Maintaining Self Discipline

[studentofthemarkets]

Took 1 winning trade and stopped for the day. That is, I stopped in my demo account.

Then I decided to take a trade in my real account in the micros. But after losing the first trade, I decided to get back my $ and instead lost a total of $45. I fudged with the SL and TP and fudged some of my other rules and ended up with 4 winners and 12 losers and a 25% win rate. 2 of those winners didn't even get 10 ticks.

This is so discouraging. I've been warned that trading live is so much harder than demo trading and for me it really was, because I didn't want to stick to my rules.

I really don't have a solid winrate on the 10 tick SL and 10 tick TP for the past month. If I work at that some more and get the win rate higher, maybe I'll have confidence to stick to the rules when trading live.

Another thing that I can do to improve is to learn to recognize the price action that I tend to do better in. Trading ranges is not one of them, and I kind of knew it, but didn't want to stop trading.

So, for today, my demo account is positive and my live account is negative. And the most likely reason my demo account is negative is because of my lack of self-discipline.

 

[Specterx]

Took 1 winning trade and stopped for the day. That is, I stopped in my demo account.

Then I decided to take a trade in my real account in the micros. But after losing the first trade, I decided to get back my $ and instead lost a total of $45. I fudged with the SL and TP and fudged some of my other rules and ended up with 4 winners and 12 losers and a 25% win rate. 2 of those winners didn't even get 10 ticks.

This is so discouraging. I've been warned that trading live is so much harder than demo trading and for me it really was, because I didn't want to stick to my rules.

I really don't have a solid winrate on the 10 tick SL and 10 tick TP for the past month. If I work at that some more and get the win rate higher, maybe I'll have confidence to stick to the rules when trading live.

Another thing that I can do to improve is to learn to recognize the price action that I tend to do better in. Trading ranges is not one of them, and I kind of knew it, but didn't want to stop trading.

So, for today, my demo account is positive and my live account is negative. And the most likely reason my demo account is negative is because of my lack of self-discipline.

You're barking up the wrong tree. You'll never make consistent profits (let alone large profits) trying to scalp index futures for ticks, especially not with symmetric reward to risk.

My advice:
- Reduce your trade frequency drastically, take only 1-3 setups per month per instrument.
- Monitor 10-20 futures contracts and trade those which have the potential for large moves on any given day (if any of them do). Yes this means you will need to do significant prep outside market hours, look at daily charts, etc.
- Aim for winners to be 5-10 times as large as losers. Yes this is only achievable on rare one-way trend days or V-type reversal days - hence the 1-3 setups per month.

Good luck.

 

[studentofthemarkets]

You're barking up the wrong tree. You'll never make consistent profits (let alone large profits) trying to scalp index futures for ticks, especially not with symmetric reward to risk.

My advice:
- Reduce your trade frequency drastically, take only 1-3 setups per month per instrument.
- Monitor 10-20 futures contracts and trade those which have the potential for large moves on any given day (if any of them do). Yes this means you will need to do significant prep outside market hours, look at daily charts, etc.
- Aim for winners to be 5-10 times as large as losers. Yes this is only achievable on rare one-way trend days or V-type reversal days - hence the 1-3 setups per month.

Good luck.

Thanks for the suggestions! I have a plan in mind to eventually move to larger profits after learning to get only 10 ticks at a time. For now, I'm focused on my method and want to see if I can get it to work. If not, I'll make adjustments.

 

[studentofthemarkets]

After thinking over today's trading, I've decided to continue trading the MicroNQ live. I came up with a very long list of adjustments to it, such as adjusting the SL after it moves into profit, but then I figured it would be too difficult on me to keep my stat records accurate if I am trading live and demo accounts differently. My demo account is finally profitable and I want to be able to replicate that in live trading. So I'll keep the rules the same. There will be a time to make adjustments, but I'll like make them one at a time so that any effects the change has will be very clear.

Also, by taking at least one trade live each day it should help me a lot with learning to have losses and not revenge trade.

In my live account I will go by the same rules I've been following in my demo. I will stop for the day after one losing trade but take as many winning trades as I want.

