Yeah, I definitely need more patience. I’m looking at CAD/CHF, and the trades are so easy, I’m seriously wondering how I missed it.
There were so many simple trades that I missed, you would think I was TRYING to miss them.
I’m gonna be more patient.
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I took a trade today, and it already got stopped out. Looking at it now, I’m wondering why I even took it. I thought it was a bear trend retracing and that it was gonna turn bearish again.
I feel annoyed and irritated, and tired of trying. But, I just have to take some time to relax my brain. Maybe play a videogame for a little bit. I haven’t played in a long time.
I don’t know. I guess I’m tired of practicing and studying charts, and I’m not improving. But I have to keep going.
I need to focus on the REALLY obvious signs, perhaps.
Often, my trades don’t look like what they SHOULD look like. I’m being too desperate.
I will not stop. I will keep going.
Jeez. Look at me. I had a bad trade, and I’m acting like it’s a horrible situation. Maybe I need to wait, maybe I need to keep taking a couple more losses.
I just gotta relax, and be patient. Jason Bourne, sniper style!
I’m feeling really frustrated right now. Just a few weeks ago, I made a pact with a friend. He had a financial endeavor he wanted to focus on, so I told him we’ll try to keep each other on track and really try to start turning a profit by the end of this year. He agreed.
My goal is to return to live trading by the end of the year.
He made a decision to quit his endeavor two days ago. I spoke with him yesterday and he explained why. The bottom line was that he’s not turning a profit at all, and he doesn’t wanna do it. I tried to encourage him, but I have to respect his decision.
To be honest, his decision is starting to affect me.
And I’ve been practicing more charts lately, and my trading is horrible. Just now, I was practicing a chart, and I had a few small wins, but mostly losses. I was shorting and got stopped out four times. I thought I was wrong. I skipped the next candle, then price fell thru the floor for about two months!
I felt like punching the computer. To be honest, I’m trying not to be a quitter anymore. And, frankly, I don’t want any quitting attitudes around me.
Trading is hard enough as it is; I don’t need anything making it harder.
Are you sure that this trading method suits for you?
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Yes. Despite everything, when I look at the complete chart, it all makes sense. The problem is me.
It’s just hard to keep focused. I will tell myself to focus on a bear signal, but price will trend up, and I completely forget about the bearish signal, and then it turns bearish.
I get confused carrying different techniques in my head. I think I should try labeling my charts more, that way I just have to wait for a particular signal.
There are still some signs I have to learn to decipher. There’s too much going on in my coconut. I’m gonna do some analysis about retracement and reversal signals. I have a bunch of chart samples, so this time, I don’t have to collect any charts. I have them already. I just gotta open the file, open a spreadsheet, and start my data collection. I’m really frustrated. But I can’t allow that to hinder me.
I’m down but not out.
Don’t call it a comeback!
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I’m so glad I’m taking all these lessons in DEMO!!
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yup - that does indeed have its advantages! 
this is always one of the Big Deals of trading, i think … be sure and let me know if you find a reliable way to distinguish between the two: i’ve only been looking for nearly 40 years - i think the best one can ever hope for on this front is more or less “something that works right now, safely enough, for what i’m doing at the moment” (and even that needs enough analysis and research!) and there’s never going to be a perfect answer to it
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ok, did you try other methods?
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It doesn’t have to be perfect–just profitable!
Yeah, and this one makes the most sense to me. It’s based on my deductive logic. I didn’t build this strategy. It evolved on its own.
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I just finished my trading. I wasn’t off to a great start. I woke up three hours late. No idea why.
Then my internet wasn’t working. For some reason, this time and last time, when my internet doesn’t work on my trading laptop, by bluetooth keyboard doesn’t work correctly either.
I got my internet to work, but my broker’s page wouldn’t load. BP loaded just fine. Youtube loaded fine. But not my broker’s. I went to my leisure laptop and my broker’s page loaded just fine.
What the–?!
Then a huge bat got in the house somehow. This is the second one. There was one last week, and again today. Last time, it was pretty small. But this one was almost double the size. Fortunately, I caught both bats and set them loose outside.
After all that, I was able to get to my trading on my other laptop. There’s not much going on at the moment. a few losses, but a few trades running. I didn’t open any positions. I was tempted to start trying to analyze the charts a little deeper, but I really need to study more. I started analyzing retracement signs yesterday, and I wanna continue with that.
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I watched the movie Whiplash. It’s about a jazz drummer who crosses paths with an overdemanding/abusive music teacher. That teacher was insulting and even slapping students who played the wrong note.
Towards the end, the teacher explained that he was trying to push his students to new limits. ¨Don’t you think it’s possible to push people too far?¨, a student asked him. The teacher basically said he was looking for the person who wouldn’t be discouraged by his abusive attitude.
The teacher told a story about a saxophonist who got treated horribly. He went home and cried, but he didn’t quit. The next day he started practicing. He practiced with the determination that no one will ever laugh at his playing again.
Then one year later, he got on stage and played an amazing solo.
I wanna be like that. I wanna keep going, even though I feel discouraged.
My ¨don’t give up¨ pact partner decided to quit, and then I had those terrible trades. Imagine you place a trade. And instead of profiting $5,000 from a huge swing, you lost $100. It was just a practice chart, but the fact is still the same–I traded poorly. I traded another chart; same result. The day before, same thing. It was driving me mad.
The dark thoughts came back for an afternoon. Everything together was a little bit overwhelming.
