Nicely put! Just about the best and most succinct description of trading that I have ever read! 
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I’ve been collecting signs for each of my different strategies. I was wondering if there’s any difference between them.
So, I’m collecting more samples, separating and editing them. I wanna compare them and see if I can distinguish one from the others.
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When I was practicing charts, I was more confident in my trades. But since I stopped practicing my charts and began working on collecting samples, my confidence has decreased.
I think I missed a signal last week due to fear. I even thought about taking it, but I was also scared of taking the loss.
This fear of loss is really distracting me. After I study the signs I’m working on right now, I’ll get back to practicing charts.
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The only key to solve your problem is by understanding market structure. This is the only tools. Otherwise, you are betting the market.
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I’m wondering what my fear is about. It’s more than just fear of loss. At the same time, I want a sign that feels 100% trustworthy. Of course, no such sign exists.
It’s simply a matter of being right, more than you’re wrong. That’s it. That’s the whole point of trusting the strategy.
Actually, because I swing trade, I don’t even have to be right more than I’m wrong. For my strategy, it’s the opposite. I’ll be wrong at least 50% of the time; it could even be 75% of the time. But catching the swing will cover the losses plus yield profit.
As I do my analysis, I feel like tossing it all and just saying ¨I’ll wing it and just do my best¨. That might work, but it hasn’t worked yet. Therefore, I MUST do something different.
Sometimes, my entry signal is an unexpected sign. Sometimes, the sign is quite tricky and I feel like I’m guessing.
Then, of course, I’m kicking myself for not taking the signal. There is no perfect trading. It will be messy, it will be unexpected, sometimes it’s just plain ol’ bonkers.
My problem is that I’m expecting it to be none of those things. I want it feel safe.
The market will NEVER be that.
The best I can do is practice my strategy. Practice it until I understand it, then trust it in the market.
There’s really not much else to it. I’m quite sure I’m overcomplicating things whenever I feel frustrated or lost.
I see a sign, and I go back and forth about taking it or not. I did this just last week. Then I think about the loss, and I conclude that it’s better to wait for a sign that’s clearer.
Then, at the end of the month, I wonder why my account balance isn’t growing.
I have to be willing to take more chances. If I’m not willing to take more chances, then all the charts, practice, and analysis in the world won’t mean a thing. There is no routine, no book, no chart, no mantra that will make me feel like I’m doing the right thing when I take a signal.
It all comes down to educated guesses. That’s it.
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The conflicts in your mind comes from your skill.
I was like you before. The reason are:
- You don’t know how to analyze market and it gives doubts and confusions.
- Next, afraid of losing comes from money management. You are afraid because you use money above your limit. Know your limit on learning phase.
- Confusions because you are using a strategy without knowing its stats. Don’t ask others strategy and use it blindly. You need to know its stats and feel if it fits you.
The way to solve the problem is
- Learn about market structure. When you know how it works, you will have confident and know why to trade.
- Find a strategy that fit your profile. Look for the stats, so you know the risk by implementing it.
- Honest with your money management. Don’t ever use money you are not affordable to loss.
- Do back testing yourself. Your stats will give you confident. Most people loss in trading because they trade something without sufficient experience or knowledge.
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I thinking more about my last post. Sure, I wanna practice more charts, but I think my biggest hurdle is trusting my strategy and TAKING the trade.
Just last week, I suspected two setups to be valid, but in the end I didn’t take them. Now, it seems they’re trending in my favour.
I could study charts for another 10 years, and none of it will matter if I don’t improve my risk tolerance. Trade through the fear.
It would be unfortunate to waste time simply over the fear of loss.
I’m over complicating it, I think. I really do. Not always, but when I see most of the setups, I seriously wonder how it’s possible to miss it. It’s harder to miss it than to actually catch it. That’s what goes through my coconut when I see these trades.
I made a plan to focus on exactly this: execution. But I get distracted by other things. Right now, I’m trying to understand my signals better. I think that makes sense, though.
Regardless, instead of focusing on execution, I took a step back to focus on something else, even though it’s related.
I think I should really just focus on execution and stop getting distracted with other things, whether or not they’re related/helpful.
I got distracted before because I was focusing on trading my long-term strategy, but kept coming across short-term trades.
Blah blah blah.
I’m really overcomplicating things.
Practice long-term for a week, practice short-term for a week, the mix the two and practice both of them for a month. Simple.
I’m gonna take a few minutes to organize my July 2024.
Hi @dushimes … your problem is simple.
You said, you can see your setup. That means you have a workable strategy.
You don’t have confident only. It gives impact to your risk tolerance.
The solution is simple.
- Don’t trade with real account. Trade with your demo account, or if you feel, it’s not challenging, use a micro / cent account. You make deposit of 10 USD it will convert to 1 000 USC.
- Try to open every position base on your strategy, look for the stats. Stats means Win Rate, Profit Factor, Consecutive Loss / Profit. Try it for 3 months. You will know if your methodology is a real one or just our short time imagination.
- If you have collected the stats, and it’s a real one (profitable), you can design a good money management for your methodology.
- Next, implementing your money management. You can start to increase the lot size in your micro account. Or if you are confident enough, try 0.01 lot with standard account.
