I think trading probably simple really and when one complicate s it ,they probably need a separate activity too .That maybe why certain people come on here to compensate the dullness of trading
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Keep at it I’m sure you find what you looking for eventually
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Today was ok. I got stopped out in a few places. And I got scared.
I can’t believe it. I got scared because I was wrong twice. My strategy says I could be wrong 3 times. But I got scared when I tried to sell and lost 2 times. So, the third time I went long. WRONG!! Now the pair is going short, and I could have have a GREAT win.
This strategy is a lot harder than I thought. I can’t believe I messed that up…
This is frustrating. This shows that even if you have a profitable strategy, the trader could be the reason there are no profits.
Oh man. I can’t believe I messed that up… This was a type of trade with a perfect entry that I’ve been trying to get right for a while. I got scared and didn’t keep going.
I’m going to be thinking about this for the rest of the day.
I’m upset about this. I’m at the point that studying more won’t help. Backtesting won’t help. Asking for advice won’t help. Looking at more charts and taking notes won’t help.
Everything external that I can do, I’ve done…for now.
I’m at the point where it’s all up to me. The profits are there. Now, it all comes down to following the strategy, being patient, and paying attention.
But being wrong twice really messes with you. Doing the same thing again feels wreckless and counter-intuitive. Frankly, it feels like you’re trying to lose on purpose by doing the same thing again.
If I lost twice, why would I do the SAME thing again???
But that’s the strategy. It’s for a reason. I added a reminder to my diagram that I could be wrong. I only added it in some places before.
Just now, I added to every step that I could be wrong 4 times. In a worst case scenario it could up to 6 times. But there was only one trade like that in my backtests.
It’s frustrating because it feels the same as leaving a stack of money on the table and not even taking it. I don’t mean you exit with some profits to avoid risking losing it.
I mean there’s a perfect trade, and you just fumble it. It’s feels like there’s a bag of money on the table, and instead you just say no thanks and you go looking for coins in the street.
It feels like that. But it’s no one’s fault but my own. I’m giving in to fear and letting my emotions get the best of me.
At some point I have to stop giving in to fear.
I just realized another error. When I took the trade this morning, and I was thinking about switching from sell to buy, I didn’t even consult my diagram.
However, I just checked and I’m not even sure the sample charts in the diagram would have helped. So, I took a screen shot of what happened today and added it.
I can’t have a sample screen shot to prepare me for every possible scenario, but I added today’s chart as a reminder of WHY to stick to the plan and keep taking losses.
So, there’s no point in analyzing and further backtesting. However, what I should do now is try to enhance my diagram, because that’s the tool that will do the thinking for me when it comes time to trade.
I took a look at my diagram for trading retracements, and I needs better sample screenshots. That’ll help me in the future.
I’m gonna keep adding to my diagram. I think when I’m ready to take a trade, I really gotta slow down and review my diagram.
Just take my time. If I don’t get to trade any other pairs, I shouldn’t worry about it.
I should focus on quality; not quantity.
Just like Lincoln sharpening his axe. I’m gonna try to keep this in mind.
Before going to sleep last night, I had a thought that recently I might be chasing false signals. I need more patience.
It’s basically FOMO. Switching from buy to sell, then sell to buy. I doubt my trades.
I have to follow my strategy, and WAIT for the signals. I get so scared that a random move is gonna happen. A big move is gonna happen and I’m gonna miss out.
I have to remember that those big moves usually don’t just randomly happen. There are clues. I get so scared that I chase anything that LOOKS like a signal. Sure, there are false signals in my strategy, but there are precursors to that–certain conditions.
I often ignore the surrounding conditions and just take trades. Sometimes, you just gotta take a chance because you never know. If you see a doji, and you’re not sure if it’s gonna go up or down, you place a straddle order. Next day, both orders got triggered and stopped out. Maybe that doji wasn’t even worth trading…you can’t win if you’re not in it.
That’s when you start taking losses and when you finally catch a win, you’re breaking even, maybe.
I’m still making some mistakes because I’m thinking about so many things at once. And it becomes extra confusing if I don’t have the answer in my diagram jumping out at me.
