Not necessarily I think. From the functions of the BAs I’d worked with they would interact with me as a subject matter expert. So with my better understanding of business processes and knowledge of data at a finer granularity I’d be able to assist with their documentation. Like their User Requirement Specs.
Maybe my definition is very narrow because that’s how the BA’s in our org usually functioned. Can’t confidently say if that’s best practice to be fair.
Before this I’d like to see governments adopt this. Especially in my country. There so much blatant pilfering, corruption & mismanagement that this kind of thing would be revolutionary.
A bit bummed. My notion CSV upload keeps failing. Created an alternative code with the hard coded delimiters and that didn’t work either. Going to DB copy and see if that works. Might have to resort to creating a new notion ID to create some kind of test/staging area to get an idea if it’s restricted to existing ID, because the CSV shouldn’t be the issue. Atleast when I read the common problems faced by users with the same error.
The downside to Notion is that there’s no error log that I’m aware of to determine specific error. No dev console of any kind for any kind of basic troubleshooting atleast. Just:
Worst case scenario: I’ll just have to duplicate and work this out on Excel. Not a huge issue. Just that I’d built a very streamlined workflow to build relationships to journal and individual currency pair analysis areas. These relationships will no longer be possible with an offline Excel file.
Psychology
Am still reading Disciplined Trader. The following resonated a lot:
Was feeling a bit despondent. I’ve gone to great lengths to get to this stage in my journey. When thinking of the worst case scenario of possibly discarding what I worked on in Notion, it struck me a bit hard. Was it worth it? This excerpt helped answer the affirmative yes. It reminded me of the reason I decided to do all this. Reminded me of the time I won this tournament:
Was the worst thing that could’ve happened at the time. Played ABC poker that tourney. Played with good bet sizing, proper positional play. Must’ve been very card lucky too. Probably the worst thing that happened to me at the time. Would’ve been better if I’d lost that day.
It built a very false image of my actual skill level at the time. My ABC strategy actually regressed a lot because I tried so hard to duplicate the good fortune of this win. Made way too many unnecessary adjustments to my game and broke what worked. Not to mention I wasn’t making an effort at studying and analyzing my game either. It was basically an unsystematic dismantling of an already average game.
Even on the rare occasion I remember it, it doesn’t affect me. I’d relegated it to my past. Today it evoked a few strong emotions of how terrible and how under-prepared my approach at the time was. Guess I’m just feeling a bit weak and vulnerable from this setback. I’ve managed much worse in this journey (funding my account & setting up bank) but the culmination of all these setbacks hit a bit today.
Guess everyone has their moments. Glad that excerpt helped set things back to perspective.
Just finished “The Disciplined Trader”. Great book. Wanted to throw it out at one point when it was talking about mass, light & cosmic stuff. Similar snakeoil salesman kind of feeling I felt reading Naked Forex in the early chapters. Glad I persisted though.
I get the impression it was really ahead of it’s time when it was published in 1990. Trading in the Zone might probably be a better alternative seeing it’s more recent but it’s still got a lot of relevant and pertinent information. A great exercise I picked up in the book was to start an “I am/I believe” statement and list as many things as you can in 10 minutes. Then identify those that conflict and work on decharging the beliefs that conflict directly with your objective. Simple but very effective exercise I think.
My upbringing was not in the stablest of psychological environments so I’m already a few steps behind a regular person in certain essential psychological facets. To top it of, I’ve never prioritized reading/corrective behavior to remedy those faults. Reading this book’s got me to realize I have to do similar reading/exercise at regular intervals. Like building and conditioning a well-toned muscle. Atleast one psychological book every quarter or so is what I’m thinking at present.
Got a recommendation for another book by J. Peter Steidlmayer that I’ve earmarked for future reading. It was published in '86 though. Don’t know if there are any recently updated alternatives to it though, even if by another author. He happens to be the guy who came up with Market Profile so his later books only cover that topic. No newer editions of this one. Also found another book on Market Profile by James Dalton. Noted them for future reference but makes no sense to read up on Market Profile atm. Much, much later like I intend to with point and figure charting.
Took a quick look at the books I’ve finished and I realized I let off atleast 2 books almost at the cusp of finishing them.