No successful trader can skip this route. Wish you luck 
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That’s what I’m working on…Thanks!
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I’m reviewing some charts, and sometimes I have difficulty formulating my signals. It’s very difficult for me to say when I see this thing, it’s a sign; or when I see that thing, it’s not a sign.
Sometimes it’s a sign, sometimes it’s not. It just depends. Trying to formulate it creates so many rules, it becomes an impractical guide to follow.
There are signs, of course, but there are other signs as well. And, it also depends on the market conditions.
There are times, I just gotta feel it. I worry that I’m not trading correctly if I can’t quantify it exactly. I’ve written my strategy down, but in application it seems vague.
To follow my strategy, one would have to study and practice charts for an undetermined amount of time.
Hmmm…You posted this earlier - fair enough persistence pays off. But where the dripping water drops one can see tangible evidence of the progress being made, albeit so slowly…
But if you are not seeing the tangible evidence maybe a more appropriate message might be:
A strategy should not be so difficult to analyse. In fact, preferably, it should be shouting at you and not hiding from you.
I think the key aspect of a strategy lies not in whether it always gets the direction right, but how much it loses when wrong compared with what it gains when it is right.
From Mark Douglas “trading in the zone”:
“Trading presents us with a fundamental paradox: How do we remain disciplined, focused, and confident in the face of constant uncertainty? When you have learned how to “think” like a trader, that’s exactly what you’ll be able to do. Learning how to redefine your trading activities in a way that allows you to completely accept the risk is the key to thinking like a successful trader. Learning to accept the risk is a trading skill—the most important skill you can learn.”
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It does! It seems the biggest problem I have is overcoming the fear and taking the trade. Just last week, I should have take two signs, but I didn’t. Very often, I fear losing and scare myself out of taking the trade.
Sure I wanna work on the technical aspect more, but execution is a huge problem right now. Has been for quite a while.
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Actually, here is one other quote from Mark Douglas which may help unravel the underlying issue(s) here - in a positive way, of course:
“The hard, cold reality of trading is that every trade has an uncertain outcome. Unless you learn to completely accept the possibility of an uncertain outcome, you will try either consciously or unconsciously to avoid any possibility you define as painful. In the process, you will subject yourself to any number of self-generated, costly errors.”
This point may be entirely up the wrong street, but the principle, anyway, is that unless one can identify the cause one cannot start to find the solution?
.
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This is what I’m working on, as well. I realised that I expect a guaranteed sign, and there’s no such thing.
A working strategy includes more profits than losses–on average, not every trade. I have trouble with this, too.
Trading is not about certainty–it’s about educated guesses. That’s it. No need to complicate it.
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Precisely! I am trying to find another excerpt from his book that addresses this very point - but in the meantime, does this ring a bell with you? If nothing else, it confirms that what you are going through is totally understandable, normal - and extremely common amongst traders. There is some comfort in that!
*There’s a big difference between predicting that something will happen in the market (and thinking about all the money you could have made) and the reality of actually getting into and out of trades. I call this difference, and others like it, a “psychological gap” that can make trading one of the most difficult endeavors you could choose to undertake and certainly one of the most mysterious to master. The big question is: Can trading be mastered? Is it possible to experience trading with the same ease and simplicity implied when you are only watching the market and thinking about success, as opposed to actually having to put on and take off trades? Not only is the answer an unequivocal “yes,” but that’s also exactly what this book is designed to give you—the insight and understanding you need about yourself and about the nature of trading. So the result is that actually doing it becomes as easy, simple, and stress-free as when you are just watching the market and thinking about doing it. This may seem like a tall order, and to some of you it may even seem impossible. But it’s not."
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This quote is not quite the one I was looking for but handles the same unique paradox that we traders need to accept. Each trade is unique and a total uncertainty and can go either way - and yet we know that, over time, our edge will work to our advantage. We need to focus on the big picture and not just each footprint along the way:
“…you’ve built a mental framework that allows you to recognize a set of variables in the market’s behavior that indicates when an opportunity to buy or sell is present. This is your edge and something you know. However, what you don’t know is exactly how the pattern your variables identify will unfold…you know that your edge places the odds of success in your favor, but, at the same time, you completely accept the fact that you don’t know the outcome of any particular trade.”
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Right. And I shouldn’t worry about it either… When I practice my charts, there’s never a need to move my SL to BE. Protecting myself from loss, often causes me to get stopped out. I have to just leave it alone and let the market do what it does.
Sure, I could get stopped out 2 or three times, but eventually I catch the entry and recoup my losses plus profit. I only need a hit rate of 25%. Trading swings works like that.
Just gotta be patient, and be willing to make a mistake.
Are you diligently journalling all your signals according to your strategy (regardless of whether you actually trade them or not)?
If so, what are the results?
If not, why not?
Surely, that is the only way to gain confidence stemming from a positive expectancy derived from your journal results?
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No, not journaling, per se. It’s worth considering again. But I mark all my trades, and trades I should’ve/wish I had taken.
The signals are all valid. But I just chicken out, basically. Sometimes, I still make some technical mistakes and read the charts wrong. That’s why I wanna keep studying/practicing charts.
But everytime I review my past trades, there’s nothing I haven’t seen already. The signs remain the same. The problem is ME!