The Anti-GURU-itis report

Trading Discussion Trade Journals
5

Only 2 trades today, the first was a -12pips on a Usd/Jpy long early on. After that took a break from trading until the Draghi QE speech on which i made a conservative but safe +42 pips.

Thats 1 win and 1 loss trading the news this week. There is still a little more unpredictable volatility in the market than usual, sudden snap backs etc so rather than waiting for it to settle down or pullback a little i’ll call it a day. A little bit of extra rest and relaxation cant hurt can it, the grind will still be there tomorrow :wink:

+30 pips

6

I didn’t trade very well today at all but i did react well.

I didn’t take the continued strength of the Eur/Usd move into consideration early on. I should have switched to the 15 min chart doubled my SL’s and halved the £’s per pip. As i didn’t do this my Gbp/Usd News trade was a loser followed by a Usd/Jpy loser.

I was pretty sure that alot of traders were going to try to take profits today on their Eur/Usd shorts but i wasn’t sure how “THEY” were going to buy the Eur/Usd without pushing up the price and eroding some of those profits. Usually they wait for the news and if the price drops they start buying close to the bottom so there is no continuation…the price then actually starts moving up as they close the shorts( buy,buy,buy), it’s way cheaper and there are enough sellers for the amount they want to move.

Anyway… At 11:55am GMT on the 5 min chart price moved from an already low 11219 to 11170. (49pips)

Breaking 11200 that hard was the obvious signal, i knew “THEY” would use that to go long. Everyone was shorting and ca 30 mins later price reached 11115!!! In the next 5 mins price moved fro 11115 to 11168. I took that as confirmation that “THEY” would take profit all day long and that retail traders would then do the same.

I went LONG Eur/Usd, half my usual trade size and took a conservative +60pip win.

It was a nice safe trade but it doesn’t make up for the fact that on the whole i’m not impressed with my performance today at all.

I’ll critique my weeks performance tomorrow once i’ve let it all marinate my brain.

To end… a small loss for me today and a break even week. There have been times when i would have paid good money for a break even week so i’m cool with that. lol

Hope you all had a good week and that you have a great weekend!

Today = Circa -20 pips calculated on £££’s per my usual trade size.
Week = BE

7

Performance.

Imagine plugging a diagnostic tool into your brain and downloading the data over last week’s trading. You get graphs and charts showing the odd spike here and there of things like patience, temperature, frustration, timing, hours traded, intensity, number of breaks, number of errors etc.

Looking at the graphs and charts you can see where adjustments need to be made. You process the data looking for what coud have caused the spikes or movement at the hi Low extremes. You then look for system adjustments and work arounds.

First your performance enhancers…sleep, nutrition, hydration, breaks, resets.

[B]Why is performance even important?[/B]

Typical Example: A guy trades for 20 days and wins every single day, doesn’t lose a day at all. Then on the 21st day he loses. Not only does he lose but he loses big, all the profits from the previous 20 days = GONE …maybe even busts his account. He says to himself “All that hard work gone in just 1 day”.

[B]Performance says he is lying[/B].

During that 20 days he increased trade size on a losing trade 4 times. He moved his Sl to stop a trade busting out 3 times. He didn’t trade any particular strategy at all a total of 5 times, he traded without even opening a chart on one occasion. One trading session lasted 16 hours straight and he booked less than $20 on it, at one point he was $700 down… list goes on.

Lets say that 11 of those 20 days his performance was poor but all he sees is “I won 20 days in a row…1 bad day”.

Yeah right!

Last week i traded solidly 90% of the time or should i say my performance was good 90% of the time.

I was unhappy with my performance on Friday. Firstly i disregarded the fact that i didn’t feel too well at the start of the session i then felt some frustration creep in mid morning and didn’t take a break. I also noted that on each of the 4 days, my first trade was loser, remember i don’t trade on Mondays. Starting each day with a loss has its implications.

