hey i just want to say again thanks! I went and reread your post about poker posted yesterday, and than started reading the 20 ema posts the 2 of you and your followers and have really provided gold nuggets in this journal ,thanks. I have all the same problems as nodoji's i dont have the same success but i'm hopeful. Almost thru the 2nd read. have a great weekend!
NoDoji's Day Trading Log
- Thread starter NoDoji
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Quote from learningTrading:
Great tips! Some fundamental and more specific questions.
I am swing trading now. I expect to hold for 2-3 weeks. Should I still be looking at 20-period. When you say 20-period, SMA or EMA? Please dont laugh at me...
Do you take Support/Resistant level into account with the 20-period at all or barely?
Look forward to reading your todays trade!Many Thanks!
I find the 20-period EMA to be a very useful road map in any short term time frame from intraday scalping to swing trades of several weeks. Once you get into months and years, then I believe these investors use the 50-, 100- and 200-MAs.
I use the EMA, but I don't it's hugely different from the SMA.
I got back a few minutes before the close and hoped to maybe get some scalps in on AAPL, but the action was like a bucking bronco and I thought better of it :eek:
I'm still very frustrated with the huge gap between my knowledge and my execution. I can see why so many hours of screen are necessary to become successful, to truly trust your trades and allow the winners to run. Each day I get a tiny bit better, but still need to hone my "winning attitude". Mark Douglas' Trading in Zone talks a lot about the winning attitude, about how a beginning trader who pulls off a few winners is conditioned to have a winning attitude and can have a long string of winners before some losses come along and knock them down, making them gun shy.
I remember when I started out (I was short term swing trading) and I had a particular strategy (which I now know is reversion-to-mean), and I had winner after winner. I never used stops. Ever. Why? All my trades were long, it was a bull run off Jan 2008 lows and every trade I put on either became profitable immediately or if it was a loser it always came back.
Until the bear market started, and that's when I realized I had to learn to day trade effectively because it was no longer safe to hold overnight. Well I did well at first, then got cocky and held overnights and allowed big losses to suck the wind out of me. I realized I'd better learn about shorting, and eventually I worked my way back to profitability.
But I still had to learn so many lessons over and over again. And am still having to do so.
It's funny how someone like me who's pretty damn sharp in so many respects and prides herself on learning very quickly has SO much trouble learning to master the mental game of trading.
Throughout my life I taught myself so many things so quickly and easily. When I was 16 I saw an ad in the paper, guitar and bass player needed for a working rock band. I'd been playing guitar less than two years and that position was filled, so they asked if I could play bass and without hesitation, I said "Sure!" Ended up traveling every weekend, playing music, having fun and getting paid for it. When the lead guitarist quit I filled the spot.
I taught myself about advertising and won a national computer trade association award for best TV commercial.
I taught myself to write science fiction and the third short story I ever wrote was a finalist in the Writer's of the Future contest. I completed a 500-page novel and Ursula LeGuin's agent sent me a hand-written letter saying she liked my idea, but the market for that type of sci-fi was too soft, and please send my next novel (I never did, too busy).
I taught myself to play soccer after years as a couch potato, and within 5 years was on a local A division team and we won the annual tournament championship. I even scored a goal in that tourney.
To me, everything is possible.
But when so many things have come so easy to me, and the mental game of trading turns out to be hands down the most difficult thing I've ever tied to master, I am left completely perplexed.
It's really so simple and I make it so hard.
I'm still very frustrated with the huge gap between my knowledge and my execution. I can see why so many hours of screen are necessary to become successful, to truly trust your trades and allow the winners to run. Each day I get a tiny bit better, but still need to hone my "winning attitude". Mark Douglas' Trading in Zone talks a lot about the winning attitude, about how a beginning trader who pulls off a few winners is conditioned to have a winning attitude and can have a long string of winners before some losses come along and knock them down, making them gun shy.
I remember when I started out (I was short term swing trading) and I had a particular strategy (which I now know is reversion-to-mean), and I had winner after winner. I never used stops. Ever. Why? All my trades were long, it was a bull run off Jan 2008 lows and every trade I put on either became profitable immediately or if it was a loser it always came back.
