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This was the last trade of the day with my half automated/half discretionary account (main acc.):
At the time, the peak of this double top was the 2907 area (this was ss'd a couple minutes ago). After I saw that bear candle with the loong wick print, I thought it was a great idea to switch over to my main account to act on this possible opportunity. I placed my Fib levels, and determined my stop, entry, and exit. Price eventually crossed my entry, I entered. I watched- and because of what happened with me in my pure discretion account, I had the mindset that I am not interfering with this trade. I was honestly sort of contemptuous of my behavior earlier, and I wanted to prove to myself that I can tolerate getting stopped out if it came down to it, and that I can let my trades develop. Because of the scale of the pattern, the stop loss was tight (volume was low/slow again), so this trade didn't feel like a big deal and it didn't feel reckless to allow myself getting stopped out. Anyways, the result was that the trade only ever went 3 ticks to 1 point in my favor, and eventually I got stopped out with a -$116.14 loss. Even though I lost, I think this was the second best trade I took today because of it's simplicity (the automation/Fib levels helped) and because of my clear-cut decision that I would allow myself to get stopped out or to meet my profit target.
In contrast to the trades I took in my other account, the pros of operating through this one is because of it's rules, or automated nature, which gives me a sense of much-needed certainty. Having back-tested the DT pattern-Custom Fib level interaction, I feel confident in following my rules (to some degree, there's obviously still some bad habits to break/bad psychology) but I am conflicted in that, in theory, when I first created this account, I thought I would be better off using some discretion combined with what it was/is, because I do believe there is some merit to my discretionary abilities (with the caveat being, that I'm lousy at letting trades develop) but now that I have a purely discretionary account that I didn't anticipate creating, I would be comfortable with making this account more and more automatic, by taking away my "right" to interfere with trades. After all, the strategy that I tested in the first place doesn't include discretionary action, and what I'm suggesting reflects exactly what I tested in the first place. So as I experiment with these two accounts, I suspect that both will gradually become more extreme, in that this main account will become mostly automated and my purely discretionary account will remain purely discretionary- if I cannot overcome my counterproductive psychology- which I believe I will.
Anyways, great trade for the more automated account. (In principal)
Acc. balance: $10,084.48
On another note, I'll be increasing my trading-workload/ I'll be immersing myself deeper into this game by means of intensity of work (genuine engagement; my obsession has been re-sparked since realizing my progress) and frequency of work (I have enough time to commit to juggling trading ideas), and through writing here.. As for writing and my thoughts on psychology this morning, I had an intimation of something I now refer to as "inevitable optimism" while running earlier, after I had disappointingly closed my position too early. It essentially means that even after making a mistake you've committed a hundred times, logically, from understanding how your own psychology and emotions work, it wouldn't be beneficial for you to sulk and feel bad for yourself and it would be best to set yourself up so that you could get over a loss as quickly as possible. So when stoicism fails, and old detrimental emotional ways take hold (they inevitably will), it would make sense to account for that as you would account for low volume. You do this by focusing on what induces a rebound effect- and I found out, that for me, it's running with some earphones in. It totally resets my mind, and after I'm done, I feel refreshed and optimistic about my trading when I think about it. This as a whole creates an inevitable optimism that I intend to make stronger. I imagine with practicing a stoic mindset, this optimism outside of trading would be a big help.
In my last post, I mentioned that I was upping my work-load. I realized recently that I get really good at things that I'm obsessed with. It's that absolute immersion that seems to be what gets the work done, and how I progress the most and the fastest. It's all about high frequency, and intensity and honestly, I haven't been living and breathing trading like I used to, when I first started. The idea of being financially free was compelling enough for me to buy a computer, and to work ~10-12 hours a day, researching during one of my vacations from work (trading webinars, taking notes, etc). When I wasn't working my dreaded job, I was working to become a trader, and if I wasn't working to become one in the moment, I was thinking and dreaming about it. Don't get me wrong, I still want to become consistently profitable, but that passion is not as intense as it used to be. It reminds me of getting into a relationship, and then a year or two down the road, it gets bland and that "magic" disappears (my relationship with trading isn't that dramatic, though). A mature person realizes that just because some of the magic is gone, doesn't mean that things have to end. In my eyes, it means you should buckle down, find your why, and give it your all. Right now, it feels like I'm in this second phase, meaning I'm going to totally re-immerse myself in my trading because my why is much more of a priority than it has been the past couple of months.