Statistics for Dummies I’ll have to restart because of the data loss. I have to overwrite the previous flash cards I did in Anki and I found a later version of the book that has a part 2 that makes it a better value addition.
Currency Trading and Intermarket Analysis also I’ll need to make Anki cards for. I’ll forget a lot of good info in the books if I don’t revise the content regularly. Atleast until I put it to practice regularly.
To Do List
If I revisit the to do list on 19JAN here’s how it stands atm:
If I commit to one book on psychology per quarter then the second point is a slow burning action item. Now to resume the 100-pip exercise ASAP. That’s the condition for live trading. No compromise.
The grading systems are super important too. If I can nail it or atleast set a rudimentary system before go live that should do good. I can always work on incremental improvements over time so it doesn’t look as burdensome.
A bit tired. Didn’t start on the To Do list yet. Thought, in the meanwhile, I’d resume the top down currency analysis I was doing before the HDD crash. Used to do this every weekend earlier. Feels good to get the the gears rolling again.
Resumed the Anki revisions and I was shocked by how much I’d forgotten the past few months since I last stopped. Not very happy about it. Maybe I’m not reading efficiently. Have decided to read up on reading. Two following books next on my reading list:
Additions to Notion workspace
Was catching up on the latest updates/features on Notion for the journal grading brainstorm. The workflow diagrams that were recently implemented have a huge scope for summarizing and cataloguing various systems. All the stuff I find in books and on the forum I should be able to consolidate in one personal reference/wiki for myself. Not at all a high priority item but super excited to implement this going forward.
The workflow symbols enable a click through function that can be used to hyperlink to pages or other references. Excellent tool to actually mindmap and plot out my trading plan.
Feeling a bit drained today. Mostly mental. I could really use a holiday. Not as productive as I’m used to being and still feel tired. But I have a hard time staying away from reading/engaging in anything trading related atm. Just realised what I was doing currency analysis during what I considered my downtime. Fine for now but not a good behavior to have in the long run. Need to know how to switch off completely when I have to.
To Do
No Progress. I haven’t even started reading a new book yet. I thought I was taking some time off but I wasn’t. Irrespective, resuming the exercise today.
Funniest journal yet
Found a hilarious journal I really enjoyed. My favorite journal so far. The OP did a really good job keeping it real. You guys might no longer be active but thanks @Gilas/@GilasTrading & @dpaterso for the entertaining exchanges and good laughs
Good recent videos
Real Vision Finance has some fantastic content and some really smart contributors. Wish I could say I understood even half of the stuff discussed in most of the content. Not knowledgeable enough atm. It’s interesting to see analysts, fund managers & economists with positions in the markets discuss market behavior. Darius Dale, Tony Greer, Alfonso Peccatiello & Weston Nakamura are fave contributors. Love the fact that they’d rather say they don’t know certain market behavior (Darius Dale on Gold) that make up some random BS.
29:01 - “If not for the BOJ pushing yield starved JP investors overseas US & global yields & credit spreads would be through the feckin roof; And thereby the S&P500, the tech stocks (and all that) would through the feckin floor.” Great explanation on the importance of the BOJ on global markets. Learnt so much despite not fully understanding everything discussed.
Found lecture at Yale, by a former Soviet era journalist, on Russia and it’s relationship with the west in recent years and why it was western policies that encouraged Russian aggression over time. While he’s not excusing current behavior by Putin he makes a point for a lost window of opportunity that the west had to be more open and welcoming of Russia in the 90s/early 2000s.
Found some great bands to listen to. Indian folk metal band and a hijab wearing girl band from Indonesia. The girls are really awesome because they are facing a lot of adversity at home for doing what they love. Really inspiring.
Edited - and I just listened to Bloodywood. That lead can sing like Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin. I need to catch up a couple of generations with music.
Same here tbh. I’m feeling a bit out of touch too. Some really good non mainstream bands out there. YT’s really helping them find a more international listener base. Listened to this a short while back. This one drew a tear. A very positive song about mental health. Positive message at the end of the video too.
I’m very impressed with this style of music, and the band itself. I subscribed, and will follow learning about their charitable cause. Thanks for this @darthdimsky - an unexpected bonus from this forum.
