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As you can see dear reader, while I was in the combine the reaction were either:
1. Knee jerk
2. In slow motion (waiting for confirmation)
The knee jerk part meant I was 'reading price action'.
Acceptable if I had practiced and determined the probability of that knee jerk setup working over time.
Many of the setups are tradable but consistency is the key.
Did I take the next trend channel line break after two reasons to trade presented themselves? NO. Why not? The loss of confidence i.e. another face of fear was because I had not practiced the hell out of my technique.
Practice is the key.
(Driving lessons!)
Doesn't stop there though....
Action triumphs everything! DID I buckle up and start driving? No?
Why not?
Risk aversion was in my bones. Loss aversion was in my bones.
I had to press the pedal and fight not just laziness (not practicing!) and boredom (entered early!) but had to contend with actually taking the risk when presented with an almost wrapped up parcel (setup! which could be a bomb and explode in my face or be the best gift of the year but I HAD TO open it) "trust!"
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
The improvements in me happen everyday, for e.g. I was disciplined and was not taking piddling profits in the EURUSD yesterday.
The trade reached my target of 10 ticks but in the retail forex world there was a 2.5 pip spread to account for (need to change brokers!!) so I was not filled as the spread came short of 0.1 pips and did not fill my target order.
At that point discipline was not the right thing because now I was risking 9 pips to make 1 pip so I should have closed the trade in hindsight but didn't.
On day 7 of my combine I was trying to scalp corn.
The big picture was that corn had gapped down HUGE recently and any upmove would be shorted into at visible resistance points on the chart (though this is a simplistic explanation it has to suffice as one of the views I had two months earlier as a trader - not so simple today)
So I shorted at the correct place.
... but could not hold....
Thus the sitting on hands part rule was violated and I chickened out.
How not to chicken out took up a lengthy look at myself since then.
I am now feeling more powerful even when I lose if I have NOT chickened out. There is no glory in being rigid but it seems to pay off in the long run.
The 'emotional thrill' payoff had been expensive for me! I thank god that trading is BORING!
Confirmation, more confirmation and then confirming that confirmation!
Is that a valid trade setup?
No, isn't it?
Yet that was what I did when I bought the top of the Japanese Yen on day 9 of the combine. (see chart with the two purple crosses at the top!)
Instead of cutting short I did something stupid like - now that it is a bad location I guess I will nurse it back to health and hold for a long time so that my winning stats improve.
Focusing on the stats is one way I was killing myself.
And did it help?
Thankfully NO!
I had to take my big loss home.
Which, now that I think of, is good.
Because there never is a good time to learn bad habits.
Yes, @FuturesTrader71's quote, which also is part of our homepage quote rotations because I quite liked it as well.
Personally, I look at it like this. Try to be right around 50% of the time, and still make good money. That in itself exercises discipline, patience, risk analysis, etc.
"Committing" to a method, and then fighting through all of the psychological issues long enough to decide is something just doesn't work with that direction, either technically or mentally, and then starting again... all the while still feeling out who we are in our approach, what we are wired to do best.
I have figured out that I don't have to be a scalper to benefit from scalper skills, as one example. That method by itself was something I honed for years, but also thought it was time to discard it more than once, always pushing myself for bigger swings, but not having that completely fit my personality either. More chaos and confusion in a world with no clear directions. "Am I doing the right things?" It can take years to receive any confirmation of that question.
Confirmation or not, scalper or not... something I just realized recently, is there are many combinations that could work, or not, depending on your personality. But, add that variable to the mix, on top of all of the other vague uncertainty and poassibiliti4s of combinations, and mathematically there are more chances to fail there there are to not win the lottery.
