Maintaining Self Discipline

[Overnight]

I'm gonna go back to trading 2 demo accounts. One will be for taking trades in the first 15 minutes or so after the open...

Don't do this, or I fear you will eternally be a "student of the markets".

Will you have two live money accounts with your broker? Most likely not. You will just have the one account. Trade demo as you would trade live. It is the only way to hold yourself true.

Remember, the only reset button on your live money account is...Oh, wait, there's no such thing.

 

[studentofthemarkets]

Don't do this, or I fear you will eternally be a "student of the markets".

Will you have two live money accounts with your broker? Most likely not. You will just have the one account. Trade demo as you would trade live. It is the only way to hold yourself true.

Remember, the only reset button on your live money account is...Oh, wait, there's no such thing.

I see your point. On the other hand, by separating how I trade into timeframes, it allows me to track how I'm doing, and try slightly different trade management methods. If I had a better way to analyze trades, like paying for Tradervue, then it would be easier to stay in one account.

Actually, now that you've got me thinking about it, I think I can group statistics according to the name I use for preset entries and exits. So, if I keep certain stop and target groups for set times of the day, I could probably keep one account and still pull up separate statistics.

Thanks for the feed back....I'll give it some more thought.

You're right, there's no such thing as a reset button on a live account!

 

[studentofthemarkets]

I have a plan now to trade just as though I was trading live. So, I won't be trading 27 contracts in 15 minute as I did this morning, because I don't think I would try that live unless I was very accurate in taking trades. (Thanks to @Overnight for bringing this to my attention.) I'll have one account and keep track of the different times I trade by tagging them.

But tomorrow I won't trade that demo account because I want to practice trailing single contracts and managing every trade. I'll stick to the rule of no more than 1 trade about 5 minutes and hopefully far less trades than that. But I won't limit the number of attempts into a trend, and no limits on losses, because I want the practice of forcing myself to trail. In looking at the charts, it should be a winning system. But simply seeing things on charts has never worked for me when actually trading, so I'm not getting my hopes up.

Plan: take every setup in my trading plan and manage a single contract aggressively.

 

[studentofthemarkets]

Practicing trailing: ended early with 24 ticks

Trying to trail trades today revealed a lot of the impulsive side of me, and not in a good way. Here's a few of the problems:

I found it too difficult, emotionally, to wait between trades. Since the goal was to be in a trend and trail, I didn't want to miss the beginning of trends, and decided to take a lot of trades. This led to a lot of losing trades. I do better when I leave very little room for my intuitions or sudden changes in direction. If I learned one thing from today, it's that I need strict rules and I need to follow them, or else I trade carelessly.

I also found it difficult to actually trail according to my plan. I did have a runner and closed it for 233 ticks, while it was still pushing down. If I had followed my plan, it would have gone farther, but my exit would have been about 233 ticks anyhow, but the point is that I found trailing to be emotionally difficult as well.

Because I'd stopped following my other rules, I found it very easy to slip into my habits of countertrend trading trying to catch "the bottom" and that ended in losing my profits.

So, I'm stopping trading in this practice account. Someday I will likely trail, but if I do, I don't want it to be as I traded today, breaking rules. I would rather stick to my regular plan of careful entries, learning to set preset targets that are likely to get hit, and then, when I'm profitable doing that, there will likely be times I'm already in a good trade and I can safely extend the target, while already having moved the stop loss to breakeven. I'm not ready for that yet. I'm going to trading in my regular demo account the rest of the day and follow my rules.

 

[studentofthemarkets]

Yep, I do better, not great, but better, when I follow rules.

Regular rules and regular demo account. 30 ticks stop loss 60 ticks target and no adjusting.

2 losses then 2 wins. Net gain of 58 ticks.

Done for the day.

 

[studentofthemarkets]

Made 104 ticks on the NQ.

I'm not trading the open very well at all. I use a larger stop loss size during the first 15 to 30 minutes and I take more losing trades. My first 5 trades today were all losses using a 40 tick stop loss. That's not something I'd want to tolerate when trading live. I need to spend some time working on getting specific entry rules just for this time of day. If I can't figure out some rules that will filter out the wrong trades, I think I'll give up on trading the open.

