Matcha's Dow E-mini Journal

[PatientOperator]

Quote from Matcha:

Yep, learned something new everyday. Keep making errors, keep fix them. Then keep repeat errors, keep correcting them, on and on.
I am still working on my trading plan as the problems revealing every trading day. Are you happy with yours now?

Hi Matcha,

Ditto - Not too happy with mine either. Still working on it. I am still digesting all the NEW things I learned everyday.

Errors - I think most of them are "perceived" errors. I am beginning to accept that it is part of the expected outcome of any of our trades. Sometimes, the negative outcome we consider them as errors might be the fact that 40%~50% chance that the market didn't go our way. But, I cannot accept (or forgive) myself for not following my trading plan - e.g. trying new things on the fly, making exceptions, moving my protective stops (my worst behavior), etc...

Need more work on fixing the 3 Ms - Mind, Method, Money Management.

--po

 

[Snowman75]

Quote from NoDoji:


What's happening now is you're seeing big trending days after the fact, where you get little or nothing (most likely a result of bias such as "too high" or "too low" keeping you from trading the trend, or from holding for reasonable profit targets), and you feel silly for not capturing something out of those days. You're then applying psychology from days like that to non-trending days where the price swings back and forth or chops in a smaller range.

How true, how true! It must have happened to me a zillion times.

NoDoji, this deserves to be in a book. My vote for best quote ever!

Matcha, its tough but you need to get in the state of mind where you don't care if its a trend day and you didn't get any of your setups going. At the end of the day, we all need to be grinders, making a living day by day and not by the big killing.

I didn't get any setup going yty. I don't have a trend setup yet, but gave it a very tight shot which I scratched for -2 (FESX). So I think its best to try and focus on what you do best.

 

[Matcha]

No trade today. Stay conservative.

The only trade signal for today was a pullback long at the open a@7:20. I didn't take since there are too much overlapping price action, I let the questionable setup pass by.

Tomorrow then

 

[Matcha]

Quote from PatientOperator:

..... .. moving my protective stops (my worst behavior), etc...

This caught my eyes a lot! As a caring cyber trading friend, I almost had a heartattack when I see this. Sorry for being criticizing.

"Moving protectve stops" you mean tighten? or widen? If "tighten", then we just got some work to do to test and refine the trade management piece of the job to find where we trail or not to trail the stops, then trade with it.

If "widen", frankly, at this stage, after one year of practicing, There shouldn't be any excuse doing that. And no one can help you but yourself.

Post below on your wall...

Quote from Went Fishing:

Matcha

I'm not insinuating anything, just posting some interesting facts.

% Loss of -------- % Gain on Balance
Initial Capital ---- Required to Recover
----------------------------------------------------------------

5 -------------------------- 5.3
10 ------------------------ 11.1
15 ------------------------ 17.6
20 ------------------------ 25.0
25 ------------------------ 33.3
30 ------------------------ 42.9
35 ------------------------ 53.8
40 ------------------------ 66.7
45 ------------------------ 81.8
50 ----------------------- 100.0

From the Welles Wilder Book;
New Concepts in Technical Trading Systems
Copyright, 1978

 

[Matcha]

Quote from Snowman75:

How true, how true! It must have happened to me a zillion times.

I didn't get any setup going yty. I don't have a trend setup yet, but gave it a very tight shot which I scratched for -2 (FESX). So I think its best to try and focus on what you do best.

Snowman75

Yes, no matter what market is doing everyday. No matter how many traders make millions, losing millions. I am just keep grinding... slowly....slowly,...let it grind..let it grind... small snow ball....big snowman...

M

 

[NoDoji]

Quote from Matcha:

This caught my eyes a lot! As a caring cyber trading friend, I almost had a heartattack when I see this. Sorry for being criticizing.

"Moving protectve stops" you mean tighten? or widen? If "tighten", then we just got some work to do to test and refine the trade management piece of the job to find where we trail or not to trail the stops, then trade with it.

If "widen", frankly, at this stage, after one year of practicing, There shouldn't be any excuse doing that. And no one can help you but yourself.

I can recall many, many, many times that tightening my protective stop too quickly has taken me out of great trades for a loss or b/e; but I can't recall one single time that widening a protective stop kept me in a trade that then became profitable. Except in instances where I accidentally place the initial stop at the wrong level and quickly adjust it, I'm almost certain that every stop I've ever widened has been hit for a larger loss than the initial cost of admission to the trade. :eek:

 

[Redneck]

Quote from NoDoji:

I can recall many, many, many times that tightening my protective stop too quickly has taken me out of great trades for a loss or b/e; but I can't recall one single time that widening a protective stop kept me in a trade that then became profitable. Except in instances where I accidentally place the initial stop at the wrong level and quickly adjust it, I'm almost certain that every stop I've ever widened has been hit for a larger loss than the initial cost of admission to the trade. :eek:

Ditto

RN

 

[Matcha]

Quote from NoDoji:

I can recall many, many, many times that tightening my protective stop too quickly has taken me out of great trades for a loss or b/e; but I can't recall one single time that widening a protective stop kept me in a trade that then became profitable. Except in instances where I accidentally place the initial stop at the wrong level and quickly adjust it, I'm almost certain that every stop I've ever widened has been hit for a larger loss than the initial cost of admission to the trade. :eek:

cheating always gets caught...

 

[PatientOperator]

Quote from Matcha:

This caught my eyes a lot! As a caring cyber trading friend, I almost had a heartattack when I see this. Sorry for being criticizing.

"Moving protectve stops" you mean tighten? or widen? If "tighten", then we just got some work to do to test and refine the trade management piece of the job to find where we trail or not to trail the stops, then trade with it.

If "widen", frankly, at this stage, after one year of practicing, There shouldn't be any excuse doing that. And no one can help you but yourself.

Post below on your wall...

Hi Mathca,

Thank you for caring. I will post that near my monitor to serve as a reminder.

My "moving protective stops" problem comes in both tightening and widening. Both have been detrimental to my PnL. I tend to tinker with the stops mostly by tightening them to capture smaller profits instead of letting the profit run. As for widening my stops, I seldom do that and like NoDji said, whenever I did that, the result of doing such a thing was almost always (90%+ chance) lead to incur bigger losses!

I think my problem comes from after a trade is opened, I have this urge to micro manage the trade, my "itchy" fingers cannot resist not to do something. Sometimes, I wish all my trades are automatic with NO discretion in the making! I've got to exercise my discipline to follow my plan....

--po

 

[PatientOperator]

Quote from NoDoji:

I can recall many, many, many times that tightening my protective stop too quickly has taken me out of great trades for a loss or b/e; but I can't recall one single time that widening a protective stop kept me in a trade that then became profitable. Except in instances where I accidentally place the initial stop at the wrong level and quickly adjust it, I'm almost certain that every stop I've ever widened has been hit for a larger loss than the initial cost of admission to the trade. :eek:

Hi NoDoji,

Ditto - that has been my experience also.

Now, I have to get rid of this bad bad bad behavior. I will try harder to correct this problem. The loss recovery chart from Matcha will serve as a reminder for me to avoid doing such unwise and unproductive things.

--po