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Gozilla's Rough road to consistency.


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Gozilla's Rough road to consistency.

  #111 (permalink)
 
Gozilla's Avatar
 Gozilla 
Aberdeen, Scotland
 
Experience: Beginner
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Here is the trade breakdown for the week and it looks terrible to see it like this, not so much because of all the red its more to do with the fact that most of these trades stick out in my mind as being plain old bad/stupid.

Poor trade selection = making something out of nothing or more precisely nothing out of nothing.
Poor management = Allowing losers to become bigger than the should have. Giving too much back or letting positive trades become losers.

Over trading can also be thrown in for good measure but that's a lot to do with trade selection and poor preparation, I'm going to have a look over the weekend at what I have been doing during the week and try to assess why I have tried to pick the trades where I have and what I have done differently this week compared to the proceeding weeks leading to this.

These bumps were expected how I deal with them is where the challenge lies.

Gozilla.

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  #112 (permalink)
 
Gozilla's Avatar
 Gozilla 
Aberdeen, Scotland
 
Experience: Beginner
Platform: Sierra Chart
Broker: Infinity/Transact
Trading: YM
Posts: 216 since Jun 2013
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As I feel I may have strayed from the path a little I want to take the time to go over what I look for when it comes to entry criteria, not just the exact setup but things that can increase the probability of success or failure. I will use old charts that are already in the thread and try to focus on the individual opportunity rather than the chart as a whole unless there is some context not immediately apparent.

Gozilla.

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  #113 (permalink)
 
Gozilla's Avatar
 Gozilla 
Aberdeen, Scotland
 
Experience: Beginner
Platform: Sierra Chart
Broker: Infinity/Transact
Trading: YM
Posts: 216 since Jun 2013
Thanks Given: 216
Thanks Received: 275


Spent a chunk of the weekend looking over the trades I had done during the week and found the majority of them to be pretty weak at meeting the entry criteria posted in my last update. Whilst shorting at support or going long at resistance are the most obvious, I wanted to look at the trades where I am aiming to catch the change of direction as they happen as this is where the bulk of my trades failed.

Also noticed that I might be a little over zealous with my stop exit strategy but this is something that I will have to start tracking as it could mean having to accept a little more risk per trade which might be harder to do than I think as I have tightened up a little by effecting an auto stop on entry since the tail end of last week.


Gozilla.

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  #114 (permalink)
 
Gozilla's Avatar
 Gozilla 
Aberdeen, Scotland
 
Experience: Beginner
Platform: Sierra Chart
Broker: Infinity/Transact
Trading: YM
Posts: 216 since Jun 2013
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Feels like the week is turning into a lost cause. No trade for Monday, three for Tuesday and two today. I have been trying hard to only take trades based on what I learned from the last post, whilst this has dropped the trade count significantly I have struggled to exercise patience when it comes to location and taken trades in areas where price has returned to a range of sorts.

Going to keep it to the charts as there is not much to talk about.

Tuesday:


Wednesday:


Gozilla -14

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  #115 (permalink)
 
Gozilla's Avatar
 Gozilla 
Aberdeen, Scotland
 
Experience: Beginner
Platform: Sierra Chart
Broker: Infinity/Transact
Trading: YM
Posts: 216 since Jun 2013
Thanks Given: 216
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Been reading and looking at a few ideas around mean reversion, I just want to record my thoughts and observations of what I have seen over the last few days. My understanding is basic and might be way off but I can see a pattern emerging.

Big drop from overnight highs on the 10th to a low on the 15th, the midpoint of this is 3502.25ish, from this low price makes a very quick move stopping just short of the midpoint. Overnight it churns around it, Once the market opens price goes lower but hits the midpoint of the 60 minute down channel. Price goes higher, drops back to this line again then makes daily highs where it drops again back the the mean.


Between the highs and the lows on the 16th price maintained the midpoint of the larger drop. With this in mind what can be done to take advantage of it. With a midpoint identified I can see that there is a lot of chop in and around this area, when price gets to an extreme its time there is often short lived with clear moves back to the mean and at times onward to the opposing extreme.


Going into the open on the 17th price is still floating around inside the range of the previous day, there is a smaller range from the overnight that I was watching just below the mean but it was never threatened. This might be going into AMT but this opening high/low creates a mid point that is tested later.

Idea of projecting possible targets for trade.




Then there is the first 3 days of this week and what they offered in terms of observations.




Unfortunately my intelligence is not what it ever has been, so keeping track of all this in real time might blow my mind, whilst I will try my best to give these musings a consideration as the day unfolds it may serve to confuse and distract from what I am trying to do.

Gozilla.

If someone has worked this stuff out feel free to point me in the right direction.

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  #116 (permalink)
 
Gozilla's Avatar
 Gozilla 
Aberdeen, Scotland
 
Experience: Beginner
Platform: Sierra Chart
Broker: Infinity/Transact
Trading: YM
Posts: 216 since Jun 2013
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For the sake of continuity I thought it was about time a posted last weeks results.

The results are pretty poor and I realise I have started to become distracted by ideas and other thoughts when I am trading. Despite defining what I was looking for in a setup more clearly and tightening up on controlling my stop losses the results speak for themselves, I've gone wrong somewhere.

