Most Difficult Trade

What's your most difficult trade of the day?

  • First setup of the day

    Votes: 9 7.8%
  • Setup following a losing trade

    Votes: 8 7.0%
  • Setup following two or more losing trades in a row

    Votes: 33 28.7%
  • Setup following one or more trades where you violated your rules

    Votes: 8 7.0%
  • Setup after you dug yourself out of the red & into the green

    Votes: 14 12.2%
  • Setup after you attained a minimum daily profit target

    Votes: 5 4.3%
  • Setup that would position you opposite your bias

    Votes: 19 16.5%
  • I trade all setups from the open to the close

    Votes: 19 16.5%

  • Total voters
    115
Thank you for warning. Hope drawdown will stay away from my account. I choose SPs who trade on a live account , allowing them to open max 3 positions and I never let my account. If needed I set Stop & Loss to get protected from drawdown.
 
Quote from xxxskier:

RN,

Be like a professional poker player and H.A.L.T. (Hungry Angry Lonely Tired), don't trade until you can put those needs/issues on the back burner. A really big issue for many is lack of quality sleep. There is reserach that shows a correlation between sleep derivation and risk seeking behavior....sorry can't find the link.

NoDoji,

this is one of the more interesting polls on ET, thanks for doing it. I voted for "Setup after you attained a minimum daily profit target", but it wasn't truly accurate for me, but is next closest among the choices. I don't have a daily minimum, but if I've had a big winner and am very green on the day, it's always more difficult for me to take another trade the same day. I'm highly aware of a pattern where I give back much of my profits after a great first trade. Nowadays, I either reduce my size, or stop trading. It's helped out my P&L and smoothed out my equity curve.

xxxskier , you still around. You're one of the guys who post useful trading info. Occasionally I'll go through my list to read up and see what's new. RN you're also one of those guys who has helpful posts.
 
Most difficult trade for me is the marginal trade, I get my entry right but then the market starts getting choppy getting close but not hitting my stop or target. Should I stay should I go should I punt I don't know ??? Last week would of added 6 ES points if I'd gotten out when I saw the chop, instead of letting it hit my stop, so I'm looking at these trades a little different, maybe BE or small profit/loss.
 
Quote from mastertrader456:

It a trade is difficult or stressful its a bad trade...

I think so too, I'm disciplined on entries and exits but where I need work is when the situation gets choppy after I'm in a trade. Going over charts to see what is the best option as we speak.
 
Greetings Bigarrow,

When I saw your comment the first thing that struck me was this; I believe that the answer to your question, is already in your question. Let me explain; in your question you stated that; “The most difficult trade for me is the marginal trade”. From this statement, one can glean that from the start, you have already assessed and acknowledged your going in assumption about this trade. But in this instance, you have only “subconsciously” acknowledged that this trade is a marginal trade. You didn’t make this fact known to your “conscious” trading mind as yet.

Therefore, when the trade was initiated, your conscious trading mind left you bereft of an appropriate “going-in strategy”. And as a result, in this marginal trade, one in which; “the market starts getting choppy getting close but not hitting my stop or target.” what was the technical likelihood of achieving your original objective, versus taking a full stop loss?

I hope you can see my point which is; that if you were "fully cognizant" of your “going-in expectation” for the trade, before you entered the trade, you would likely have been better prepared to assess the “health” of your trade, as you monitored its realtime progress.

Proposed Solution: I believe that if you make a small mental adjustment in the "conscious" examining of the “going-in expectations” of your trades, you will thereby likely select a more appropriate trading strategy for these type of trades, and things should likely start to improve in instances such as above.

Hope this helps.

KDASFTG
 
Quote from KDASFTG:

Greetings Bigarrow,

When I saw your comment the first thing that struck me was this; I believe that the answer to your question, is already in your question. Let me explain; in your question you stated that; �The most difficult trade for me is the marginal trade�. From this statement, one can glean that from the start, you have already assessed and acknowledged your going in assumption about this trade. But in this instance, you have only �subconsciously� acknowledged that this trade is a marginal trade. You didn�t make this fact known to your �conscious� trading mind as yet.

Therefore, when the trade was initiated, your conscious trading mind left you bereft of an appropriate �going-in strategy�. And as a result, in this marginal trade, one in which; �the market starts getting choppy getting close but not hitting my stop or target.� what was the technical likelihood of achieving your original objective, versus taking a full stop loss?

I hope you can see my point which is; that if you were "fully cognizant" of your �going-in expectation� for the trade, before you entered the trade, you would likely have been better prepared to assess the �health� of your trade, as you monitored its realtime progress.

Proposed Solution: I believe that if you make a small mental adjustment in the "conscious" examining of the �going-in expectations� of your trades, you will thereby likely select a more appropriate trading strategy for these type of trades, and things should likely start to improve in instances such as above.

Hope this helps.

KDASFTG

Que?
 
Quote from NoDoji:

What is the most difficult trade for you?

Basic assumptions:

You're a discretionary trader.

You have a setup or collection of setups you trade that present a profitable edge (if setup X presents, then profit Y follows more than 50% of the time).

When you are so tired, that you could fall asleep just so, but you cant sleep, because you must watch the market, because of your fucking trade, to make the fucking money. FUCK
 
Most difficult trade is the one I place just after a small win brings my account to a new high. Say I had 17,490 in my account and I placed a trade that just squeaked me above 17,500. Seeing the new number "5" in the third place, makes it hard to think of going back to a 4 or a 3 even though my normal risk limits say that's fine. I usually take a few days off until I'm sick of looking at that 17,500 and say, "It's worth the risk just to get away from that number." Then I trade freely again.
 
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