I want things to be simple not cumbersome so don’t want to spend all day tracking my performance or making a bunch of notes that i will never look at again but i do want to flag down any issues so that i can make improvements or look for early signs substandard performance so that i can make adjsutments both to my routine and to my focus/ awareness whilst trading. Prevent any high pressure situations before they occur and manage the ones that get through better.

It’s easy to do things to excess when daytrading. Over trading, trading too many hours, skipping meals, too much unnecessary screen time or dead screen time as i call it etc. All of these hurt performance and performance drives results.

8

I’ve made some really nice trades the last few days, made money on the Eur/Usd both Long and short yesterday, i also got most of the move on a nice short Usd/Jpy Tuesday.

Despite this, I am just under BE for the week. There are 2 trades both of which i could have taken BE after they struggled funnily enough but let run, that are the stand out negatives. The rest is just the usual.

I have also managed to lose the first trade of the day for 7 days in a row. Is this a record? lol

I’m feeling slightly drained and frustration is starting to set in a bit as it looks like i’m on target for my 2nd BE week. Just need to get in some rest and relaxation really and come back fresh on Monday. A nice winning sequence will come :wink:

The Squawk thingy on Talking-forex has mentioned the SNB making a few moves in the mornings this week. Don’t know if it’s true or if it’s nonsense, but the Eur/Usd’s movememnt has been a bit weird at times this week for no apparent reason ([I]spurts and not really finding direction[/I]). Usd/Jpy has also been a bit more negatively correlated to the Eur/Usd than usual.

As far as my performance is concerned i have probably put in a bit too much screen time the last couple of days which has also caused minor errors. I put this down to the frustration mentioned above. I will bear this in mind for next week’s trading and implement a “work around”.

Hope you all managed to rack up some pips this week.

9

On Friday at London close i made 50 pips going Long on the Gbp/Usd. Price had over extended to the downside, considering the good U.K news in the morning and i knew traders would want to take profits on their shorts; even more so being Friday afternoon. Anyway, that trade gave me +40 pips for the week.

Break even trading

If you lose 5 trades in a row and then win 1, [B]in the moment[/B] you are really happy about that winner. If you win 20 trades in a row andd then lose 1, [B]in the moment[/B] you are really pissed off about that 1 loser. It’s human nature, I can’t see the point in denying it or going into cliches. How you react to it afterwards…that’s a different story.

The last couple of weeks i have been in and around break even alot so of course my mind has picked up on it and there has been some frustration felt during the trading day.

Where does BE come from?

Let’s say current market conditions are not ideal for your strategy and you trade to BE then that is an achievement. By using your experience and not jumping off the cliff, instead of having to come back a few hundred pips when things do pick up you you are able to start making profit immediately.

If however, bad performance like getting into trades too early, frustration, putting in too many dea screen hours etc is the problem then you have essentially thrown away a profitable week(s).

For me it’s been a mixture of the two and i am fully aware what i have to place emphasis on in the coming weeks.

This is where the trading plan and other documents, (private journals, to do lists etc), i have written down at times of absolute clarity come in handy.

Reading these documents it’s clear what my goals for the year, quarter and month are and i don’t mean financially, i mean the areas i want to improve and progress in; and the plan of action to achieve that.

Re-reading all the things i’ve written i ask myself, are a few days of BE trading and my frustration around it in line with my plan? In terms of importance am i focusing on what i need to be focusing on or am i going with the moment so to speak, zooming in and geting lost in detail.

Reading over the trading plan helps to regain perspective and reset the mind. At the weekends i also find that when i have a spare hour or two, usually early in the mornings, writing about the past trading week or watching a technical trading video helps to reset my mind. It’s a form of active rest. As long as i keep it informal and don’t go over the top turning it into a full days work or Forex double overtime i find it helpful.

