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Zen & the Art of The Small Account


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Zen & the Art of The Small Account

  #981 (permalink)
 
kronie's Avatar
 kronie 
NYC + NY / USA
 
Experience: Advanced
Platform: "I trade, therefore, I AM!"; Theme Song: "Atomic Dog!"
Trading: EMD, 6J, ZB
Posts: 796 since Oct 2009

Brian,

just curious, what your thoughts were on today's trading environment, dominated by these events:
1) Greece and its perpetual reality problems
2) the rotation of share ownership and hidden buying in the noise
3) the Fast and Furious pace of significant retraces once a trend got going, that ruined each trade

just curious,

because today was a sushi day (i.e. chop, chop, chop), and days like these often cause 2 events:
1) tremendous mental stress and loss of discipline towards rational trading
2) loss of one's gains and possibly overtrading and possible account loss

today, I traded sim101, because I saw way too many precursors to calamity and no possible follow through worth trading


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  #982 (permalink)
Paige
Gainesville, Florida, United S
 
Posts: 66 since Dec 2010
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Would you mind elaborating on what you saw that made you back-off of today's market?

Peace,
Paige

  #983 (permalink)
 
PandaWarrior's Avatar
 PandaWarrior 
In the heat
 
Experience: None
Posts: 3,165 since Mar 2010
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A total bust week for me. Narrow trading ranges combined with many distractions equals a small loss this week. Net of -50 ticks.

My charts went naked this week. Trend lines only drawn in real time. Well there is a 20EMA on the five minute chart. but other than that, its naked. I must admit, I dont miss the fig leaves that much.

Health wise, I am doing pretty good, maintained the weight loss from last week, only one small episode.

The big news is that my parents are moving in with me at least temporarily. I have been in and out all week helping them move. Trying to trade while doing this was ill advised.

In any event, I am looking forward to next week. Today I am going to try to watch the Al Brooks presentation.

Cheers.

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, Leonardo da Vinci


Most people chose unhappiness over uncertainty, Tim Ferris
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  #984 (permalink)
 
PandaWarrior's Avatar
 PandaWarrior 
In the heat
 
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kronie View Post
Brian,

just curious, what your thoughts were on today's trading environment, dominated by these events:
1) Greece and its perpetual reality problems
2) the rotation of share ownership and hidden buying in the noise
3) the Fast and Furious pace of significant retraces once a trend got going, that ruined each trade

just curious,

because today was a sushi day (i.e. chop, chop, chop), and days like these often cause 2 events:
1) tremendous mental stress and loss of discipline towards rational trading
2) loss of one's gains and possibly overtrading and possible account loss

today, I traded sim101, because I saw way too many precursors to calamity and no possible follow through worth trading

1) In terms of Greece, Damn the bastard bankers. They've done more harm to society than all the drug cartels combined.
2) I trade CL so don't care about the share rotation in equities
3) I like the retraces. I try to trade them

Mental stress is self induced and I avoid over trading by the use of rigid daily stop rules and a rule I got from @Private Banker to never take a trade in the same area if the first one was a loser. Helps avoid chop.

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, Leonardo da Vinci


Most people chose unhappiness over uncertainty, Tim Ferris
Started this thread
  #985 (permalink)
 
bluemele's Avatar
 bluemele 
Honolulu, Hawaii
 
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if my parents moved in with me, then I think I would quickly suffer from about ever 'dis-ease' known to man!

It was a tough week I think for many....

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  #986 (permalink)
 
PandaWarrior's Avatar
 PandaWarrior 
In the heat
 
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bluemele View Post
if my parents moved in with me, then I think I would quickly suffer from about ever 'dis-ease' known to man!

It was a tough week I think for many....

Well, they'll be here a month and then on the road with an RV. Something they've always wanted to do and now are doing and getting paid to boot....back here once a month I think, so not to bad.

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, Leonardo da Vinci


Most people chose unhappiness over uncertainty, Tim Ferris
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  #987 (permalink)
 
PandaWarrior's Avatar
 PandaWarrior 
In the heat
 
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Posts: 3,165 since Mar 2010
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Last week was tough for me. I made some mental errors, but most of the time I felt like a blind man walking around in a dark room. By Friday, I'd had enough and decided to just sim trade. I made some live trades early in the morning and those were BE for the most part less commissions. The rest of the day I just watched. Of course, I had nothing but winners....well not all but far more than the losers.

This next week I will be on sim only as my charts have become quite naked and I am relying on my intuition as well as the formation of certain patterns to occur.

