Getting my act together

Quote from BoyBrutus:

Seems to me before you can concentrate on your trading you need to get your health and emotional wellbeing in order.

Can I suggest, since this is your journal detail your weight and exercise goals lets see your improvements in those first. I'm not looking for baby steps :D

You need to build some positive momentum in other things in you life which you can then channel into you trading.
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When my daughter was hospitalized we had to do some family therapy with a psychologist at the hospital. That was more than 6 months ago. Through the therapy it was determined I had major depression. I thought it was just stress but when a psychiatrist gave me some meds to try, my stress dropped way down. I was on meds for a month and during that time I stopped eating like a horse and the weight started coming off. I was at 295 at the time. Since then I've kept a log on my food intake and whether it's stress related eating. I'm currently at 246 with a long term goal of 185. I know this type of trading is tiring so having the weight loss goal is just as important to me as working from the emotions side.
 
Quote from HunterGatherer:

Have you considered cutting yourself off after losing a predetermined amount in one day?
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No, but I see where you got the idea.

I intentionally violated the work required before trading and paid for it with large losses. My emotions got the better of me. Unfortunately it hasn't been the only time. I'm a little wiser now.

My wife had surgery in June of this year and went through physical therapy through July. That's why I did no trades during June and July. I've learned to back off whenever stressful events hit me because I lose my discipline.
 
Quote from balda:

What charts (time frame) do you use for such a short routine (6 sec.)?
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I use a software package called Street Trader. It allows you to synch updates between charts. I use 6 sec. because I think that's the update frequency for the $tick from esignal. Everytime a update hits $tick it cuts off the updates to the other charts and they start the next bar. All I'm looking for are relative values like is chart 1 higher/lower than the prev. bar while chart 2 is lower/higher. Sometimes I have empty cells on some charts so this isn't perfect.
 
Quote from Bearbelly:

Interesting post. Care to share how you filter out the arb?
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Calculate estimates for buy and sell arbitrage for the day then watch $prem to make sure when a market looks weak it's not about to trigger a buy program.
 
9/26 Trading

When I started my trading process after the open, the market was very strong. I started up my trade entry software and by the time I had the DOM up the ES had moved to 1337.00. I figured I missed the entry but the market was nice enough to come back down to 1336.00. At that point I had a screaming buy so I put on a long trade at 1336.25. It was profitable nearly from the start. Once again after it hit 2 points of profit I felt very uncomfortable. I did all I could to hold myself back but gave up when it hit 1339.00. I put on the exit and got filled at 1338.75. At least I held for a tick more than yesterday even though I had no signs of a reversal.
I'm happy I held a little longer and expect to do even better as time passes.

+118.96
 

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Been exhausting time watching the markets today. Two opportunities at short trades, but each time the ES dropped by .5 before I could get a trade off, so I balked. The first shot was around 9:10 CT. No opportunities to get long. Market has been trading normally just about the whole day. No commitment from institutions to do much so far.
 
Could the lack of interest by institutions today be due to the 3 day settlement on stocks? Yesterday would have been the last trade date to settle this quarter. If so, tomorrow there could be lots of selling as they unload the "window dressing".
 
Took a trade based only on momentum. No trades from my normal method. Soon after entry I was sure the trade would be no good. Price action was bad. When tick went over 1,000 I exited the trade. Hopefully tomorrow will have some decent opportunities.

+18.96
 

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Last night was my day off. Felt lousy yesterday so I went to bed at 4 pm. Didn't wake up until 4am today. Have a cold and still feel lousy. Tried to do normal trading today but everytime I saw a trade, by the time I got ready to send in a order, the market had already moved. After missing 3 trades of +2pts, I took a 2 hour break. Felt like I was moving in slow motion. Didn't want to miss a move this afternoon so I took my trade in "anticipation" of selling by institutions. Of course it didn't happen and I was lucky to get out of the day with a profit.

+6.46
 

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