Progression takes alot of focused practice. At the end of the year of course i want to have made money but i also want to be a much better trader than i am today, and that won’t happen by accident :wink:

10

This is one of the most interesting threads on here, keep it up. It takes guts to make public your failings but it means you cant hide from them and have to confront them, a lesson for most of us.
Seems you trade full time, is this your main income source?

11

Anti Guru? wait let me get my pitch fork and stakes lets burn them all and hang them High!

12

Hey Eddieb,

Thanks for your comment. You are absoutely right. It’s very easy in this game with a little bit of knowledge to do the Guru thing, but to progress and become a really good trader you have to put in alot of work and practice. The addition of a public journal is a help at tthe moment as it makes me conscious of my mistakes in a different way. If it stops being helpful i’ll get rid of it :wink:

To answer your question, Yes, the milk in my fridge is paid for by the eur/usd lol

Have a great week!

13

Slaying Guru’s this early on a Monday lol Looks like someone is eager to make some pips this week :slight_smile:

14

Monnnnndaaaaaayyyyyy! New week, New month!

[B]Running your own race[/B]

On trading days i don’t look at anyone else’s predictions for the day or at what trades they have taken, in fact i avoid it. I don’t want to end up second guessing myself, hesitating or taking trades that i don’t see or “understand” or go in softer on my own. More importantly; if i can’t trust my own analysis then i should be working on improving it; shouldn’t I?

The squawk will often throw out, “sources” say the big boys @ blablabla Bank have place orders for bids or offers @ xxxx .
80% of the time i’ve already spotted those resistance levels on the chart anyway and very often either due to large SL’s, no SL’s, building positions through averaging etc those levels are not immediate so don’t effect my strategies ([I]of course there are exceptions[/I] ;( ).

I think of trading as an individual “sport” and just like in other individual sports the game is the same, but the top players play it very differently to one and other. They play to their strengths and work hard on their weaknesses. Through hard work and practice they turn their naturally good shots or strokes into killer shots or strokes and they turn their awful shots or strokes into “pretty decent” ones.

This is why i think generic information or advice will only take you so far. It fits but it doesn’t fit well enough to take you to the level you want to go to.

[B]Learning process[/B]

If i already know 60-70% of whats in a trading video before i watch it for the first time then i know i’m really going to get alot out of that remaining 30-40%. There will be things that may hold the answer to a big step in my progression or a solution to something small and important. I can take it and apply it to what i do.

It’s the same when i’m reading a thread on a forum. A bunch of guys will say the same thing in different ways and then start agreeing with eachother. Then someone will say something pretty simple which no one really pays attention to but he has just said the most important thing in the whole thread. You have to have a level of experience to know it, but [B]it’s those guys you want to pay attention to[/B].

“If there is a hole in your roof the rain will find it”… yep the market is the rain and the roof is your strategy :wink:

I think that finding your niche is a huge part of this “sport” and in my case it took way longer than i had imagined. Once you have found it though it’s like beginning again in a way. You now have to master it, all the ins and outs under all conditions over an extended period of time. There’s nothing generic about that.

Now for an hour on my Business plan aka trading plan.

Hope you Monday warriors banked some pips!

15

Firstly, my first trade of the day yesterday was a winner!
Broke that first trade losing streak :slight_smile: Made +40 pips on a london open long (Gbp/Usd), but that wasnt the story of the day.

Eur/Usd…wow!

Between 13:05 and 13:20 Gmt the eur/usd goes from 11345 to 11395 (50 pips), no news figures.
between 13:30 and 13:55 it then goes from 11385 to 11445 (60 pips) ,no news figures.