But I decided to keep studying, and I found a vulnerability in my trading. I started to feel hopeful again. It gave me the motivation to keep studying.
Patience, young padawan.
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For a while I was studying reversals.
Some trends last for months before reversing.
Yet, despite that, I was studying them as if it was a frequent occurance.
Retracements happen all the time, though. I spent way more time studying reversals than retracements.
This was just a natural progression in my focus. In retrospect, I should have spent more time with retracements.
Why focus on something that happens a few times a year? It’s better to learn how to trade retracements that happen every month.
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On my trading laptop, it wouldn’t connect to certain websites. My leisure laptop did, so I figured the problem was not with my wifi–just the laptop.
I went online, and they started talking about code this, and all this deep stuff. Normally, I wouldn’t have a problem with that, but it didn’t seem like the right answer.
I tried to reset my laptop to a previous restoration point, but it turned out that I never created one. I was sure I did before, but there wasn’t any.
I was about to do a hard reset of my laptop. It got about halfway and I hit cancel. I decided to try updating my Windows. It took way longer than I thought.
It took over two hours, I think.
Well, installing the updates fixed my connection problem! My laptop seems to be back to normal and working fine.
The first thing I did was set a restoration point.
Now, back to the charts!
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I think it’s important to be honest with oneself while trying to grow into profitability as a trader.
I have to be willing to challenge myself about what I’m doing and what I’m thinking. In my mind, I’m waiting for a variety of signals. Perhaps I’m being TOO flexible.
It’s possible I need more structure and should be more selective about what I’m waiting for–the set up, as well as the conditions. Initially, it feels like I’ll be missing out on too many opportunities, but I’m taking too many losses.
SOMETHING has to change. I have to do something differently if I want my outcome to change. And changing my strategy won’t help because the problem is me. If I change strategies, the outcome would be the same because I haven’t learned to wait for the appropriate set up and execute it properly.
This is something I have to reflect on more…
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I’m checking out AUD/NZD, and if I were trading that properly, one setup lasts one month, a second trade lasts two months, and a recent retrace trade lasts one week.
That means that generally, my strategy calls for very infrequent trades. But I have to pay attention everyday.
I’m really struggling with the patience part. I’m actually scared of NOT trading. When candles are popping off all over the place, I just think about how I should have traded that and how much money I could have made.
This is something I’ve written about several times. It’s difficult because my brain is still stuck in bad habits. My emotions are more in control than my strategy.
When you’re waiting for a support bounce, and you’re not being patient, your desperation can turn EVERYTHING into a support bounce. So, you’ll trade, trade, trade until you lose 30% of your account, wondering what happened. That’s Terminator style,
not Jason Bourne sniper style.
A large part of me is scared. I’ve been trading and studying everyday for the past few years. Imagine not taking any trades for three weeks! Theoretically, the end of one trade is the start of another, so I should always have a trade running.
And that’s what’s hurting me. I don’t have to do anything. I’m only gonna take a trade if I see a signal. That’s it. And I’m gonna have to get used to waiting.
This is something I have to be willing to do.
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there speaks someone who has perhaps read too much Mark Douglas and not enough Michael Harris (my comment is tongue-in-cheek and jokey, but i mean it seriously as well)
perhaps
it’s “not proven”, in my opinion
i’m not arguing with that
not arguing with that, either - it’s canonical, but i’m far less clear about everything you said after that, and i don’t think the validity of the observation above lends any evidential value to the rest (sorry if i sound very outspoken! you have read enough of my posts here to understand that my intention in posting in your thread is supportive and not a criticism!! 
)
“not proven” (i’m being polite)
i think there’s a big, important point you’re missing, there: it’s trivially easy to learn to wait for the appropriate set-up and execute it properly when you have a strategy that you KNOW has a proven edge that you have independently verified, yourself
in my opinion, that will be more helpful to reflect on more, rather than the pseudo-psychological mumbo-jumbo with which you’re currently distracting yourself! 
pleased to hear about your computer, though - and always wishing you well!
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Hi, send me pm at friday, we will talk about this problem. Regards Greg
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I’m taking a step back, and I’m gonna do something very basic. Also, something that I should have done a long time ago.
I know what my set ups look like. Or do I?
In my mind I seem to get my rules mixed up. So, I’m actually gonna re-write some my rules, along with pictures.
I need more concrete rules. Everything keeps getting mixed up in my head. That, mixed with desperation = wreckless trading.
I need a way to separate my strategies, without it getting too complicated and impractical.
I’m gonna take some time and think about. A couple ideas popped into my coconut, and I wrote them down.
I just gotta simplify things. I can’t just trade less. I have to have a clearer idea of what I’m waiting for.
I think part of my problem is trying to have a strategy for all the different conditions. For my S/R strategy, there are tons of conditions, but finite signs.
I wanna try keeping my strategy flexible for the conditions, and a little more rigid for the signs.
Instead of trying to remember or anticipate so many different scenarios, I’m gonna try to just wait and see what the market throws at me. As candles unfold, I’ll watch for the right conditions.
This may sound very obvious, but for some reason, in my mind is seems different. I’m trying to teach my brain to relax and not be so jumpy.
Instead of worrying about what each individual candle means, I can draw my S/R and just wait for price to hit that zone. If it does, great. If not, whatever.
My desperation has been in the driver seat for too long. Time to put that dude to sleep in the backseat.