Why am I now getting my "second wind"? Because I'm finally doing the right things. This quote comes to mind: "To those who have, more will be given. From those who have little, even that will be taken from them." This quote isn't just about money, material goods, or anything superficial. To me, this quote mirrors the concept of the "snowball effect", and actually that's pretty much what it is. The relevance of this line is paramount when it comes to learning or trying to perpetuate certain behaviors. For example, in a negative context; the consequences of eating sugar. If you start out the day eating a bunch of oreos, it definitely is likely that your body will crash, your mood will dip, and you'll crave oreos or sugar again later on in the day. If you followed through and always acted on that craving, eventually/over a certain amount of time, you would be a total disaster and be overweight, be diabetic, and maybe have heart problems, etc.
This snowball effect applies to so many things, and for the sake of my development, it would be in my best interest to pay closer attention to my decisions, and to repeat the actions that are beneficial. This is so obvious, but so many people (including myself) have hardly an issue with perpetuating negative behaviors:
"It's not a big deal."
"Just this one time."
"I'll do it tomorrow."
"I deserve it."
I've been deep into the concept of compounding, and I posted a video about it a couple days ago and if you're reading this and you haven't seen it, you have to watch it! It turns out that every little thing counts/every decision matters. I've gotten to the point where I'm more uncomfortable not putting effort into growing than I am being comfortable and doing nothing. So this heavy work-load of mine will gradually become base-line activity, and results will manifest in due time- as long as I'm committed, as long as I make the right decisions, and I'm immersed. Speaking of work-load, I'll be sure to pay special attention to my behavior tomorrow while I'm trading; in particular I'm going to focus on not closing my position too early (if there's a trade for me tomorrow), and let myself get stopped out or let price hit my profit target while I'm analyzing the market.
"To those who have, more will be given. From those who have little, even that will be taken from them."
I actually had written a pretty extensive journal post before deciding to type this new one. The reason for this being, it was full of rationalizations, and it was me essentially trying to figure out what I did wrong this morning. I now can confidently say/think that I didn't do as much wrong as I initially thought I did, and that I just have a proclivity to blame something, and then try to fix whatever it is through event-based corrections (as in short-term, next day precautions). If you go through my journal, you'll see plenty of this, tbh. Anyways, here are today's trades:
Trade 1: 2 point wide stop. Had I entered a tick earlier with the same stop distance or if my stop was a single tick wider, I would've been profitable. That's not what really that matters though- the reason why I entered this trade is because price was at it's highest that it's been in a very long time/we're in a climbing bull market, and it was after 9:30am- subjectively, it was an opportunity that I couldn't pass up. Discretionarily, bullish break-outs have worked for me in the past, giving me another reason to enter. All in all, this trade was great in principal. This is just the way things played out, and I got stopped out for a ~$100 loss.
Trade 2: It cannot be determined to what degree I was effected by my last loss going into this trade. I've heard that traders become more likely to enter the opposing direction after losing a trade, and I actually remembered this in real-time after I had lost, but still thought this short was a good opportunity (I thought I was being objective- and I'm not exactly sure if I was), which overruled that idea. The reason for entering short was because the market failed to break-through twice, and the market conditions we've been having lately seem to favor the development of mountains, or arches. I was using the 10,000 tick chart at the time, and the quality of progression of a down-move (evident through the relatively long bearish candles before I entered) was the cherry on top from which I decided to go short. I got stopped out for a 7 tick loss (I accidentally entered a tick early).