Then it starts trending upwards from 14:45 until 18:25. It trends from 11425 to 11527 (102 pips)
There was a negative U.S factory orders report at 15:00 but there was no reaction in the market at all, none of the usual spikes or fast money moves etc

Then from 18:30 to 23:55 it drifts back fom a peak of 11533 to 11456 (77pips)

[B]Now before all of this from 9am to 13:05 it goes from 11320 to 11351 (21 pips in 4 hrs 5mins)[/B]

[B]Did someone give this thing steroids?[/B]

Yes the first part of the move are stops getting tripped quick 50pip surge no problem, but after that…

No news figures or big announcements, [B]counter trend[/B]…and then “sources” reported that a very big bank went short at 11430 with stops at 117xx, targetin 104xx. Why would they go short at 11430 on a day that price goes to 11530 only a few hours later and not in a surge either? 11430 in fact anything 114xx looked like a very good price to go short.

Anything happens now and its … could be SNB in the market lol “could”. It definitely wasn’t Greece that did it.
9 trading days ago we hit 1109x! (500+ pips in that time). Remember the word parity?

My eur/usd short busted out at 11367 lol for -29pips, felt i got in around 7 pips too early at the time, 7pips early in light of the tsunami seems laughable now. I couldn’t justify going long @114xx but put in a short @ 1151x which is up around 40 pips now, i moved the stop to BE already incase of Tsunami day 2. I will let this one run alll the way to “parity” :wink:

Hope some of you were on the right side of that mess.

16

First trade of the day was a winner, price over extended around 30 mins before the UK cips PMI figures. Quick in and out trade as i didn’t want to be in the trade going into the news. 4 mins +10 pips, safe move.

Looks like the Euro only had a days worth of steroids. Vey different game today. My Eur/Usd trsde from yesterday is currently up around 85 pips having spent most of the day between +40 to +60 pips up and then going to +100 pips around 3pm-ish
.
I hate this kind of trading, days and days, massive retraces ,overnight etc, however, there is so much potential upside in a trade like this and my risk is Zero, so let it ride. The ones that hit make a huge difference when the bulk of your trades make 30-40 pips. ([I]Note…not watching the trade but i know it’s there, irritating as hell[/I])

My performance was good today, let an end of day trade go that usually i would have taken. Price wasn’t quite right, had it gone the other way my SL would have been 10 pips or so too large or i could have gotten “stuck in traffic”. I’m consciously trying to improve in that area.

Thought a bit about how dangerous is to get comfortable in this game, and how being “hungry” to continue progressing, make good trades and decisions in general helps with concentration. Any thoughts?

Time for some rest and relaxation. Hope you had a good day.

17

For anyone with a little less experience than me this post might prove to be insightful. For anyone with more experience than me don’t be afraid to chime in and give me some pointers.

Most people trade a predefined system, patterns, indicators, price action or various hybrids of all of these on specific time frames, usually at the same time everyday . When i look at a potential trade i don’t just think about what i have to do but [B]who i am trading against.
[/B]

Lets say i go short gbp/usd, i don’t use Fibonacci but i know that alot of traders on the time frame i trade on at the times my setups come along do. They often want to get into a trade say at the 50% retractment level on certain moves and the 61% on others. Knowing this i check the distance from my proposed entry to where the fibonacci boys are going to want to get in and cause me trouble.

Is the trade still worth entering?

If i do go in and the traffic gets very heavy at that point i know why, i might use price action or look at momentum to see if i’m good here or if they have the edge and i need to scale out or get out completely.

Now, i also know where the fibonacci boys want to get out of their own trades ;)…you see where i’m going here.

It’s the same with the ema boys, you can see where they want to join a trend or where positions of dynamic resistance are building up and they see a potential breakout or again where they want to get out of their own trades.

Then there are the price action boys you have to deal with. If they even sniff a pinbar or a 3 candle set up they are going to dive in. So although i’m not trading that setup i have to be aware of what it’s going to do to my trade over multiple time frames.

I think everyone more or less pays attention to S&R so i wont mention those boys.

I agree with what alot of good traders on this site say about building up a picture of the environment as a whole. I also think that you don’t need to be a master of the techniques you don’t trade but you have to be aware of them and how they affect you, the same is true of sentiment cycles and fundamentals. It’s all part of mastering your niche which is something i try to work on every day, some days more successfully than others.