Until the bear market started, and that's when I realized I had to learn to day trade effectively because it was no longer safe to hold overnight. Well I did well at first, then got cocky and held overnights and allowed big losses to suck the wind out of me. I realized I'd better learn about shorting, and eventually I worked my way back to profitability.
But I still had to learn so many lessons over and over again. And am still having to do so.
It's funny how someone like me who's pretty damn sharp in so many respects and prides herself on learning very quickly has SO much trouble learning to master the mental game of trading.
Throughout my life I taught myself so many things so quickly and easily. When I was 16 I saw an ad in the paper, guitar and bass player needed for a working rock band. I'd been playing guitar less than two years and that position was filled, so they asked if I could play bass and without hesitation, I said "Sure!" Ended up traveling every weekend, playing music, having fun and getting paid for it. When the lead guitarist quit I filled the spot.
I taught myself about advertising and won a national computer trade association award for best TV commercial.
I taught myself to write science fiction and the third short story I ever wrote was a finalist in the Writer's of the Future contest. I completed a 500-page novel and Ursula LeGuin's agent sent me a hand-written letter saying she liked my idea, but the market for that type of sci-fi was too soft, and please send my next novel (I never did, too busy).
I taught myself to play soccer after years as a couch potato, and within 5 years was on a local A division team and we won the annual tournament championship. I even scored a goal in that tourney.
To me, everything is possible.
But when so many things have come so easy to me, and the mental game of trading turns out to be hands down the most difficult thing I've ever tied to master, I am left completely perplexed.
It's really so simple and I make it so hard.
Got ya!
I can tell you real fast one area where you are causing difficulty for yourself. Your post today said you were using a 1 minute chart to get in early for longer time frames profits. That in my opinion is a flaw,a bigger flaw then you can imagine.
A 1 minute chart will not allow for profits in a larger time frame except by luck now and then. You actually stated that in a round about way when you said because mkt conditions changed it became a mistake to hold overnights when it was best just daytrade. In a 1 minute chart the so called early signals are not setting up for the 5 minute, or the 15, etc. Thats a fallacy. I would never invite a bimbo from a trailer park to go downtown for a Play or to see the Royal Ballet. She probably had the Forest Preserve in mind anyway.
Yes, trading is tougher than politics. Other professions have a playbook to follow, repetition doing the same thing over and over. In any field only a select few rise to the top, i once worked for General Motors on a production line, so did Stanley O'Neil. I also was a salesmen and a truck driver. Stanly O'Neil left Michigan and became the top guy in Merrill Lynch. Stanley blewup Merrill big time and managed to suck about $160million out of them as they showed him the door. Here i sit never messed anything really up but did not steal $160 million either. I fought hard just to be a daytrader. Life is never fair, we just deal with it.
If Stanley was a trader he never would have made the $160 million, better chance to lose $160 and showed the door. Life is not fair.
Your discipline sounds sound in your previous travels, all well and good. In the trading game you are correct, it is going to mess with your mind big time. If you were a guy, i wound say even mess your mind ALMOST like a women can. HA,
You need to do less drifting around. Your trading plan needs to be narrowed down, you need to decide on a single time frame and stick to it. You need to decide what you want to trade and stick to it. Work on your trading rules..............NOT just on what you want to trade as the flavor of the day. Drop the 3 minute charts, no one takes signals from that. You need to do some unlearning.
Trading is hard mentally because it goes against all we learned in the past on how to learn something new.
In trading it is making mistakes and deciding if correcting the mistakes is worth the challenge. Correcting them is not enough, eliminating them is the real challenge.
No easy gig is it?
A 1 minute chart will not allow for profits in a larger time frame except by luck now and then. You actually stated that in a round about way when you said because mkt conditions changed it became a mistake to hold overnights when it was best just daytrade. In a 1 minute chart the so called early signals are not setting up for the 5 minute, or the 15, etc. Thats a fallacy. I would never invite a bimbo from a trailer park to go downtown for a Play or to see the Royal Ballet. She probably had the Forest Preserve in mind anyway.
Yes, trading is tougher than politics. Other professions have a playbook to follow, repetition doing the same thing over and over. In any field only a select few rise to the top, i once worked for General Motors on a production line, so did Stanley O'Neil. I also was a salesmen and a truck driver. Stanly O'Neil left Michigan and became the top guy in Merrill Lynch. Stanley blewup Merrill big time and managed to suck about $160million out of them as they showed him the door. Here i sit never messed anything really up but did not steal $160 million either. I fought hard just to be a daytrader. Life is never fair, we just deal with it.
