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David's Trading Journal Chapter 2


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David's Trading Journal Chapter 2

  #51 (permalink)
 
Massive l's Avatar
 Massive l 
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@David_R I went through the lowest of the lows several times on my path. I can't go into it because it was so crazy and it's personal.
I know what you're feeling. It's indescribable. Knowing you can do this because you're smart enough and you've put in the time.
Sacrificed everything and still fail. But if you believe you can do it then pick yourself up and get back in the saddle. Don't give up
unless you know without a doubt that is the answer.

I'm not sure what faults you have but mine was holding losers. I could win or lose and it wouldn't matter emotionally. But all it would take was one
trade with a lapse in judgement and I'd give up a week's worth of gains. After 10 years I finally started using OCO orders.
A simple change with a huge impact on my success. You might just be off on one thing Think about what's holding you back from trading successfully.
It might be hard it might be easy. I don't know. I believed that I had an advantage not using stops! I was stealth, no one could see me. lololol
what a joke. But I finally realized it was my problem. Nobody gives a shit about my orders. My 2 and 3 lot trades mean nothing to anyone but me.

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  #52 (permalink)
 
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 David_R 
San Jose, Ca
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Massive l View Post
@David_R I went through the lowest of the lows several times on my path. I can't go into it because it was so crazy and it's personal.
I know what you're feeling. It's indescribable. Knowing you can do this because you're smart enough and you've put in the time.
Sacrificed everything and still fail. But if you believe you can do it then pick yourself up and get back in the saddle. Don't give up
unless you know without a doubt that is the answer.

I'm not sure what faults you have but mine was holding losers. I could win or lose and it wouldn't matter emotionally. But all it would take was one
trade with a lapse in judgement and I'd give up a week's worth of gains. After 10 years I finally started using OCO orders.
A simple change with a huge impact on my success. You might just be off on one thing Think about what's holding you back from trading successfully.
It might be hard it might be easy. I don't know. I believed that I had an advantage not using stops! I was stealth, no one could see me. lololol
what a joke. But I finally realized it was my problem. Nobody gives a shit about my orders. My 2 and 3 lot trades mean nothing to anyone but me.

Massive,

Appreciate the feedback. It's probably more than one thing with me. I think years ago it could have been one thing, or maybe two, but as the years have gone by I think I've gained more weakness. Probably my biggest issue these days is I feel as though I trade scared. Not because the size is too big, but because I'm extremely fearful of loss. It's almost as if I expect every trade I take to lose and it feels that way from the moment I enter. If the trade succeeds I'm immediately looking for another trade and rush it ultimately to get stopped out. Then the anger of loss and the need to make the money back sets in, so it's off to the gambling and not trading. Entering and exiting. Entering and exiting until what was made on the first trade is gone, or worse, I'm down on the day. Then it's on to trying to get back where I was before F-ing up. All this is exhausting, frustrating, stressful and exactly what happened today. I've been told over and over to walk away, limit the number of trades I take, if I lose a certain amount stop trading and lots of other excellent advice that I seem totally incapable of employing. My conclusion is that I'm not trader, but a wannabe trader. I'm not a professional, but a hack I should probably quit, but the desire of the potential freedom is intense. I've worked for corporations for over 40 years and can't stand their bullshit. The lure of trading for a living and separating myself from these companies is so strong that I keep going even after 20 years and tens of thousands of dollars in losses. I've stopped in the passed and not traded for extended periods of time, then I look at the charts and say, "I can trade that". Then i realize that the way the market looked yesterday doesn't mean it will look like that tomorrow, or the next day.

I've tried to get funded via Topstep, Leeloo, Earn2trade and one-up trader thinking one of them will work. Over 40 failed combines later I'm still trying.
I don't have the answer, or maybe I do and am incapable of executing the answer. I've now got very bad habits engrained in me and worried they can't be broken..

My latest post, which I will make after I submit this response, are trades I took today and they match what I described above.
Thanks again.

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  #53 (permalink)
 
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 David_R 
San Jose, Ca
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The 20 trade experiment is out the window.it only took one shit day for that to happen. Here are trades for today. My intention, as always is to not be impulsive. You will see from the chart that I failed in that regard.
110521_trade_1_NQ


110521_trads_2-6


110521_trade_7-8_NQ

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  #54 (permalink)
 Miesto 
Monte Carlo, Monaco
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@David_R, I think the charts you posted are a bad example of what you are describing. If you have 5 trades losing all the profit from 1 trade you have in essence an 1 to 5 Risk to Reward which is excellent. You kept your losers in check and let your winners run. Well done! We all know how difficult that is. Seriously, I don't see the problem. Overtrading? Last week I had one day with over 50 trades. So what? After fees I made $2 or so per contract (expectancy). Meaning the more I trade the more I earn. Of course, I paid a lot of fees but as long as I am net profitable who cares.

I have seen worse and to be honest this doesn't look too bad at all. You will always have losers and sometimes you get whipsawed trying to find an entry. That's the price you pay for getting to play. The entries that worked today you played very good and made up for the losses, right?

You got whipsawed in what turned out to be a pullback (but limited your losses). Now that should not be to difficult to work on. How to recognize a (complex) pullback (market structure) or congestion/range and stay out of it. Wait for price to choose a direction and trade the move like you did very well in trades 1, 6 and 8. Trade 7 was a wrong entry. You saw it in time and you cut it, nothing lost. You did not give the trade some extra room and then hoping it will come back.