So in principal, I stand by my trades and understand why I took them- but there's some personal controversy around the second one. The second trade I took may have been taken out of a "lower quality place" (for trading at least; mentally), because I do re-call thinking about making that $100 back, but I also re-call thinking "that's not the way to think" afterwards. It's definitely true that these productive and counterproductive thoughts co-exist in my case, and I'm starting to think that just because you may partially think in a seemingly diminishing manner while trading, doesn't mean that all of your actions are tainted by these thoughts- as long as you act on the thoughts that you have learned produce positive results, and you are aware enough to determine what action is inspired from what function (fight or flight causes intellectual confusion, the pre-frontal cortex is slow and organized in deliberation to action). Obviously it is an incredibly difficult undertaking to be consistently and consciously aware of these separate forces, but I think being that self-aware could only help trading effectively.
I have to mention what I blamed immediately after losing. I thought that the reason why I lost those trades was because I was too focused on holding my trades no matter what. The imagined implications of this, was that because I was too narrow-sighted/too concerned with holding my trades, that my trade location wasn't up to snuff and overall, that I traded poorly. In retrospect, and especially after examining the locations of both trades and my reasons for entering both trades, I did everything I possibly could do, and plus, I met my goal I set for myself yesterday. That's not to say that there's absolutely no merit or nothing to consider of what I blamed- but there's no determining what caused what at this point, the event is over with and I do not completely remember. I would rather accept my losses, and acknowledge that I did the best I could while remembering that I was in a state that wasn't entirely conducive to fantastic performance; that I know how to trade, but I could do better with my own awareness of my thoughts and what thoughts trigger what (re)actions. This brings me to a point that I always revisit.
I realized that I wouldn't have to "withstand" holding trades that are clearly going against me if I were calm, present, or in the zone. That's essentially what I'm after as I've mentioned in the previous string of posts- and not that the approach of not interfering with a trade purposely is a bad idea, but the idea wouldn't be necessary if I could train myself to remain calm under pressure while in a position. I thought of this earlier; maybe I'm being too indirect in my approach to remedying closing positions too early, and that it would be better to recognize when I'm put in that situation, to just sit there and practice remaining calm instead of forcing myself to not interfere no matter what. So the difference would be that I would have the freedom to exit at any time and would be forthrightly addressing the issue, instead of incorporating an artificial rule that may just re-establish my old habit of always holding trades/not being able to exit when I should because I would still be scared to. I'm kind of going full-circle and confirming the first paragraph I wrote in this post, but I digress.. Lol.
To conclude my thoughts: There is nothing external that's going to magically make me a better trader. The systematized approaches that I've come up with don't have that engagement that I'm looking for, and most of the rules I've come up with, don't jive with me at all. I'm looking for freedom of expression, the ability to be adaptable in all market conditions, which I find way more interesting than running a totally automatic trading strategy (don't get me wrong, I'll still be fore-ward testing my half automated one) and I actually love the challenge of becoming consistent. So yeah, the next step in my trading is to master being under pressure, so that I can act freely in those situations to the extent that I can.
One more thought. The most important work I do isn't outside of trading (but writing definitely clears things up). It's exactly when I start analyzing the ES at the beginning of the day, to set the stage for how I'll perform. It seems obvious that this is the case, so I'll be sure to include more stoicism into my trading work-load. I mentioned the effectiveness of immersion last night, and I just realized if I immerse myself into stoicism, or a way to calm myself, I can only imagine positive results. So! The bulk of my work should be to focus on this, instead of endlessly coming up with counter-strategies to current issues- since I'm attracted to the idea of being purely discretionary. Alright, that's enough writing for now. I'll probably be posting more about stoicism or anything related, later.
-$189.56 for the day in my pure discretion account.