My mind gets super flustered and I can’t think clearly. Seriously. That’s when I start overthinking and concentrating on the wrong thing, and I’ll start considering details that aren’t even worth paying attention to.
¨What about this candle? What does that mean? What about that over there? Is that a sign? But that contradicts this candle here. Should I buy? But this candle here says I should sell.¨
This is when it’s time to move on to the next chart. This is when I need answers in my diagram. And if I don’t see them, I need to add them when my mind clears, so that next time, I’ll have something to help me.
I can’t beat myself up over these kinds of mistakes. I just have to be patient with myself. Sure, I want to get to profitability faster, but some things can’t be rushed. The only way to go faster, right now, is to work on my diagram and add helpful details for future trades.
I may have said this already….
I’m realizing how chaotic my trading is. I’m gonna have to add an element to my charts to help me decide how I’m trading that pair, and then stick to it.
But this was pretty much the first week testing my diagram live. I made some adjustments and I learned. Let’s see how next week goes.
Today was very very strange. I felt so so confused today about how to trade.
My brain is taking in too many signals. I’m having trouble filtering which signals I should follow, and which I should ignore.
Some trades I’m long, but I see something that makes me think I should be shorting.
That’s a sign of something I need to fix. I took a note on my notepad that should try studying some retracement/consolidation areas that present some confusion and how I should handle it.
I had no confidence in any of my trades. It’s very frustrating. It makes me feel like all my studying and trading has been in vain. How could I be studying and trading for this long, and be so confused?
With several trades, it only felt like whatever I do, the market will do the opposite.
It reminds me of The Disciplined Trader. He talked about when you have a strange relationship with the market.
I’m acting like the market is against me. The market’s not against anyone. It just does what it does.
I’ve said before that there are always clues to what the market is about to do. I can always see it in past charts. I feel like none of it helped me to day. I have to find out why.
It could be because there were so signals for me to respond to at the moment. And if there are no signals, then my brain is just gonna make something up.
This is a problem. My diagram didn’t help much. Maybe I was too anxious to understand it.
It also didn’t help that I went to bed late, woke up late, and had less time to trade.
One pattern I’ve been noticing is that I just keep making new mistakes.
Every time the market consolidates or swings, I make new mistakes.
But the new mistakes don’t turn into profits.
I have no idea what was wrong with me today.
The decision should be simple. Buy, sell, or wait. If you’re not sure, do you still stay out? Gotta be in it to win it, right?
Is it better to just do nothing?
Any strategy has multiple elements to it. Mine has several possible signals. However, they’re not formally prioritized. If there are two or three signals in a consolidation, which one do I follow in order to trade the breakout?
Backtesting should reveal that. Sure, numbers don’t lie. Charts don’t lie. Research and data is black and white.
However, the error occurs in the interpretation of that data. I need to finda way to avoid what happened to me this morning. I felt completely lost in my trades. If I’m feeling like I’m gonna lose no matter what I do, then something’s wrong.
I was flooded with emotions. The more I looked at the chart, the more confused and frustrated I felt. No helpful clues jumped out at me. The more I saw, the more confused I was.
It’s funny how different set-ups look when your emotions aren’t running. I think I should further reduce how many pairs I’m watching. Perhaps just five. I want to focus on quality; not quantity.
I must admit that I tried going thru the first few pairs on my list, and I felt rushed to make it to the end of my list.
I’m further reducing my list to 6 pairs. It’s actually uncomfortable deleting more charts. It feels like I’m saying good-bye to opportunities to make money. Obviously, that’s not the case. If it was, I wouldn’t be deleting them in the first place.
I will continue to study various pairs to gain an understanding of price action, but I’ll only be trading these 6 pairs.
Trading is a lot easier this morning with only 6 pairs to watch. I’m taking my time. However, I’m noticing that I’m running the risk of taking too long to assess what’s happening in the chart.
I think this is good practice though. Once I noticed I was taking too long, I tried to focus a bit more on what I was seeing in the next chart. Above, recent high? Nope. Below recent low? Nope. Any reversal signals? Nope. Ok, next.
