There was a mistake with the first message of this thread, December was the conclusion to my first profitable year, and it wasn't my first profitable month. It took me 3.5 months to break even.
As for help from other traders, let's just say I have not learned anything from this board that truly changed the way I trade, I have learned quite a few concepts but none of them ever helped me make a dime. Although I have to say that I started to pay attention to the concept of Tony Oz 3 day reversals for additional confirmation, and my next experimentation would be of course the 30/60/120 minute charts. If someone really helped me I let the entire board and my entire team for that matter know about it. Tony's books are on my desk at work for all to borrow and look through, see if they can find a piece of wisdom or two.
I would rather see people telling me what works for them rather than pick on my trades. I have been trading long enough to know what I am doing and I don't need people to tell me whether a trade is good or bad, the market teaches that and I am sensible enough to know that I need some adjustments. Save the generic advices and psychology, what do you think I write this journal for, I remind myself where my psychology is every day and I can tell you going into a 3 day weekend with a 3 games losing streak is tearing me apart as with the exception of being with her I would rather be trading than doing anything else right now.
If I ever use someone else's idea as a bread and butter set-up, whether it is Tony Oz's 3 day reversals or Brandon's 30 minute charts you can be sure that I will give all the praises in the world to them. The truth is I have not got anything useful from this board yet, it is a lot easier to say "gee you gotta do xxx" than actually do it. It is very easy to throw me a trade that worked text book perfect without giving me detail why you did it. Gee I shorted QQQ at lunch time and I shorted it all the way into the close for 75 cents, what made you think the market will tank? Was it a certain resistance level? Was it a certain chart pattern? Wow I took two Oz bottompicker plays and they rocked! Out of all the signals generated by that filter, why those two? What were the SUBTLE YET VITAL pieces of information that sealed the deal? What made you went long as opposed of going short? How did you make up your biase?
Those are the bread and butter that can really feed those of us in a slump. "The shotgun approach does not work in a choppy market", gee, I just lost 3 straight games, I know that already, thanks . . . "You don't listen" Well first of all, the number of people worth listening to on this board, that actually offer anything of value, I can count them on one hand, if I took all the advices thrown my way I wouldn't be trading.
I post my journal as a way to communicate with others and if I learned anything new at all I would say so, I never expected to learn anything useful from a board like this as I don't believe anyone would give me their bread and butter set-up to the level I expose my own trades. And unless you can actually help me make some money with some SPECIFIC techniques, I take your comment as valuable as anyone else's. Telling me first 30 minute is risky is of zero help as the time period makes or breaks my day.