I woke up, got out of bed, and I messed around for 10 minutes checking futures.io, Facebook, and YouTube. I remembered what happened yesterday and realized I needed to get the ball rolling, so I meditated for an hour. This was a great session. I wasn't falling asleep, I was re-directing my attention when it (I) got too involved in those stories playing in the back of my mind, and I was simply the observer. Wanting to carry that calmness and way of analysis into my trading, I decided to re-immerse myself into stoicism and I basically started off my day genuinely engaged and moved by this video: . So with having meditated and watched this video, I was definitely influenced and was ready to challenge myself by maintaining this state of mind while in a trade. I felt prepared and mentally organized. I started analyzing the ES around 8am, and I saw an opportunity:
Trade 1: When the time came (it was around 8:30) I entered short at right where the only blue line is in the ss above, and I intended to hold my position until price reached 2934.25. Volume was low, so I ended up having to hold the trade until 9:25 (I entered roughly an hour before), and I got out with a point of profit. I didn't want to hold the trade through the open, because I don't like trading with that much volume and volatility. I wasn't done trading, though.
Obviously, had I held the first trade I would've hit my profit target- but, I made the decision not to trade through the open- it's not that I wasn't in control and couldn't help myself by getting out of the position. Trade 2: The lines in the SS above are the layout of the second trade I took: my stop loss was the line closest to 2934, my entry was the line at 2932, and my profit target was the very bottom blue line. I was anticipating a bearish continuation; at the time, the bulls were stuck/not progressing much by that last candle, so I intended to enter after price dipped back down to that blue line. That's what ended up happening, and I eventually got stopped out for a relatively big loss, I think I was ~-$84 after this trade. Anyways, the coordination of this trade was unquestionable, meaning I didn't give into the fear I was feeling and didn't overthink my decision to enter. I did want to get out after price re-established itself half-way through the red candle, though- I got nervous then. I held the position regardless, still thinking the trade was a good one. I was simply wrong. To be honest, my judgement was hindered by nervousness, so I didn't trust myself to exit.
After losing the second trade, I thought that it was still likely for price to eventually reach where my second trades profit target was. I watched as price reversed up from where it stopped me out, and noticed that price was having a hard time breaching higher highs. I was anticipating a rejection-to-drop. I got in after some bearish momentum with a $100 stop, but the bears ran out and price regressed back up, to then do what I had anticipated a couple of hours later. I was wrong again.
After the second loss, I knew I was done for the day. Today was a repeat of yesterday, except I was clear-headed and my thoughts and actions were/are synchronized. I didn't feel nearly as bad as I did yesterday though, because I realized something as I watched myself get stopped out of the second trade: I need to keep losing.
The only reason I have a hard time holding winners is because I'm afraid that the trade is going to turn against me and I'll lose my profits, but the general fear is that I'm afraid of losing/losing money. If I were indifferent towards both winning and losing, obviously it wouldn't matter and I wouldn't be as fixated on winning as much as I would be on my process/making the right decisions. So I need to become more tolerant, or better yet, extremely tolerant of losing trades (and winning trades), and even losing streaks- because if I become thick-skinned enough, or actually, indifferent enough, the element of fear would be mostly out of my trading. I would be able to trade efficiently if I didn't worry about losing. This is where stoicism kicks ass- I was being stoic to some degree (more than I've ever been in my trading) so these losses didn't effect me like they used to. Normally after a single loss, I would call it a day- and that's not a bad thing to do- but for my personality, I need more exposure to trading/performing, and to discomfort in general. I need to take risks to get used to negative consequences, so I become less afraid of taking risk, so I can take better trades.
So I'll work to become less inhibited by simply trading more, and taking the trades that I normally would be scared to take. You'll probably see me losing more, but I think I need to experience all of this losing in order to become better as a trader. I'll keep immersing myself into stoicism, and cultivate a hard-wired stoic attitude towards my trading. I'll gladly keep losing and losing if it's what I need to do to change, to become consistent.