Anyway have a good trading day guys.

18

At one point in the early hours yesterday(Thurs) my eur/usd trade was up +200 pips.

It was a “full size” trade not the usual 1/4 size i let run, the plan was to see how far it would go, was hoping to get to 11200 or lower. As mentioned i did move the trade to BE almost immediately. At 150 pips i then moved the SL to give me +30 pips or an average trade if it busted out…call it an admin fee :slight_smile:

Anyway as you know the eur/usd was back on steroids yesterday. 200pips 24hr ranging hmmm seen this before… when the whole world was going under back in 08! 30pips banked!

Two other trades yesterday, a break even, damage minimiser and a spiked out gbp /usd trade for -20pips.

This is week 5 since the Christmas/New years break. From experience around every 5 or 6 weeks i get to the stage where everything is trading, ( [I]work/life balance, whats that?[/I]) and fatigue sets in so i take a long weekend, Fri-Mon, off. Add that 2 or was it 3 day eur/usd trade into the mix and… time to get out of here!

Writing things down is great because reading it back you can see where you are goin wrong. As i get more fatigued i can see the Guru-itis slipping into my posts. I don’t think it’s just down to fatigue but also to “getting comfortable”. The market is [B]not[/B] that kind of “woman”, i should definitely not be getting comfortable.

I should be thinking about each days objective, about accuracy, about trading my plan, about sniping, about perfect execution, about … well, you get the idea. If i don’t do these things it begins to dawn on me that in effect i am just trading until i lose which is a complete waste of time and hard fought for cash.

Soooooo, a looooong forex free weekned to reset, refresh and recover. I will fire up the screens on Tuesday ready to snipe.

Sports cliche, sometimese defence is the best offence! (defense, offense)
Have to know when to shut it dooooooown.

Have a great weekend all!

19

Apart from the obvious rest and re-couperation, the best thing i find about taking a long weekend away is how my general perception changes and how i’m able to re-connect with the real world. Trading can be a very intense world of it’s own where priorities both within and outside trading can get quite skewed.

Something to think about.

During the online poker boom 10+ or so years ago alot of “kids” dropped out of college/ university or decided against going to university at all because they were able to make so much money playing poker. Forums played a big part in the online poker culture.

Anyway, i remember reading or seeing a video about one of these guys in a sort of “What are they doing now?” type thing. Now this guy wasn’t one of the online superstars or even one of the forums better known players. He was a low key, “play poker for a living dude” that no one would have ever heard of.

Ok…10 years later, the guy has a nice house in a middle class area is married and has a couple of kids. To the surprise of the interviewer, the guy still plays online poker for a living as most of the online pros moved into other things, partially due to legislation in the U.S but also due to the development of the game, less fish and the games getting harder to beat.

Don’t worry; i’m about to get to the point. This guy wasn’t a great player but he could beat a certain level and put in alot more volume than most players. He was a “grinder” By sticking to a certain level and putting in that volume he made his money. After the boom he made less money and it was more difficult to make money but he was able to spend time with his kids etc.

Here it is… the interviwer asked him, “Is there anything you regret about choosing poker as a career or is there anything you would have done differently?”

He answered, “[B]I don’t regret anything, but if i had to do it again i would definitley have spent more time studying the game and becoming a much better player and less time playing, grinding for money.[/B]”

That statement stuck with me. In trading after you get past the “get rich quick” stage or the “double up, douple up” stage, by putting in some study and practice. [B]When you hit the intermediate stage things change[/B]. Depending on your individual situation, responsibilities, capital, country etc you can grind out a living at intermediate stage. It’s very easy to put in alot of trading and screen time, analysis, testing, and neglect study time. Of course that missing knowledge is key to going to the next level.

I don’t study nearly enough for what i want to achieve. I got to the point where i scheduled a couple of hours per week study time rather than nothing at all as i felt that 2 hours, minimum, intense study per week, (100+ hours) over the course of a year was much better than nothing.