Now here is something that is childs play to most but a revelation to me. I cannot trade bar by bar, Al Brooks catchy title notwithstanding. Trading bar by bar is death. Trading patterns however is the ticket. And for some reason, last week I finally caught on.....trouble is, I figured that out much to late in the week to have any positive effect on the PnL.

So this next week, I will be sim trading only patterns. I confess I did not come up with them, my trading buddy did and he even gave them cute little names. But I recognize the validity of those patterns and combining them with fib theory, simple trend lines as well as support and resistance made a huge difference in how I saw price action on Friday. I was content to wait for the patterns to manifest instead of trying to manufacture trades out of the bar by bar action I have been struggling with these last two years.

From a health standpoint, things are about the same. Weight remains the same, I experience slight vertigo several times each day and the Arizona heat is affecting me much more this year than in years past. This has led my wife and I to seriously discuss relocating for the summers to cooler climes....this time next year, I plan on being somewhere much cooler.

So my goal this week in sim trading is to exercise patience for the patterns to appear and take each one without fail. At the end of the week, I want to have several charts with entry markers in exactly the correct places. At the moment, I don't care about how many ticks to use for an exit, just the entry.

I'll report on this exercise next weekend.

Cheers

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, Leonardo da Vinci


Most people chose unhappiness over uncertainty, Tim Ferris
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  #988 (permalink)
 
PandaWarrior's Avatar
 PandaWarrior 
In the heat
 
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Its been more than a week since I last posted here. Time has flown and my father had his gall bladder removed last week with some complications that seemed to be finished with today.

Last week was my first truly naked trading week. This weekend I experimented with adding an indicator back to the chart with the idea it would help make the one thing I needed to make sure I did not forget about easier to see...that is the trend. Turns out, after 15 minutes with it on this morning, off it came. It clearly did not show the trend the way it needed to be shown. In fact, a simple trend line did a far better job of keeping the trades going in the right direction.

With that said, I still traded twice against the trend and only once with it. Eventually the trend changed and I took a single trade with the new trend.

All but one of the trades I exited early. Twice this helped me in terms of minimizing the losers on the counter trend trade and twice it bit me in the rear.

Worse than this, I failed to take each pattern trade that set up.

Consequently, I left quite a bit of money on the table today. I cannot tell you why I did not take every trade. For sure I had a long bias even though all three of my charts said DOWN. In particular, my 30 min chart said sell and hold......but I didn't.

Solving the emotional and mental blocks to trading success is the key to the future of my trading career. The Holy Grail is something best left to history professors. Instead, I look forward to the day when without hesitation, I can take each trade set up and hold it to completion.

Cheers.

Screen shot of the 30 Min chart 2011-07-18_1421 - aztrader9's library

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, Leonardo da Vinci


Most people chose unhappiness over uncertainty, Tim Ferris
Started this thread
  #989 (permalink)
 
PandaWarrior's Avatar
 PandaWarrior 
In the heat
 
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Posts: 3,165 since Mar 2010
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I have some time so I thought I would jot a few lines about trading today.

Stayed with the trend all day. No counter trend trades.....Score a 10 for that.

Took appropriate entries 98% of the time. Score 10

Some good entries failed. Thats ok.

Held trade on the losers to the full stop. Score 10 or a zero depending on how you look at it.

Only held two of the winners to my target. Score a -10 for that.

The difference today....holding losers and cutting winners short....

One of my trading buddies suggested that we take my entries and his exits. On essentially the same sequence of trades, he was plus 60 ticks vs. my -3 ticks.

After I realized I was not up to holding in the slow moving market today, I packed it in, only to walk away from my computer minutes before a nice run up happened followed by a very tradeable short run. Oh well, those are the breaks in trading.

I am getting closer on the entries. Knowing which ones I want and which I don't. The gap between me and very nicely profitable days is holding my trades. Once in, I like to be out pretty quick or at least have some nice positive movement pretty fast. Several trades today seemed to last forever. I held one of them for a full target but the rest I really struggled with.

This will be my major focus going forward. Holding trades to my target.

Here is my chart before the first move down. I don't have a capture from this point forward.

2011-07-19_0832 - aztrader9's library

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, Leonardo da Vinci


Most people chose unhappiness over uncertainty, Tim Ferris
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  #990 (permalink)
poiseau
china
 
Posts: 1 since Jul 2011
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very good


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Last Updated on July 25, 2011


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