I meditated for ~2 hours this morning. To the traders or people reading this that are skeptical of meditation, after I had meditated and traded, I realized why it has such a significant effect. Meditating is essentially practice for re-directing your own attention, with the main goal of maintaining that level of attention for as long as possible. I know, there are different ways to meditate and there can be different goals through and of meditation; for example, you don't necessarily have to focus intensely on anything to increase your awareness or get into this meditative state- you can "let go" or let your awareness roam free with a small degree of focus, and get yourself into this hypnagogic state/vivid dream-land (this is lucid dreaming). You can get between that space as well, and be physically awake while being aware of "back-of-the-brain activity". Anyways, I essentially see meditation as exploring and manipulating (not with a negative connotation) awareness- and the ability to re-direct attention and concentrate at will are incredibly useful in managing or even preventing counter-productive neural pathways to activate. For example, this morning during my meditation, I did end up thinking "the wrong way"; I found myself dwelling on old, terrible memories. I was shocked coming to, realizing that I had let my awareness go on for I don't know how long, entertaining these thoughts. I eventually got back on board with some effort/non-effort (you meditators may know what I'm talking about with the effort/non-effort thing), and thankfully I got back into a state that was similar to yesterdays. I was ready to trade, coming back from a place that would ordinarily ruin my morning.
Price action looked terrible when I first analyzed the ES in the 10,000 tick chart. Because of this, I decided to look at the other charts, and noticed and/or imagined that traders could possibly make out a developing double top in the 10 and 15 minutes charts (before the open) since I could, and the daily "gave" me an impression that price could drop today. So I was biased to the downside from the start. Anyways, it was around 8:30am when I stopped meditating and started observing the ES, and I did not want to trade the action that was taking place at the time. I waited until the open, and a minute or two before the open, I saw that price was selling off. I had that feeling, I thought that maybe it's going to sell off hard but I was apprehensive. The open came, and price messed around for a minute, and that's when I decided to just jump in short after seeing some very convincing bearish momentum. The bearish bars were like liquid in their movement. I made $171.36 on this trade, closing manually with good judgment.
In the past, I would've called it a day after a win like this, but I decided to push myself out of my comfort zone. I realized that today is a day of ample opportunities in the ES and that I need to take advantage of these opportunities. So I watched as price climbed back up, and my plan was to capture the next move to the downside if there was going to be one. Given the almost instant, dramatic sell-off at the open, I thought it was safe to logically assume that traders would be enthusiastic about another move to the downside (a continuation) rather than get cold-feet when price re-reaches that low point of the day. Like I wanted and thought, the bulls sold off, and as I was watching this with the intention to enter, I had the thought that ~"what you're scared of happening is going to happen". I think this thought came from me putting myself in the bulls shoes: I was imagining bullish traders frantically closing their positions, I was imagining bullish traders in denial as this bearish bar developed. It seemed like it was inevitable for price to drop back down, so I entered short. I closed with a point of profit- I gave into a fear-driven rationalization that I need to take baby steps. Maybe it wasn't such a bad rationalization, though.
I had an interesting thought after I finished trading. Is it possible for a trader to be scared of winning trades? And, can a trader be scared of becoming consistent?
Very interesting journal Zach, I'm enjoying following along. I do some meditation, more tao yin and qi gong since I like the blend of mental and physical activity, tying them together. Better for me to do them before trading, but I find myself squeezing in some mat time while waiting for a setup or when in a trade that is en route. Cool stuff, along with deep abdominal breathing they definitely help keep me focused and centered instead of nervously reacting to every little wiggle on the screen. I need to meditate more though lol... keep up the good work man, best of luck.
I appreciate your reply! I'll do my best to keep it interesting, luckily I love writing. I've heard of qi gong, but I don't know much about it or tao yin. I heard that plain yoga is both meditation and obviously it's physical, so I may get into that to combine the two elements sometime in the future. As for now, I just meditate in the mornings, and after I'm done trading I go for a mile run (interval sprints with mild running to catch my breath) with some music playing in my earphones.