If you want to hear some good, non-mainstream music, check out this Mongolian band, The Hu. Very talented and use traditional Mongolian instruments and Mongolian throat singing. I say non-mainstream, but they are gaining in popularity.
Current Reading
Dropped “How to Read a Book”, Adler. Too dry. Picked up some hints in the first 100 pages that will definitely speed things up for me but it feels dated (1972) and is a tough read atm. Will revisit later. Instead picked up and finished reading
Good read. Very practical advice with examples. At the moment requires a lot of conscious effort to implement some of the ideas because I intentionally have to slow down from my usual speed to practice concepts.
Further reading
Further reading will be centered more around mind maps, effective learning and memory improvement. Downloaded Obsidian the other day to start implementing the Zettelkasten method. Never tried it before but the sooner I start the better. It’ll pay a lot in the long run for the kind of reading/learning I want to take on going forward.
Anki reviews
Anki reviews are back online. 5 consecutive days reviewing my flash cards. Haven’t made any in a long time. Have plans to include new ones based on further reading material down the line. Here’s how they’re supposed to work.
To do list
4H/1H analysis still underway. Admit to a lacksadaisical start, but steady progress. No progress on the grading systems either. Sri Lanka is going through daily power outages. 2-3 per day. That’s impacting the to do list. While the power is out I’m able to whip out the phone and continue reading a pdf, which is why my reading’s progressed much further than the action items.
Hello again my friend. This may or may not be relevant to your quest, but I had to refer back to one of my old favourites this week in my current consulting contract. We were running down the rathole of trying to please everyone with everything during an extended stakeholder discovery and requirements gathering exercise that is now a week behind schedule. I had to stop, and go back to analyze the work that had been documented before I inherited a project mid-stream.
The book is called Flawless Consulting by Peter Block, who has been around probably as long as I have.
I re-read just the chapters 10 - From Diagnsosis to Discovery, 11 - Getting the Data and 12 Whole-System discovery. 44 pages out of a whole book of 370 pages. 12% of the book - about two hours of effort. I was then able to write up in tabular form a critical reduction of planned effort to move from data collection (restricted to four options including do nothing) and get back on track with confidence that we remained in the green status area of red, amber, green or “RAG” status.
How is this relevant to Forex, you may well ask. So it is exactly the same process I went through about 12 months ago in setting out my strategy, then plan for a Forex business investment plan. It has taken me over 15 years to get to this stage, but it has been well worth it.
I have my colleague Phil to thank for this. He has 20 years less time served as a consultant than I do, but he recommended this book, and used it religiously in his pursuit of being a highly productive project manager. He was not always popular with all stakeholders in the programme of works that lasted over 12 months, but he was pivotal to the programme in being able to complete ALL deliverables within the timeframe and budget assigned. That is all that matters in the end. Is it quantity of reading, or quality of understanding the text and the context that matters?
I got this book for £6 on eBay. Admittedly I could have bought a more up to date copy for £42.78 on Amazon, but I applied my 80/20 rule. I figured by spending 20% of the new published price I would get the benefit of 80% of the book (old version versus new version). That gives me a 4X advantage over anyone happy to pay list price. That is probably one of the reasons I have become profitable after over 15 years of trading. Unwillingness to “pay list” for anything in life - whether goods or services. Enjoy all of it or some of it, but for £6, you can’t complain.
Thanks for the recommendation. The amazon reviews for the book are really glowing (atleast for the more expensive 3rd edition ). I have a feeling the book will help draw a lot of tangents to things that need work outside trading.
Doing the same thing about noting books on other topics that I expect will have a similar impact, like @ponponwei’s thread of books on stoicism. There are some solid recommendations from the folks in the thread.
Your RAG status mention has got a few wheels spinning in my head. If I can combine that with something like a progress bar, for the things I’m working on, it will give a lot of context to the med term stuff I already have in the works.
Power cuts have stopped. Stopped everything forex related while they were ongoing. I found it a bit difficult to cope with and instead relieved some of the pent up stress playing a video game on the downtime instead. Back to the grind now and re-resumed my Anki sessions and other projects (Obsidian/mind mapping).