If Stanley was a trader he never would have made the $160 million, better chance to lose $160 and showed the door. Life is not fair.
Your discipline sounds sound in your previous travels, all well and good. In the trading game you are correct, it is going to mess with your mind big time. If you were a guy, i wound say even mess your mind ALMOST like a women can. HA,
You need to do less drifting around. Your trading plan needs to be narrowed down, you need to decide on a single time frame and stick to it. You need to decide what you want to trade and stick to it. Work on your trading rules..............NOT just on what you want to trade as the flavor of the day. Drop the 3 minute charts, no one takes signals from that. You need to do some unlearning.
Trading is hard mentally because it goes against all we learned in the past on how to learn something new.
In trading it is making mistakes and deciding if correcting the mistakes is worth the challenge. Correcting them is not enough, eliminating them is the real challenge.
No easy gig is it?
Completely disagree with only this statement, identify the context of the market and trade within the context.
You need to do less drifting around. Your trading plan needs to be narrowed down, you need to decide on a single time frame and stick to it. You need to decide what you want to trade and stick to it. Work on your trading rules..............NOT just on what you want to trade as the flavor of the day. Drop the 3 minute charts, no one takes signals from that. You need to do some unlearning.
You need to do less drifting around. Your trading plan needs to be narrowed down, you need to decide on a single time frame and stick to it. You need to decide what you want to trade and stick to it. Work on your trading rules..............NOT just on what you want to trade as the flavor of the day. Drop the 3 minute charts, no one takes signals from that. You need to do some unlearning.
Gotta agree with the posters above. Saw year jrnl yesterday and thought 3 min bars is flirting with danger. You know the basics and some rules only learned by lots of screen time (don't enter a trade on the 4th move u or down) so go with a timeframe where you can do well. 5 min bars on huge stocks, longer on lesser ones.
Good trading.
Good trading.
I think what everyone's missing is that I'm using the 1-min chart in conjunction with the 3- and 5-min charts to spot setups early enough that I can get in before price moves to a level that I feel I'm chasing a good entry. I'm not trading off the 1-min (unless I'm intentionally scalping).
I really don't think my problem is whether I use 3-, 5-, 10-, or 15- min charts. They all work for day trading. My problem is trusting the trade to work fully and giving it a chance to do so.
The only solution I can think of is to scale out of my positions half and half, the first half when I start getting nervous the trade will reverse on me, and the second half stays with my initial stop in place until the trend truly ends by violating a technical price point.
I really don't think my problem is whether I use 3-, 5-, 10-, or 15- min charts. They all work for day trading. My problem is trusting the trade to work fully and giving it a chance to do so.
The only solution I can think of is to scale out of my positions half and half, the first half when I start getting nervous the trade will reverse on me, and the second half stays with my initial stop in place until the trend truly ends by violating a technical price point.
I didn't read the journal so I have no idea where you are in your trading. The following suggestions are made assuming you are new to the business.
Stick to 1 instrument and master it. I usually recommend the SPY, GLD or USO. Trade a small lot until you achieve consistency. Then start scaling up.
Stick to 1 chart setting. We're all looking at the same thing. Only using different filters. Find the sunglasses that fit well and you like. stick with that pair.
Back test every observation.
When you find the method that suits you, Automate everything.
Once you have a profitable automated system, plug in other markets. Good systems are robust enough to work in most markets.
Some people take forever to learn because they keep changing their charts and instruments they trade. Unfortunately most never learn.
Stick to 1 instrument and master it. I usually recommend the SPY, GLD or USO. Trade a small lot until you achieve consistency. Then start scaling up.
Stick to 1 chart setting. We're all looking at the same thing. Only using different filters. Find the sunglasses that fit well and you like. stick with that pair.
Back test every observation.
When you find the method that suits you, Automate everything.
Once you have a profitable automated system, plug in other markets. Good systems are robust enough to work in most markets.
Some people take forever to learn because they keep changing their charts and instruments they trade. Unfortunately most never learn.
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