Remind me NEVER to break rules at your house!
“GET IN THE SHOWER”
Glad to see you are holding yourself to your rules.
I hope you have a plan on how to assess if the rules still fit correctly on a regular basis, and in a robust manner.
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I don’t think punishing yourself for breaking your rules is the answer.
You know the famous routine of “good guy, bad guy”? Well, it seems you are painting your rules set as the “bad guy” and your “inner self”, the gambler, as the “good guy”.
You set your own rules, but you don’t want to observe them! You need to learn to love your rules not hate them. If you love them and devote yourself to them because of the values that you created them for, then you will put all your effort into finding every opportunity to use them. Love is never a passive emotion. it moves us, and with incredible energy and persistence.
Love your rules and cherish them and instead of a cold shower just bathe in the warm feeling of success from something you created yourself.
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@SovoS I hear you, but my personal problem is chronic low self-esteem. And it is of a self-sabotage nature. However, it’s a double-edged sword because I use the same low self-esteem to drive myself foward.
It works for me in some ways, and against me in others. Just like nunchakus.
You can either hit yourself in the head, or use it for self defense. You just gotta learn how to use it.
And that’s what I’m doing. I’m learning how to control it. Trading triggers my bad emotions (doubt, arrogance, desperation), and my trading plan keeps them under control and gives my emotions structure.
This morning, I had one journal entry to do and I looked at the EUR/USD chart.
It’s going green, and I almost clicked the button to start opening a trade. But I stopped immediately.
I told myself “I will follow my trading plan.” I finished my journal entry, and started drawing S/R lines for everything that could be significant.
I realised I didn’t have enough time to finish the trade properly, so I set some alerts and that’s it.
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Could be worse, could be a sansetsukon! 
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“You are a monk! You must show mercy!”
“Even Buddha punishes evil.”
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Just had an idea…If there is a move I’m confident about, I could try to open a position early, but the purpose of this is to get in so early that your SL is maybe .5% or even.25%
So, if you lose, your loss is incredibly small. But if you win, you have all those pips before getting an actual entry signal.
I feel like this is something I want to try, assuming the SL is super inexpensive.
I’d note that as a discretionary trade in your notes as an EXTRA trade then add to the position when the indicator gives you the go.
Once you have enough data you can then decide whether your discretionary ones are gaining or costing you money!
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Ok. Fair enough. Thanks!
There is certainly nothing wrong with giving oneself a bit of freedom as long as the risk is quantified and accepted upfront so one does not get disappointed if it goes wrong. And @chrisfraser05 idea of keeping a separate record of these is very sensible.
But what is interesting here is how and why one does become “confident” about a move. I am sure we all do it but do we really know where this gut feeling originates.
I would suggest that for traders there are two main sources. Either a conscious/sub-conscious absorption of news/opinions that we read and hear along the way (e.g. the possible affects of the latest US gigantic support package on inflation and dollar value), or from a general overview of the charts we look at (e.g. so-called naked trading).
The first of these, a kind of pseudo-fundamental analysis, is unlikely to succeed consistently because. like all fundamental issues, it can take time to materialise and in the meantime price will often take out such close stops that you are talking about even if it eventually turns out that our view was correct. There is also a real risk here of temptation to keep moving the stop level further away because of the conviction that one is correct, let me remind you of this from one of your earliest posts here:
The second, the naked chart picture, perhaps has a better basis for success and is a form of intuitive Price Action analysis, where you are at least evaluating the majority of active actual participation in the market rather than just a personal hunch.
But give it a go, keep it small, document the reasoning and analyse the results. Whatever the outcome you will learn a lot about trading and yourself! 
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You raise a good point. Where does one feel confident? For me, if I’m seeing several signs that something will move a certain way, then it does move exactly as I thought, I’m feeling confident. Not invincible, but confident.
Of course, no one ones where price will ever go. But, if it does go my way, then reverses, moving my SL will lock me in at a 2-3% profit, or at least break even.
And that’s something I’m doing more of now: moving my SL up.
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I agree. A hunch is not sufficient. When I say “confident”, I’m referring to price action.
However, what I’m working on is seeing the action for what it is—not what I want it to be.
So, today is a step in that direction. I placed a EUR/USD long trade. But I lowered my TP to where it would probably stop, not where I WANT it to stop.
After that I noticed another area that could be problematic. So, at least now I’m a bit more prepared for what could be coming.