One positive result from being down so much at the open was that I had the motivation to trail the one good trade I got into, instead of closing it at a 2:1 reward to risk ratio. I closed it at 135 ticks instead of the target which was set at 80 ticks. The trades after that one all used what I've been doing, 30 ticks for a stop loss and 60 ticks for a target.

 

[studentofthemarkets]

I'm re-evaluating my trading plan and entries. I've gotten away from the main strategy this thread was created for, which is to enter the retracement to the beginning of a trend. I've been taking too many trades and guess too much.

In seeking consistency, I'm going to spend some time trying to come up with some more specific rules limiting my trades to one entry type, allowing variation for how that will look depending on the day's trading conditions.

I won't be waiting 5 minutes between trades, but probably more like 20 to 30 minutes or longer between trades. I won't be allowing for a 2nd attempt right after a failed trade. My goal is to see if I can enter in a place where an intraday trend is starting. I want to make that my focus and get super precise with just that type of entry.

I used to have a rule of 3 losing trades and then I'd be done for the day. Well, I think maybe I should just take 3 trades, winners or losers, and be done. It will help me to keep my focus on not overtrading and being much more selective.

Somebody....please hold me to this....if I take more than 3 trades in a day will somebody please write on this journal telling me to stop it? thanks

 

[formikatrading]

Just don't do it!

Somebody....please hold me to this....if I take more than 3 trades in a day will somebody please write on this journal telling me to stop it? thanks

 

[studentofthemarkets]

Made 91 ticks today and ONLY TOOK 1 TRADE! Yay!! I'm glad I didn't lose self-control today. It helps to have a public journal to be accountable to.



I really need to study taking short trades on down days. There was only one place that matched my entry criteria for a long trade today and that was the trade I took. However, the better trades were, of course, to the short side.

Reporting my statistics for the week is a little complicated because I used 3 demo accounts then switched back to one, the Main Demo Account. I'll try to make it clear to understand.

The Main Demo Account made 300 ticks for the week and here are the statistics:



The Trading the Open account was traded in only Monday through Wednesday, sometimes using multiple contracts and the net loss was -2 ticks. Keeping track of my trades during this time has been really helpful in revealing that I don't trade around the open very well. Yesterday I took 5 losing trades in a row during the first 20 minutes after the open. Last Friday I lost 1 trade with multiple contracts. I said I would include last Friday's losses with this weeks Trading the Open Account, but now that I've changed things around again and no longer using multiple contracts, it doesn't make sense to add them in.

I only took one premarket trade in the Nasdaq this week, adding 19 ticks for the week.

Net ticks for the week:
+300 Main Demo
-2 Trading the Open
+19 Premarket

That totals 317 ticks. I'm glad to end the week nicely positive, but I'm still not very consistent and take a lot of losing trades and that's why I'm not trading live yet. But I might be close to trying again.

 

[studentofthemarkets]

Taking only 3 trades in a day has its challenges.

I didn't stick to a set stop loss or target today, which made me need to think more while trading.

It's not allowing me to take quick losses and jump right back in if I got the entry slightly off but got the direction right. This is frustrating and makes me use larger stop losses than I want to....but that is all part of my plan: I need to use this frustration to learn to be a more accurate trader. I WANT to to learn to trade accurately with only one entry that works....rather than multiple tries and stop outs and risk losing self-control and blowing my account. When I start trading live, I will be limiting my entries and the most I would take is likely to be around 3 trades per day, so it's better I learn to make it work on demo.

The trade that worked didn't end up being a trend. The 2 trades that got stopped out needed a much larger stop loss, but did catch the beginning of a move. One thing I'm not sure about is if it was possible for me to have timed the entries better on both those trades. How do you know if it will make another retest before dropping? Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't, so do you get in and give a lot of room for a retest? Do you get in and allow for getting stopped out with a small loss and get right back in after a retest? That's what I prefer, but not going to happen with taking only 1 attempt per trend. Do you wait and pass up good opportunities because you ONLY take the retest...but then what about multiple retests...how do you know it's the final retest?

I'm planning to keep at it and see if I can improve.

Lost 36 demo ticks