It is very likely I will be heading back to the sim world where I can retrace my steps to find where I got lost.

Gozilla

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  #117 (permalink)
 
tturner86's Avatar
 tturner86 
Portland, Oregon
 
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Gozilla View Post
For the sake of continuity I thought it was about time a posted last weeks results.

The results are pretty poor and I realise I have started to become distracted by ideas and other thoughts when I am trading. Despite defining what I was looking for in a setup more clearly and tightening up on controlling my stop losses the results speak for themselves, I've gone wrong somewhere.

It is very likely I will be heading back to the sim world where I can retrace my steps to find where I got lost.

Gozilla

When you are driving and you pull off the road, you don't look back to see where you exited the road do you? You look forward to where the road is and get back on it.

I wouldn't focus too much on where you got lost. Focus on where you want to go and start to move in that direction. (Like Gretzsky's quote about how he played hockey by being where the puck was going, not where it was.)

Work to remove the distractions and focus on your setup. (I understand how hard it is, I have been going through the same issue once I went live.) I believe the issue will be between your ears, and if you go to SIM you will not be in the same environment and therefore won't be able to resolve it.

**Just my two cents.

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  #118 (permalink)
 
Gozilla's Avatar
 Gozilla 
Aberdeen, Scotland
 
Experience: Beginner
Platform: Sierra Chart
Broker: Infinity/Transact
Trading: YM
Posts: 216 since Jun 2013
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tturner86 View Post
When you are driving and you pull off the road, you don't look back to see where you exited the road do you? You look forward to where the road is and get back on it.

I wouldn't focus too much on where you got lost. Focus on where you want to go and start to move in that direction. (Like Gretzsky's quote about how he played hockey by being where the puck was going, not where it was.)

Work to remove the distractions and focus on your setup. (I understand how hard it is, I have been going through the same issue once I went live.) I believe the issue will be between your ears, and if you go to SIM you will not be in the same environment and therefore won't be able to resolve it.

**Just my two cents.

The differences between sim and live have not been as obvious this time around as has often been experienced in the past, being live exposes weaknesses that you wouldn't even know exist as a sim trader and thats an education all on its own. I have tightened up as I wanted to improve trade selection and quality of trades by having a better defined criteria for entries but, the results have gone off a cliff for lack of a better expression.

Psychologically it has at times been frustrating but I have done better than usual to sticking with the plan, right now though it feels a lot like the method has been tweaked to a point where the results have gotten worse rather than better. I will need to re-examine my journal to see what I was thinking and doing in the lead up to live and during this latest stint of being live.

Gozilla.

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  #119 (permalink)
 
Daytona's Avatar
 Daytona 
London
 
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Gozilla View Post
The differences between sim and live have not been as obvious this time around as has often been experienced in the past, being live exposes weaknesses that you wouldn't even know exist as a sim trader and thats an education all on its own. I have tightened up as I wanted to improve trade selection and quality of trades by having a better defined criteria for entries but, the results have gone off a cliff for lack of a better expression.

Psychologically it has at times been frustrating but I have done better than usual to sticking with the plan, right now though it feels a lot like the method has been tweaked to a point where the results have gotten worse rather than better. I will need to re-examine my journal to see what I was thinking and doing in the lead up to live and during this latest stint of being live.

Gozilla.

I think the differences between sim and Live are personal for each trader. I keep on reading everywhere that Live is a completely different world to sim, but for me it feels not too far apart. When I was in sim I still had the urge to take profit early, traded more aggressively after some losers, etc. However for me there was (and still is) a huge difference between market replay and sim. When I can ffwd through all the chop straight to my entry point, I could execute as per my plan, so obviously my issue is more one of patience. One thing that helps me trading live is to not have the pnl within my direct vision when in a trade, so I can just focus on the chart.

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  #120 (permalink)
 
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 Gozilla 
Aberdeen, Scotland
 
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daytona111r View Post
I think the differences between sim and Live are personal for each trader. I keep on reading everywhere that Live is a completely different world to sim, but for me it feels not too far apart. When I was in sim I still had the urge to take profit early, traded more aggressively after some losers, etc. However for me there was (and still is) a huge difference between market replay and sim. When I can ffwd through all the chop straight to my entry point, I could execute as per my plan, so obviously my issue is more one of patience. One thing that helps me trading live is to not have the pnl within my direct vision when in a trade, so I can just focus on the chart.

In the past I have struggled with the psychological differences between Live and Sim, but increasingly I have come to rely on a plan and rules to protect myself from the inevitable losing streaks that I will encounter along the way. And to that end in my latest foray into Live trading I felt largely indifferent to the P&L as the trades unfolded, sure I would get a little frustrated now and again but that was more down to making poor decisions I knew I should have avoided rather than the actual loss of money.

Replay is a brilliant tool to use to test out strategies but the boring parts that can be skipped are the areas when live that can play tricks on the mind and fool you into chasing trades that don't exist and may even lay waste a well thought out plan, patience can be built by enduring the monotony of what can often happen during the trading day.

Gozilla

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