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I guess you were pleased with the direction of this trade after you posted this? Are you still in it for longer term or did you reach your target? I was also long EU yesterday as a day trade but it started to struggle just under my target, just below 1.20, so I closed it manually. I don’t have a view on EU right now.
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Actually, I moved my SL up yesterday so, I managed to break even.
This was my first time I did any SL management.
I got stopped out but I didn’t lose anything.
“Protect your money” was running thru my mind.
When you closed manually, did you break you trading plan?
This is one of the best ways to learn. You get many experienced traders here who would be able to help you. As a beginner, you have the right approach to learn and improve yourself. I am wishing you all the luck.
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In principle, this is good practice, but with reservations. I would suggest only moving the SL when there is a new point that would clearly form a new suitable stop level such as a new low/high, etc, or when the price has reached a certain number of pips in order to avoid a decent gain turning into a loss.
But it should still leave the trade with sufficient room to “breathe” to avoid accidental stop outs.
This is, of course, a very important point, but, again, it is important to ensure the trade still has room to move especially in the early stages when price can often retest an earlier level before continuing the more in the right direction. Protecting equity should not simultaneously stifle profit opportunities.
No it didn’t.
My entries and trend-following are based on EMA’s, but my targets and stops are based on PA, mainly patterns, trendlines and S/R levels.
But I do not trade entirely mechanically and I leave open a discretionary option to change things if there is a good reason. In this case, my target PA level was 1.20 which is both an earlier S/R level and a strong so-called pyscho-resistance level, being a whole number. There is no rationality behind that but many traders focus on round numbers.
So my target was just below this level and we got within a few pips of it. But it hung around there for several hours without pushing higher and so the discretionary element here went:
“This is a day trade and it is within a few pips of target so the potential additional small gain from waiting any longer is not sensible compared with the potential for a quick drop away from this level and losing the day trade profit.”
Time is an interesting element to consider in decision-making instead of just price. In this case, the level was one that a lot of traders would be watching and it became apparent after a few hours that there was not sufficient additional buying interest to push it that bit higher. This may not matter in a longer term trade where the level is just an interim point along the way to something higher, but is significant in an intraday type trade where the level was a terminal target.
Just some thoughts!
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OK. I like your idea of not being totally mechanical. But, I don’t want to break my trading plan.
For example, I have two short-term strategies for opening and closing trades: MA and trend line. If I open because of a TL, I have to close when price crosses the TL.
If price crosses the MA, I hold until it crosses the MA again.
I have a DKK trade that was upswinging, and I could tell it was running out of steam. But, not based on numbers. I just had a gut feeling that it has been running for a while and a pullback was due. I told myself that I would keep it open until it crossed the MA again, but I also wanted to lock in my profits and short it during its pullback.
I wasn’t sure if I was breaking my rules or not. So, I left it alone.
The next day, it pullback! I was kind of annoyed that I missed out.
So, going forward I’m going to add an additional trade. One for MA and one for TL trades. Or just TL so I can profit all directions the price moves in.
@SovoS I understand what you’re saying about leaving room for price to breathe. That’s why I brought the SL up to $0, but not any higher. I saw @tommor call it “ratcheting SL”. I should have done it that way. Next time.
We agree with you and this is easy to do once we have overcome the mental barrier of the absolutes. For a learning trader and has not master the skills, it is difficult because like you said, trading is about probability. Trading requires a different mentality where everything is relative. What works for one person might not work for another. That is why we see legendary traders using different trading systems. And yet they are successful because their system fits their personality.
As many of us here have experienced, I am sure, that you have seen where you do the EXACT same things, yet the results differ. So we are confused because most of us are not trained for the world of probabilities and game theory.
We human are creatures of causality. We like to find the reasons WHY things happened the way they happened, hence trying to find the cause. Yet, often time same causes, yet different results.
Anyway, love reading your input as it give me another perspectives.
Abdul
MFM Team
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Think of the markets like this picture…some see buy…some see sell…both are correct in their own timeframes…price analysis is over-rated in my opinion…traders need to focus more on time analysis…have a great weekend!
Abdul
MFM Team
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Thanks for the input. But I don’t understand what you mean by “time analysis”. Could you elaborate a bit more, please?
Cheers.
A simple (the most simple?) exit technique I use for profitable long-term trend-following in forex is to exit at the close of the third consecutive day that price has closed in the same direction. So if you get into a long, exit at the third consecutive higher close, exit a short art the third consecutive lower close.
This is easy to check and confirm on a recent D1 chart of your selected pair - e.g. how often is a third higher close in an uptrend followed by a fourth higher close?
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