Bit of advice - which I am bout 99.99% sure you will ignore!
Too much stuff - get rid of most of it.
Day is either 1) Outside Day or 2) Inside Day - if you don't know the difference then you should not be trading. Trade each day type differently.
Use averages for levels - forget about home runs, only a mugs game.
Use ladder, booktrader, dom, or whatever name you want to call it for fast order entries in fast moving markets - set up buttons for +/- 1 to 4 ticks, and reverse trade, market to limit, trail stop and what ever else you find you need to handle fast moving markets.
There are a few more things, but I would like to see your reply first.
J_S
I've got a very open mind and I’m aware that I know almost nothing about trading so I appreciate the advice. I know most people aren’t like that, but I’m not here to show the world how good of a trader I am, because I know I’m not. I’m here to learn and grow as much as possible so that I
can be a good trader.
I've got some questions as frankly I'm so new that some of your comments went over my head.
1- When you say too much stuff what in particular are you referring to? Is it what I'm looking at on a chart (candles, volume profile, volume counter, range, PDHLOC, zones)? Or are you referring to everything else I'm doing in terms of my routine? I do feel like I'm collecting too much information and right now I don't know what is useful and what is noise, so I'm going by trial and error and honestly that takes a lot longer to get right than I would like. I'm hoping this journal can make things like that a bit more obvious so I would appreciate some more detail on this so I can know what to address.
2- I haven't heard of categorizing days in that manner but I did a quick search on and it makes sense. Today was clearly an outside day and I should've traded differently than yesterday. Thinking about it now there were signs in the first 30 minutes of increased volatility that I could've interpreted as 'we will most likely have an outside day today, tailor your trades with that in mind'.
The way I was categorizing days previously was as follows:
· Trend day (directionally one way, very little force stopping the move)
· Volatile balance day (balance significantly above ATR with bull and bear opportunities, ie last Friday)
· Slow balance day (balance ~ATR with few bull and bear opportunities, ie most of last week)
One of my mentors showed me this categorization and I haven’t given it much thought beyond that to be honest, as this made sense to me when he explained it. I’ll read more into inside and outside days though because I don’t know what I don’t know.
3- This advice confused me the most. Could you elaborate a bit more on the averaging levels piece?
4- Regarding forgetting about home runs as it's a mugs game are you referring to my overarching methodology of aiming for the bigger moves of the day (11pts+)? And saying I should focus on other methodologies such as scalping?
5- You’re absolutely right on the last point, I haven’t researched much on this and I’m aware that it’s a blind spot. Definitely something I will be learning in the very near future. Do you have any recommendations on a relatively effective and efficient way of learning and improving this skill? There's so much conflicting information on the internet that for a new trader it's difficult to separate a good method from garbage.
Again, I appreciate the input