Meditating 2 hours is definitely where it's at for me. I'm trying to make that state I was in more easily accessible, if not constant. Get to it, then!
-$57.28 in my half automated, half discretionary account (the Double-Top only one). I didn't use my pure discretion account, and I'm calling it a day since it's Friday and I have a crusty mind rn.
I had a harder time getting into my groove with meditation this morning. I found it more difficult to concentrate (I got less sleep than usual last night), I kept getting distracted by my thoughts and memories, but, there were some consistent moments of focus that I think definitely carried over into my trading performance. I'm not sure if sleep was the only factor that detracted from my meditation, because I did eat earlier than I usually do (?), and there were a lot of external distractions as well. With that being said, I think lack of sleep is the most influential factor in todays inability to concentrate as well as usual.
It was around 8:30am when I spotted my first opportunity. Finally, I was able to use my double top-only account. I was diligent in that I constantly re-applied my Fib levels to determine my stop, entry and profit target (for this account, this is an expected repeatable behavior and probably a redundant statement) and eventually price crossed my entry and of course I entered short then. I took a SS a minute or two later of the trade:
I was stopped out for a ~$144 loss. With my newfound mindset though, I still wanted to trade; I wanted to get more exposure to taking risk and to act on opportunities that I would normally avoid. Even though I felt and thought that way, that I wanted more exposure, I kept in mind that today is Friday and there may be a lack of follow-through later on in the morning, so it would be logical of me to be careful. So, after this loss, I had the thought that price could get up to the 2935 area, and then it could reverse and my set-up would "re-appear", so to speak, and then I would find it acceptable to re-initiate the trade. The reason it was acceptable to act on this trade again was that time was approaching the open, which entails higher volume and volatility naturally, and that if there were going to be any opportunities worth acting on, on this Friday- this set-up is in my alley and falls in "high probability parameters", and I thought that I simply got in to trade this double top at the wrong time earlier. My timing was off. So, I was willing to give it another shot later on.
What I wanted to happen, happened. It was 5 minutes before the open as price passed my newly adjusted entry target. I did enter. Price immediately went in my favor, and when the open came, it went in my direction even more. I remember thinking as I was holding the position that I was pushing my luck, and since it was the open, I determined that I needed to get out if price got too wild and confusing. When price went a couple ticks against me, and when I noticed that I was ~2 points green, I decided to close the position. Of course, had I held, I would've been profitable today. Here is a ss of the end results of both trades (entries and exits; 1000 tick chart):
I don't think that I've ever seriously "re-initiated" a trade before. Normally, I would just stop trading after the 1st loss, and would think I would be taking too much risk by entering the market a second time- and I used to think it was especially absurd to re-enter on the same set-up. But now I realize it's not, as long as I'm being logical, and I'm thinking in terms of probabilities and seriously consider what I think price is going to do next. I don't know how many times I've gotten stopped out of what seemed to be a fantastic set-up, to watch price do what I had anticipated in the first place. Now that I actually have the desire to take risk, I feel no problem with trading relatively uninhibited. I'm not concluding myself to have totally accepted risk, because I haven't (evident through closing my second trade too early), but I have an appetite for it now and will be replicating this behavior.
As for getting out too early- this is an expected regression. When you aren't feeling your best, when you're not the sharpest you could be, the chance of making a mistake is higher. For example, say you go out drinking with some buddies and get really hungover the next day. In my experience, I end up regressing to worse behaviors; I'll buy some fast food, I'll lounge and be lazy all day, I'll neglect to exercise- just all around I'll be gross. If you're tired and have a less than favorable baseline of behaviors, you'll probably act in worse ways; you'll regress back to bad behaviors. I will say though, regression is an absolutely normal thing, and a myriad of variables can push you into a state where you're more likely to under-perform. What matters is if you rebound. This brings up that inevitable optimism thing I mentioned a week or so ago. We're humans, we'll re-make mistakes, but as long as growth is truly valued, valued more-so than the dwelling/self-pity of negative behaviors, at the end of the day you'll do what's in your best interest.