However, of course it doesn’t even come close to being enough. Yes by daytrading you get alot of experience and by paying attention and not listening to music or watching youtube i feel i learn alot [B]BUT[/B], there are people who have done it all before whom you can learn from and vastly reduce the learning curve.

Forex is a little special in that you have to really search for material that is of good quality but also relevant to your trading arena, style, personality, experience level etc, and the knowledge comes in many forms.
In my case when i’m really driven to finding something, usually because of a loss, i often find something relevant that reduces the learning curve, so there is stuff out there.

Soooooooo, I plan to increase my study time. I will boost it gradually. For a month i’ll do a minimum of 4 hours per week instead of 2 and then add another 2 hours per week after that.

The long weekend did me good, i hope it does my trading some good both short and long term.

Hope your trades all hit TP today guys!

20

Tuesday 2 trades, Win Win
Wednesday 2 trades, W L
Thursday 2 trades so far, L W

Since returning from my long weekend i have been noticeably more patient. This has mainly been with regards to waiting for confirmation before going in on a trade and or getting out ie trade execution and also in not taking borderline trades. I’ve also been able to focus better in general. Lets hope this continues for another week or 2 :wink:

No essays today for a change, some of my posts seem to be on the long side lol.

However, I have been thinking about something i read as a beginner in a trading psychology book (Mark Douglas) about the subject of individual trades and how you are supposed to view them. Before burning the guy and saying that i don’t fully agree with him i will re-read what he wrote, take it from there and maybe write something about it in the next few days.

Hope you have all had a good week so far!

21

Ended up taking a 3rd trade yesterday at london close which also turned out to be a winner. So yesterday’s results were, L W W

I browsed through Mark Douglas’ book looking for the relevant paragraphs that i referred to in yesterday’s post. As i looked through the things i had underlined as a beginner i found plenty that i agree with today and something that i had misunderstood as a beginner. However, I think the major difference on reading all those notes today as opposed to back then is the thought process behind my actual application of these ideas and not just the theory written in the book.

Up until yesterday what i had rememberd reading was something to the effect of “Don’t place too much emphasis on individul trades but on a series of trades”. This was written in respect to results and not getting emotional over a losing trade.

Again up until yesterday, my disagreement with this statement was… if you don’t place emphasis on the individual trade then you may execute it sloppily. You may end up with a series of sloppy trades. Even a few sloppy trade would negatively affect the outcome of the series.

When i trade now the trade i am about to take is the only trade that matters. [B]Before[/B] i take the trade i tell myself that this is an isolated moment, i dont have to take the trade and if i do take it i don’t care what happens to price once i am out of the trade. [B]Win or Lose when i’m out it’s over[/B]. Rinse and repeat.

Remember thats [B]before[/B] i take the trade, i then concentrate on execution of the trade to my predefined guidlines for that strategy.

While browsing my notes in the book i came across the following quote which i really like [B]“What separates the best traders is that they have trained their minds to believe in the uniqueness of each moment”.[/B]

As a beginner reading, “training your mind to believe in the uniqueness of each moment” didn’t help me at all. I highlighted it so i must have liked it or thought it important when i read it. How i came to implement it in my own trading had nothing to do with the book but through trial and error, gaining experience and searching for [B]practical[/B] solutions when things went wrong.

This just emphasises how important it is to re-read books and articles or watch trading videos again periodically as our experience level rises.

Close out the trading week well and have a great weekend guys!

22

Friday’s results = L W

So for the week Tue-Fri (I don’t trade on Mondays) the sequence was: WW/WL/LWW/LW

In yesterdays post with regards to individual trades i wrote, [B]“Win or Lose when i’m out it’s over”.
[/B]
Thinking about that it dawned on me that although correct and how i trade it doesn’t tell the whole story; and to a beginner it would probably be a nice line but not very helpful.