In my demo account I will trade as much as possible throughout the day. However, I will only take high probability set ups. If I have a trade (either a winner or a loser) that either doesn't follow my rules or is too risky then I will not take another trade until I've spent at least 5 min writing up all the things that were wrong with the trade and what could have been done better. This may mean missing a better set up for the trade I really wanted to be in.

I need a way to limit how many losses I take in a day and to prevent multiple losing trades in quick succession. For now, I will try to limit my losing trades (in the demo account) to 1 losing trade allowed per 15 min. So, anytime I have a losing trade I will need to wait at least 15 min until trading again. This rule will probably be changed sometime soon, but it's what I'll go with for now.

 

[studentofthemarkets]

Took 9 losing trades in my live account and no winners. I have a serious problem with not being able to stop after a losing trade.

Working on self-discipline for live trading seems impossible to me at this time. I will never be successful at live trading if I don't figure out how to control myself when I have losses.

I'm not going to trade live again for a while. I blew my tiny account and don't want to add more money to it.

One thing that I can do that MIGHT help, is get better at the demo trading so at least I WILL KNOW how to trade the right way. Then transferring that knowledge to live trading, is something that, honestly, I don't even know if I have it in me to be able to do.

I always felt like if I understood how to find high probability trades, and had a good track record of finding them, that I would have the self-discipline to make this work. But today makes me really question that.

No charts with trades today. There's no point. The trades weren't based on technical analysis, but rather, my whims.

Oh, and BTW, I had one winning trade in my demo before switching to my live account. So my demo account is doing great for the last month.

So, now that I'm back to following my rules, I'll be spending some time writing out my errors and working on drilling into my head where my thought processes went wrong. Let's see, that's 45 min (9 trades x 5 min each) of writing I need to go do.

 

[Bernard111]

Again, you are continuing to count losing vs winning trades; this is worthless while the issue is your bad trades, i.e. the ones when you are not following the rules. So journaling your trading process is a good step.

 

[studentofthemarkets]

That's a good way to look at it.....yes, the emphasis should be on not taking the bad trades, but only those that are true to my set ups. What I should focus on is how many of the bad trades followed the entry rules and lost...vs how many of the bad trades did not meet the entry criteria. I think I'll start posting those results on here too. Thanks.

 

[studentofthemarkets]

I'm changing my perspective on how I view trading in my live account. My primary goal is no longer making money or having a winning trade, but it is to be a careful trader. For now, my rule is to stop trading after 1 losing trade each day. My goal in continuing to trade live, even though I may not be quite ready, technically speaking, is to prove to myself that I can learn to be self-disciplined when trading. If I can't control my trading, especially when I'm in the negative, or if I need money, then I won't last as a trader and possibly should give up on trading. I think I can do this, but I need to know for sure if I can. I'd hate to eventually lose a large sum of money simply because I lacked self-control.

What I'm hoping for is that by limiting my losses to one per day, or about $6 a day, eventually my live account statistics will match my demo account statistics and I won't have lost a lot of money in the process of learning how to go from demo to live trading.

 

[Overnight]

...So I'll keep the rules the same. There will be a time to make adjustments, but I'll like make them one at a time so that any effects the change has will be very clear.

In my live account I will go by the same rules I've been following in my demo. I will stop for the day after one losing trade but take as many winning trades as I want.

In my demo account I will trade as much as possible throughout the day....

One thing that I can do that MIGHT help, is get better at the demo trading so at least I WILL KNOW how to trade the right way. Then transferring that knowledge to live trading, is something that, honestly, I don't even know if I have it in me to be able to do.

Seems you have conflicting rules between the two. I say stick with the live account and put the demo aside. You have the micros at your fingertips. Once those demo accounts get a hold of you, they will never let you go. The psychomadness of demo trading is surreal. Do NOT let it get a hold of you, or you will be in demo hell forever.

 

[studentofthemarkets]

I use demo trading to fine tune my entries and exits and the practice isn't something I want to be trying with real money...although sim trading using replay would do the trick too. But thanks for the encouragement to stick with live.