You need to see the things you did right. Don't be too negative, focus on what went well and the knowledge and experience you already gained. Try to learn from your losers by analyzing in depth.
Leave the shit behind you on what it already cost you and so on. Focus on the next step, small improvements every day, there is always tomorrow.

-Michel

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  #55 (permalink)
 
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 cory 
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David_R View Post
.. I expect every trade I take to lose and it feels that way from the moment I enter...
...

I expect "they" will trick me to enter in the wrong direction as @hyperscalper theorizes so I "space" the order out up to 3 micro contracts. This way the fear of 'I am driving in the wrong traffic' already built in.

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  #56 (permalink)
 
David_R's Avatar
 David_R 
San Jose, Ca
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Hello Futures.io community. This is just an arbitrary post to my Journal because I have not posted in awhile. Probably not the best approach for a trading journal. Nothing has changed for me. Over the last several weeks I burned through my account that started out at 10K and got up to 15K. So at basically zero I added more funds. Like somehow that's going make everything better. So now working with a little more than 5K I traded it up to around 11K and it now sits at under 4K. This is the same story. Nothing new here. Today I traded and started out down, but was able to take another trade or two and get to a profit of over $900 before commissions. I proceeded to continue to trade and ended the day with a loss.

I've had some conversations with other traders that have suggested not trading my own money. Probably a good idea except for the fact I haven't been able to pass a funding combine. This tells me that I need to stop trading or, at a minimum stop adding funds to my trading account.

In an effort to turn this around I need to make some changes. To be honest, I'm not certain what those changes are. The conversations I spoke of above had all sorts of advice. Make up some simple rules and stick to them. Journal your trades to see what you did correctly and incorrectly. Don't over-trade. All the advice is great, but my issues are psychological. How does one not feel FOMO, greed, impatience, fear of loss, if one is feeling these things? I'm thinking therapy may be a direction to go, not I don't know if therapy can correct the above issues. Can anything correct these issues? Do all traders have these issues and if so how do they deal with them.

Part of me wanted to shift this journal to a focus of process. The process of trading. Will focusing on process help with the psychological weaknesses? I don't know, but I'm not feeling confident about it. When watching the market and then entering a trade everything changes. All the shit hits the fan. The psychological shit, that is.

So, if I focus on process, what method. The method isn't the problem, so pick one. Which one? What rules? I don't know. I'll post more when/if I figure any of this out, or take it day by day.

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  #57 (permalink)
 Miesto 
Monte Carlo, Monaco
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Hi David,

Good to see you're still around. How will stop trading bring you any further? Don't you think you should trade more?

You don't learn to swim by diving in the deep (read trading mini's). You will drown. Nor will you by standing at the side line.

Is there a way for you to keep on trading and thereby learning how to handle your emotions and not lose so much money?

How difficult is it to trade max 2 micros per trade (for a start), max 3-5 trades per day and a max daily loss off $50-75 for one month? Can you show a positive PnL after one month? Maybe use this journal to journal your trades.

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  #58 (permalink)
 
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 David_R 
San Jose, Ca
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Mich62 View Post
Hi David,

Good to see you're still around. How will stop trading bring you any further? Don't you think you should trade more?

You don't learn to swim by diving in the deep (read trading mini's). You will drown. Nor will you by standing at the side line.

Is there a way for you to keep on trading and thereby learning how to handle your emotions and not lose so much money?

How difficult is it to trade max 2 micros per trade (for a start), max 3-5 trades per day and a max daily loss off $50-75 for one month? Can you show a positive PnL after one month? Maybe use this journal to journal your trades.

Thanks Mich,
I've decided not to stop, but also decided to enter another funding combine. I'm not going to trade my own money anymore until I can be consistent. If I fail, I fail, but I'm not going to bleed anymore funds. I will record my trading here. I may go the mini route as well, but not sure about that. I have to trade a minimum of 10 days, but can go longer with a profit objective of $3000.

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  #59 (permalink)
 
David_R's Avatar
 David_R 
San Jose, Ca
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December 07, 2021

First day of my most recent funding combine. We gapped up huge. Wasn't sure what to do, but also feeling like i missed out. These trades probably had some fear associated with them because I didn't hold them very long at all. Not sure what to say because it's a lot of the same.


120221NQ trades


120721 ES trades


120721 PNL

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  #60 (permalink)
 Miesto 
Monte Carlo, Monaco
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Hope you don't mind me giving some input and food for thought.

Is it fair to say you could not hold on to these trades because of fear like you already mentioned? Not probably but for sure?

Where is this fear coming from? What is there to fear?

Is it the because of the possible loss of money?

You bought the NQ for $649,600 (16,240 x 20 x 2). Just 1% price decrease is $6,496. Do you think this is normal? To buy something worth $649,600 with one push of the button. How long do you need to work to make such an amount of money?

You've lost 22K in total (Post #56, 15K to zero and 11k to 4k). That's 3.4% or 1.7% per contract (when traded with two lots), that's just peanuts.

You need to take away the cause of the fear or else you will never succeed, no matter how much, and in what way, you are going to try.

There is only one way to take away the fear and trade in a carefree state of mind (which, you know, is necessary to become successful).

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Last Updated on December 20, 2021


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