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1/16/15 Friday
Live Trades: 0
Sim Trades: 14, +64t
-Lower volatility day allowed me to catch my breath and spend more time analyzing market direction and set ups.
-Was not able to get myself to take a trade whenever I marked an arrow. I still care about results in spite of it being sim and simply an exercise. Hard to just let go.
-Again missed several +30 trades out of disbelief.
-Need to be a little more careful with NQ. The patterns are larger lately so it is easy to get chopped up using 15 tick stops. Wait for clear channels to develop then look for opps on the breaks of these channels.
-Watch for DeMark trend lines for good opps, especially after channel breaks.
-I have decided to place arrows both in real time and in hindsight. Hindsight is 20/20 and therefore represents perfection. My focus is to approach perfection as much as humanly possible so I'll compare what I did in real time to what I see in hindsight.
Monday:
-Take 20 trades minimum regardless of market conditions.
-Pay close attention to channels for direction, and the channel break rules. Look for DeMark trend lines.
-Mark set ups in real time with colored arrows.
-Maintain the good perspective that I am in a new phase and not get emotional.
-Really try to focus on taking at least one A+ live trade if available.
Regarding more screen real estate, I do understand why you are looking at 4 markets, but might it work better for you if you reduced the number of markets you are following, rather than trying to change your physical setup to better accommodate all 4?
Reason: it must be distracting to be trying to follow all 4 markets at once and pay enough attention to each of them. That is one impression that I got, anyway, from your posts. If you knocked it down to just 2, for instance, perhaps you could handle the decreased information load better. The point would be to reduce the amount of juggling you have to do, and simplify your decision-making tasks.
Merely a suggestion, but it would be easy enough to try it out and see....
Bob, thank you for your suggestion. If I were trying to take 40+ trades a day in markets with high volatility like Thursday you would be absolutely correct. It is too much. Thursday was an experiment to see what would happen if I took everything I saw. It also happened to be a day where all markets were moving an unusual amount, so juggling the trade, trade management, journaling, placing my markers on 44 trades was more than I would want to handle on a daily basis.
I traded two instruments on two screens for a long time and found myself with a lot of down time. Adding two more instruments has not been that big a deal if I wait for the quality set-ups. This yields 10-20 trades in uncorrelated markets where set-ups form at different times. Of course this is sim so the pressure is not as great.
The problem with four instruments on two screens is that I am only seeing part of the day's action at a glance. I am constantly expanding the screens to see the whole day, then contracting them and having to remember what it looked like. Not conducive to properly feeling out the action.
In any case, I'll give it a shot to see how it works. Thanks for your support and I look forward to reading your journal. Good luck!
Seemed like a slow day, though a couple of the instruments moved a bit. Only a few set ups that I really felt good about. Two worked, one didn’t. Did not reach my 20 minimum. Day was too slow to go for it. Would have really had to push it, though I managed to put in 26 arrows.
Managed to do a nice job of finding channels and sticking to their trading rules. In particular, the change in direction on NQ after the channel break was something I anticipated well. I wasn't able to take advantage of it because the confirmation bar was not to my liking, but I was happy I saw it all unfold real time:
As for the viable set ups according to my rules:
Successes: took 2 of 13
Failures: took 4 of 12
Neutral: took 0 of 1
26 potential trade areas for a minimum potential of +180t
Tomorrow:
-Take 20 trades minimum.
-Pay close attention to the channels for direction, and the channel break rules for change of direction.
-Mark set ups in real time with colored arrows.
-Maintain the good perspective that I am in a new phase and not get emotional.
-Focus on taking at least one A+ trade.
1/21/15 Wednesday
Live Trades: 0
Sim Trades: 10, +1t
Plenty of good set ups according to my rules today. I have rubber banded back to being more cautious. Did not reach 20 trade goal though they were there. Missed a lot of great trades and exited at BE on a couple others. No live trades.
Had trouble with attitude. Got really upset after I passed on several really big winners. Took a while to get my perspective back.
Continuing to take a higher percentage of failure and neutral trades compared to success trades. Two quick losses put me on my heels followed by a third a while later. Had trouble entering and staying in after that. Was fortunate to catch a nice winner that almost got me whole.
Trades taken quality continues to be less than adequate. Only 50% to plus 15 ticks before -15 ticks. No better than a flip of the coin.
Stats on trades available compared to those taken:
Need to figure out what draws me to the lower quality trades while passing on the higher quality.
Tomorrow:
-Take 20 trades minimum. Get this done
-Continue to watch the channels for direction, and the channel break rules for change of direction.
-Mark set ups in real time with colored arrows.
-If there is a trend, look for the 30 to 60 tick pull backs in tight formations.
-Maintain the good perspective that I am in a new phase and not get emotional.
-Focus on taking at least one A+ trade live.
1/22/15 Thursday
Live Trades: 0
Sim Trades: 17, +55t
Opened up the trade spigot a bit more today. Almost made the 20 trade target, though a couple trades today were mechanical entry mistakes (going short instead of long, entering GC when I meant to enter CL). However, I failed to enter a few critical early trades that could really have opened things up.
While I was very upset at my inability to push the button yesterday, resulting in many missed good trades, today I was more amused. I could only laugh as I sat there, finger frozen over the mouse, watching several more +30 tick trades take off without me. Laughing is a much better way to handle adversity!
Did a nice job of following the channels and trading either within them or waiting for a break and going the other way. I am getting better at laying out possible scenarios for channels as price makes its way forward forming different patterns. With this method one must be constantly adjusting and visualizing patterns that could form.
For the most part I stuck to 30 to 60 tick pull backs for TL breaks with trend. While this missed a few nice +30 trades it also kept me out of some traps.
Draw down was too big today, -$330. If this were real money it would be hard to continue. I need to really pick good 1st and 2nd trades. Or, take some quick early profits, a la, Linda Raschke, to get a bit ahead and in the groove.
Also, it may be worth waiting for more clear structure before entering the first trade.
Was not able to take any live trades.
Mark up stats:
Successes: took 5/15, 33%
Failures: took 6/11, 54%
Neutral: took, 1/3, 33%
Potential +265T
Tomorrow:
-Take 20 trades minimum.
-Continue to watch the channels for direction, and the channel break rules for change of direction.
-Wait for clear structure before first trade of the day.
-Mark set ups in real time with colored arrows.
-If there is a trend, look for the 30 to 60 tick pull backs in tight formations.
-Maintain the good perspective that I am in a new phase and not get emotional.
-Focus on taking at least one live A+ trade.
I had never heard this idea. I think it's a very interesting idea from a personal psychology standpoint: bolstering your confidence if nothing else. And anything from Linda Raschke is worth thinking about.
I'm not quite sure how to implement it, since I would want to only take profits when the trade warrants it, rather than according to its psychological benefits.... but I'm thinking about it.
I think it was on one of the webinars she did here at futures.io (formerly BMT)
For me it would be taking 10-15 ticks on a trade that stalls on its way to my usual 30 tick target. Rather than watch it reverse and take me out at BE, or worse, an early loss, I'd put some points on the board. Now I am in a better psychological position to take the next set-up and ride it out.
