A very long day for me....been working my ass off...its 1030 and ive been on this damn computer since 7 this morning. I decided to get a E-book business going in my spare time. I have alot of spare time, and the extra beer money wouldnt hurt. I have like 1000 e-books. But anyways i spent all day going through them, decidng what ones to throw on ebay, and also getting each one a template for auctions. Lots of work. I did 75 auctions today for them. Going to post them all on ebay for a test run. See the supply and demand to determine prices, and also supply and demand to see which ones to keep posting and which ones to take off it. But anyways, not sure why i am saying this is my trading journal...but i guess ill be working on this alot, and i can keep ya in line with this.
Reason im posting this thread is because ive been thinking all day non stop...whats the one most thing that affects my tradingy..and it clicked!! The PNL is what effects it. I keep such good records of my PNL its so stupid. I know exactly how much im up or down for the week, month every trading day. Two examples...friday...i knew i was down 150ish gross for the week...so all i wanted to do was make that back..and i traded my ass off to make it back..and i did...i got lucky...and today... i had one bad trade in the morning, and so what do i do rvenge trade and end up losing more. I need to stop thinking money...and just trade!! Money is my only emotional problem.
I came across a article tonight by Martin Niemi...i think of it as a sign...kinda random i ran across this on accident, when im having this problem...but here it is...
The above is a very interesting statement. Sure, most everybody wants to go to heaven but I can't think of anyone I know that wants to pay the price right now to do that. Funny, but trading is much the same. People want to make a lot of money. People want to be full time traders. But, not many people will pay the price by grinding it out one trade at a time. We say we will ... we want to ... we try to, but we start to look ahead and some how or another we always seem to come up short. Why is that?
A large part of the problem is that traders tend to think about the money too much. It becomes very psychological, very emotional and therefore almost impossible. People spend so much time "line iteming" the wrong issues, i.e. "How much can I make this month?", "I only need an additional two grand a month to make my bogie!", "How much size can the market handle?" yada, yada, yada ... all of which has little or nothing to do with the current trade!
Do you think you can be profitable every day? Do you think you can make $12,000 per month trading? Most everyone will say yes because they want to! But, in the back of our minds it's more like " NO WAY! Nobody makes money every day. Why do we think that? Well usually because our thought process is skewed and secondly we've never known any one who could.
On the other hand, how many times have you taken a few trades and made 5 to 7 tics? Probably a lot! And how many times have you struck out at the end of the day or week by going for the long ball instead of taking the walk? Unfortunately, more often or not. Why? Usually because we think to much and way to far ahead.
What if we could trick ourselves into not thinking about the money, not thinking about market size etc., and just think about the next trade? I'll bet we could make money every day! And what does 7 tics per day, at $31.25 per tic, twenty trading days per month add up to? If you can forget about the answer to that question, you're on the right track. If you get excited and obsess about it and plan it out and put it into multiple budgets and spreadsheets, then don't bother to go on because you're thinking is skewed and you will probably fail.
Starting tomorrow, i will not keep my PNL screen up...i will have it minimized just because it has a nice bail button on it
and i use that alot...but if i find myslef still looking at it alot...ill close it...i also am going to stop keeping track of my daily PNL...its not important...i will just keep track of volume, and on saturday ill post my NET PnL in my journal. I just need to stay away from the money aspect of this as much as possible.