To conclude, I'll give myself credit for entering a second time; taking risk that I thought was worth it. On the flip side, I know I need to hold my trades longer, and I probably shouldn't be trading while in a worse state than usual. To leave my progress off, I'm thinking maybe this new acceptance of risk may positively influence my ability to hold trades in the future, as long as I can practice withstanding the discomfort. That will be the one of my goals for next week.
Half automated/half discretionary DT acc. balance: $10,027.20
(started with $10,000 on 3-27-2019)
Pure discretion acc. balance: $4,927.47
(started with $5,000 on 4-17-2019)
I started my morning trying to get my hands on older historical data of the ES for further back-testing. It turns out, there is a thread here dedicated to uploading tick data (
I keep getting requests for people to share their GomRecorder data. A few threads have been started on the subject but not many are following thru it would seem.
I am collecting data from IQFeed via QCollector. All data contains bid/ask and is tick …
) which I discovered from a YouTube video uploaded back in 2014.. I love that this place is relatively old and is still going. Thanks @bob7123 for the consistent data feed uploads, it is much appreciated.
I'm looking to expand my arsenal of set-ups and strategies, so over the course of next week, I'll put in some effort towards generating some ideas. I'll do this by re-looking at and researching the classic chart patterns I learned when I first started getting into technical analysis (I have no problems testing and utilizing the classics), and if that doesn't work out or is not appeasing, I may come up with something by simply looking at my charts, and tallying occurrences of a specific pattern that I notice a lot and think can be taken advantage of. One thing is for sure though, I need to focus on the long-side.
In terms of approach to doing all of this, in the past, I thought about ways in which I could find a set-up for a particular kind of market, and that would be to analyze the daily chart and to classify certain trends or price action that is unique. For example, there exists price behavior in the daily chart of the ES that I consider to be a "slow-climbing bull market" (that's what we're in right now). I could go further and classify different kinds of daily price action, and within those classifications, I could scan for the frequency of a certain pattern and eventually test it and only use said pattern within the confines of that type of market. I could test for cross-over as well, between bearish markets that have slight differences. I think that's what I'll do.
As for the process of back-testing itself, I know I need to slow down a bit, and perhaps do less back-testing in one day to lower the chance of making mistakes. Just like with practicing math, I'll have to be more deliberate and concise- because I do have a tendency to rush things that I don't enjoy doing, and honestly, I got pretty tired of back-testing.
Also, on an unrelated note, yesterday I watched the new CME Micro Indices webinar, and I gotta say, I'm sold. I will be trading these products to get actual, real exposure in terms of risk, when these indices get popular and traded enough. The only thing is- obviously when they launch, there's no historical data to discover edge- so trading these products at first will be an even more uncertain undertaking than trading a market with history. FT71 said he's going to trade the Micro-E-Mini S&P as if it were the E-mini S&P, and if it's the case that the Micro S&P is like the Mini, that's great news for most of us here. Especially traders who are under-capitalized like me. So if it comes down to it, and if the Micros get big- I will undoubtedly trade those products over the Mini's. I'm very excited for the launch in roughly 8 days from now.
To conclude:
- I need to come up with some set-ups and strategies to back-test.
- I'll be keeping my eye on the Micro-E-Mini Indices when they release.
I'll do my best to keep it interesting, luckily I love writing. I've heard of qi gong, but I don't know much about it or tao yin. I heard that plain yoga is both meditation and obviously it's physical, so I may get into that to combine the two elements sometime in the future. As for now, I just meditate in the mornings, and after I'm done trading I go for a mile run (interval sprints with mild running to catch my breath) with some music playing in my earphones. 