Article below explains the state of my country with key macroeconomic indicators. Factual and well written article I think.
Downloaded 5 years worth of H1 data and did some rudimentary analysis. I had questions that could only be answered by looking at data.
While analyzing the data I understand why GMT+2 was adopted for MT5. Besides Metaquotes being Russian based, the NY session also closes at midnight on FRI on the same timezone. Fits like a glove. Revised previous listed time zones as follows:
The calculation and charts assume SYD session start at 0000hrs (as opposed to the 2200hrs from the previous day). I don’t have the computing power to make the necessary adjustments. My spreadsheet crashed a few times already while working on the large dataset.
Pip values are determined by calculating the difference between session open and session close. Pip values are larger if you calculate intra-session movements (the lower the time frames the larger the aggregated pip movement). If you account for intrasession volatility the rankings may change
Labelled as directional pip movement (could be incorrect labelling on my part) because the difference calculated is a positive value, irrespective of whether there pairs moved up or down during the session.
DST isn’t accounted for while calculating the session times. I ignored it because making the adjustments over 5 years to account for a skew of 1 hour didn’t make sense. Too much work for a marginal change to the numbers.
Data according to my broker LP. Though highly unlikely, it may differ significantly enough to the data from other LPs, and may not be an accurate representation of the aggregated volume for all retail LPs.
Top 5 Pairs by session for the past 5 calendar years (2017-2021)
Since I had to determine the session overlaps anyway, in the course of identifying session start/end times, it made sense to make look at session overlaps too. NYC/SYD session overlap not accounted for due to the 0000hr SYD session adjustment.
Top 5 Pairs by session overlap for the past 5 calendar years (2017-2021)
Unintended finding
Was suprised to find out that broker data can also have gaps and may not be as complete. Determined that while analyzing some errors in the data. Like the missing GBPJPY data below. Out of the 24 records for the day I could only download 11.
These errors were very rare though and had minimal impact on the analysis (~0.7% sessions excluded from analysis as a result of missing data).
Further analysis
What I really wanted to know was whether the Asian session was a potential leading indicator or trailing indicator. With the trading volume and significant news releases in the LON & NYC sessions it’s not difficult to believe that SYD & TYO trail. But is that consistently the case for all the currencies? That’s what I really want to understand. Might not be able to pull it off but I’ll try.
4H/1H analysis
Going well since the power resumption. Also evolved the way I analyzed each trade. Found a potentially better way to quantify it and will have to revisit some of the earlier analysis to apply the same standard consistency. Power cuts are back on but my area isn’t facing it as badly as the rest of the country. Feeling something like survivors guilt because of the suffering the rest of the population is going through atm.
Journal grading
Dropped the idea for now. Waste of time for now. I’m better doing it when I have a sizeable data set of journal reviews. I usually get the best ideas while I’m actively working on data, which is something I don’t have atm.
I will apply the same principles on a trade grading system. It complements the work I’m doing with the 4H/1H analysis already and is more relevant. Rather than blathering on and on about it now I’ll just do it with the data I’m already preparing atm.
Further reading
Read a bit here and there from a # of books when the power is out. No serious studying atm. More focused on getting that analysis out of the way to start the live trading.
Oof lots of lines of code involved though. But I love that it’s just within Notion.
For Mindmaps I’ve tried using Miro. There’s also Coggle but it sucks because ideally everything is all in just one place. For now they’re in my physical notebook.
Yea, Miro appears to be the most popular one out there. I think most of the videos comparing mindmapping software use Miro as the base. I remember looking at coggle too (cuz it was free!) and decided against it cause it had 3 private spaces. I settled on another free version (freeplane) which is a software download. Steep learning curve in my case though. Even the user manual is one massive mindmap, which is actually pretty cool because you start getting used to collapsing/expanding and see how the devs use it
Atleast you’ve got the habit of doing it. I’ve never bothered till now so it’s a bit difficult to get it to be habit forming, which is why I’m including it in the journal too (for accountability). In time hopefully!
They did a killer cover of Metallica’s “Through the Never”. I love this particular track though. Has an epic feel
). I have a feeling the book will help draw a lot of tangents to things that need work outside trading.