I added a ¨thoughts¨ page to my journal. I haven’t journaled my thoughts in a long time. Finding the most comfortable format will take some trial and error (spreadsheet vs word document), but it feels pretty good to write my thoughts.
Trading seems easier on the brain, today. Just six pairs. I’m watching the charts, and logging my thoughts in my journal. I went with the word doc, by the way.
I’ve complained about how I get distracted and take longer breaks. However, I’m feeling like perhaps that’s not such a bad thing. When I’m thinking hard, sometimes I need to do something else, to let my thoughts move to the back of my brain and just simmer a little bit. Kinda like how people often get ideas in the shower.
Distracting myself, but coming back to the task, is a way of giving my brain some space to think and process the situation.
I’ve been writing in my excel spreadsheet and in my emotional journal. Writing here seems redundant, but this is a bit different because I’m writing to share here.
I don’t know.
Anyway, no good trades to mention. I seriously have a problem following my strategy. I did it again. I got confused in a trade because there were mixed signals. There SHOULD be a priority. But I didn’t make one…(I added it to the diagram just now).
I was feeling like my diagram wasn’t guiding me thru the mixed signals. I had two signals. I didn’t have any answers about what I should do. There were no clear answers. Or maybe I was too distracted to follow what the diagram was showing me.
GBP/USD, EUR/USD, and AUD/CAD were looking super similar, and each had slightly different signals, and I was mixing the signs from all three. I was buying, selling, buying, selling. Switching sides several times; each with a loss. This is ridiculous.
However, this is the first time I’ve ever watched my trades so closely. I’m learning a lot, which is nice. But eventually, I’ve gotta be along side the trend, not two steps behind.
And when the fakeout candle hit, it made sense, and I thought I was wrong, so I closed and reversed my position. Then, I figured out just now that it was a fakeout, and I didn’t take advantage and trade it. So I lost again.
My problem this time was feeling like my diagram had no answers for me. Perhaps I was so confused and BELIEVED that my diagram had no answers.
What can I do for next time? I’ll have to think about it.
I just took a look at one of the six pairs I’m watching. I see everything clearly now. The signs were all there, but I was so paranoid about missing out, I was worried about what each move means.
For me, when it comes to reversals, momentum is king. If a swing is losing momentum, it’s a wrap. There may be a couple more candles that push price a little more, but it’s ok to take those losses because that trend is about to reverse.
My problem was that I doubted the strategy because of other candles of a weaker significance.
I could have traded those weaker signals, then jumped back in on the major trend after that fakeout/retracement ended. But I mistook that retracement for a reversal.
And I was so flustered and confused that I didn’t even consult my diagram. I thought my diagram had no answers, and it did.
I got an idea last night. I mentioned before about writing notes on each chart. But I got an idea to do that a little differently.
When I say writing notes on the chart, it’s just a text box. It’s really the same thing as what I would write in my spreadsheet. But now, I think I wanna try detailing what is happening. If a trend is losing momentum, draw where I think that’s happening. If there is a support or resistance area, draw the line and label it if necessary.
Then maybe I can even write instructions for what I should do next. ¨If price breaks this support, go long¨ or whatever it could be.
Hopefully, this will help me follow the strategy and not deviate from the plan.
But a problem I think I have is that when I see a big candle (for example), I’ll think ¨wow, price is going that direction now? I guess I was wrong and I should jump on that trend.¨
However, my strategy tells me to hold. My greed and FOMO is so desperate that I think my strategy is wrong, so I reverse my position. Then, the next day, I see that price reversed again, and is going in my original direction.
So, that’s how I end up doing the panic dance. Buy, sell, buy.
I’ll try it this week and see how it goes.
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I will say that I’m grateful for one thing: I’m not constantly changing my strategy. I may add small things to help me apply the strategy or something like that.
But I’m not removing steps, then adding them back. So, that part, I’m grateful for.
The rest is up to me.
It’s just so funny how easily a trader can ruin a profitable strategy.
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