Maintaining Self Discipline

formikatrading said:
Do you not trust that you have a method that has an edge or do you not trust that you can follow the method?
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Well the thing is, I see the "edge" that I use for trading working all the time...even with today's price action. I don't have rules that let me jump in and follow it because .....well, my rules say to wait for a pullback and there weren't any that were exactly what my rules allowed for....but I can change my rules a little to follow "the edge" that I have....I have to do some more chart work to make my rules very plain and figure out how to make my edge work.

And I was profitable demo trading my "edge" last month...just being super cautious with real money now.

This is a "wait and see"...but might be a long wait. And then, might not. :D
 
studentofthemarkets said:
If I didn't have an edge and rules...I would have shorted every one of those 5 min candle tops on the way up this morning. :D:D:D:banghead::banghead::banghead::D:D:D
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formikatrading said:
It's quite possible your "rules" are not allowing your to exploit your edge.
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For example, I have rules that would have let me take the pushes up after the first 5 min up candle...but I didn't trade them because this week I traded three times right into resistance. Of course I saw that resistance was likely super high up because we dropped so much, but I didn't want to make the same mistake so stayed out. The better decision would have been to get into any of the many retraces up, even though it had already moved up. I knew not to short them...finally, but risking $ on it is a different matter.
 
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MADE 74 TICKS IN MY LIVE ACCOUNT!

12-11-2020 5 min and 1 min Live Account blank charts.jpg

That's the good news.

There is not so good news.

For one thing, it was still risky. It could have turned out very differently. I didn't "know" if it would keep going down. Also, it almost came back and took out my stop loss at BE+5...which would have been OK. I just figure, if I have a stop loss at around BE, it's likely to get taken....but I don't have to worry about losing $ with it, so I don't care too much, as long as I can get to BE safely.

I trailed after it nearly took out my BE stop loss. Once it got a little past my usual target of 60 ticks, I closed it because I was super happy with it. If I had continued trailing it very tightly, it would have made a little more. Something to think about.

The other not so good news is that I took 2 losses in my demo account. Lost 44 ticks for the day (one trade -15 ticks and one at -29). This account is not doing well this week, which is very concerning. Maybe it's because I'm not as selective with trades in this account as I am in the live account?

12-11-2020 5 min and 1 min Demo Account blank charts.jpg

So, today's nice live trade could have easily ended differently.

Live Account for the week: 46 ticks
Live Account since 11-27-2020: 131 ticks

Live Account Trade List for this week.jpg

Live Account Trades since 11-27-2020.jpg

11-27-2020 Statistics.jpg

Demo Account for the week: -44 ticks (shows -34 due to a platform glitch)

Demo Account trades for the week.jpg
 
Congrats on the profits! Why was it risky? Trading always involves risk. If you're not taking risk, you have no chance of making money so maybe you need to learn to embrace risk. I wonder if thinking in terms of ticks is counterproductive. If you're trading to win, you're thinking points, not ticks. And is your 60 tick target too arbitrary? Just some things to think about. You might consider doing live or demo but not both. Keep improving!
 
formikatrading said:
Congrats on the profits! Why was it risky? Trading always involves risk. If you're not taking risk, you have no chance of making money so maybe you need to learn to embrace risk. I wonder if thinking in terms of ticks is counterproductive. If you're trading to win, you're thinking points, not ticks. And is your 60 tick target too arbitrary? Just some things to think about. You might consider doing live or demo but not both. Keep improving!
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It's true that I wish trading was not risky, but had a guarantee to work. :D

I guess I've never thought in terms of points. Probably because I just take tiny trades. Doesn't 74 ticks sound better than 18.5 points? :rolleyes: Maybe if I start making a ton of ticks I'll go to using points.

And yes, 60 ticks is a little bit arbitrary. There's nothing magical about it. I use it because it helps me to have a standard to work around. I guess I base it a little on the stop loss I want to use. I think it's hard to have a stop loss of less than 20 ticks. 30 ticks is easier to trade with. That's all going to be dependent on time of day and volatility, but it gives me something to look for. If the trade needs a bigger stop loss, sometimes I will actually not take that trade. I want the target to be at least 30 ticks to make equal 1:1 risk to reward, and 60 ticks stretches that to 1:2 risk to reward. That has nothing to do with what is going on with the charts....but it helps me to find places on the chart where that will (might) work. Just gives some structure to the trades I take. It's like a crutch...but I'm happy to use a crutch if it helps make $$.

Thanks!
 
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All day it's been bugging me that none of today's trades were in alignment with my plan. I don't even know why I took the demo trades except that I felt like price was going to break higher. Neither were trading by my plan, and I think some of that is because it was around the open and structure is still setting up so I don't see how to follow my normal plan for that time of the day. I even broke my rule to wait between trades. So, those weren't placed carefully, the way I want to trade.

Had I followed my plan with the live trade I would have entered earlier. The delayed entry gave it very little structure to support the trade. It was the lack of structure around the entry that made me feel like it was risky, although I had to think about it for a while to realize that.
I think what I might be struggling with is not identifying in real time the 3 things I look for in a trade. It might be a matter of just getting better at pattern recognition. Going through charts and identifying the 3 things is something I do sometimes and I think it helps, but apparently I need a lot more work in this area.

In some ways, it wasn't that bad of a trade, but because I entered after it started moving it makes it hard to know what a safe stop loss is. It might have needed a larger one but because it did move quickly, I think moving to BE +5 was the best option. On full contract futures it would have been stopped out. It came within 2 ticks of the entry, but the MNQ came within 9 ticks....so I was 4 ticks from getting stopped out.

Another thing I haven't figured out yet is how I'm going to work with trades I move to BE that get stopped out. I want to trade by rules, so I've been trying to think of what rules to have to follow for when to move to BE and what rules to have for re-entry. And I don't want to use the BE as an excuse for trying to make a low probability trade have low risk...and I don't want it to lead to over trading.

What I want from it is to get the chance to get a good trade that only has the risk of getting to BE attached to it. I've been watching how often price doesn't retrace back to where I'd likely enter and even though most of the time it does retrace to BE there are those trades that sometimes don't and make a nice run. So, over time, this should be very profitable, depending on how easily I make it to BE without getting stopped out first.

Hopefully this weekend I'll get a clearer picture in my mind of exactly how to make this work and write it all up.
 
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