Someone said “Knowing what to do and being able to do it are not the same thing”. I think that’s quite obvious and true. The distance between where you are now and being able to execute that “move” is the exact level of skill that is missing and that you need to acquire.

When i started trading i thought i was being an aggressive trader but i was actually being a maniac trader so of course i would move stops to stop trades busting out, i would double, then triple up losing positions. I would revenge trade so 1 traded ended up being 3 or 4 etc. Basically i did many things right but could not deal with losses so when i did lose the loss was disproptionate.

How did “Win or lose when i’m out it’s over”, come about and how am i able to actually follow through on it?

Trading for me is technical skills, psychology and Practical skills. [B]Practical skills are physical, they are not in your head.[/B]

Through trial and error i came up with exercises that worked for me to improve my practical skills on the major points that were hurting my trading.

One that helped with loss in general was, i gave myself a 2 trade limit per day. So regardless what happened in the market i had 2 trades to take advantage of it. Another part of the challenge was that i couldn’t increase my stops during the trade. I later added that if i lost both trades on 2 consecutive days i had to take the 3rd day off, later still i added that i wasn’t allowed to lose more than 25% in a week of what i expected/hoped to make in a month.

So imagine, it’s 8am i’ve just busted out of a trade and am eager to dive into something i see on the screen…but i only have one trade left and hours of the trading day to go. So i began to hold back.

I did this exercise for 8 weeks, at that point i had it, but i still couldn’t throw away the structure i had built, took many months.

After you get your driving licence you are still a rubbish driver :slight_smile:

From there the thing about individual trades hit me. So at first i practised not looking at a chart for 30 mins after a trade had ended, win or lose. Of course i wanted to know what had happened to price, should i have set my stops differently? Should i have gone in again? But i just practised not looking at charts for 30 mins after a trade for a few weeks. I then started reducing the time period.

The post is getting long… but this is the type of thought process and physical work i had to do to increase my practical skill level to be able to execute trades the way i do know. There is still tons of room for improvement so i am by no means the finished article.

Over time your attitude to loss changes too. Some of the trades i value most are where i have not only taken a planned loss, but minimised it (part of trade management), where as a few years ago i would have stepped of the cliff and done myself some damage.

Most things written are about ,maximising, specifically profit. Even if its correct, without the practical skills i look at it as…“nice” but, [B]“I ain’t gonna get there”[/B], so i read it then file the knowledge away until i reach that stage in my development.

I think thats why alot of us struggle. The theory says do A,B,C in situation 7a or your trading wont work its the right way, but if under live conditions 7a i can’t do A… what is the point of me stressing over B and C?

As you improve your practical skills you can expand your moves or become more “text book”. Until then learn to lose well so that your next winning trade wipes out the losing trade you just made. Think defence before, during and after a loss and forget the maximising stuff…maximising losses sucks! You might not be “text book” yet, there may never be a need for you to be either,[B] but[/B] if you are making money and not taking huge losses who cares?

So as you see it’s a simple line…"[B]Win or lose when i’m out it’s ove[/B]r" BUT [B]there is a ton of work over a long period of time behind it.[/B]

23

What a brilliant post!
I like the idea of a self imposed trade limit, that would really make one focus on each trade. It is very tempting to continue a winning streak, or to try to win back a losing streak. Personally I stop trading when I hit my days profit target or maximum acceptable days loss

24

Hey eddieb,

When i started trading i did try the max loss per day and the daily profit target but in certain pressure situations i couldn’t consistently stick to either of them, it only took a charged or high pressure situation and boom…you know the rest. Shows how different we all are.

Anyway, i found by doing exercises or work arounds, as the one i described, to build up my practical skills it then allowed me to overcome the problem. It’s like say you want to follow a fitness routine and it says do 3 sets of 20 push ups twice a week but you cant even do 1. You have to find an easier alternative which will help you to build up your strenght so that you can achieve the 1 then 5 etc. The 20 will come later.