychology") is taking bad trades (or not as good trades) as the previous ones missed. Now if I miss the good ones there is always tomorrow. Nothing worse than losing my "edge" because I reduced it by taking less than optimal signals.

As an aside, my "edge" usually produces 1-3 optimal, full compliant with my rules trades per trading day in the hours range of 8 am to 11 am Eastern time. Anytime after that time or even towards the end of that time the trades quality deteriorate significantly.

The best trade is sometimes not to trade as that at least yields break even which is already better than 90%.

More to come....

My One Year Journey to Break Even

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My One Year Journey to Break Even