Staying focused while trading

DevBru said:
I am trading ES and probably get 2 or 3 trades a day and i find myself getting very distracted during the waiting, sometimes even missing trades because of it since i often leave my desk to do something. It sometimes results in me running out of patience and taking on trades that i shouldn't take on.

I tried playing some games but i am not really in to gaming. I do play some guitar and also work on and off on automated trading but nothing to serious so far.

What do you guys do to keep yourself entertained without losing to much focus?
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DURING TRADING,

DON'T leave trading desk
DON'T play games
DON'T play guitar
DON'T use ET while trading
DON'T eat
DON'T go toilet
DON'T use social media
DON'T even listen to music
DON'T attempt to multi task
DON'T peep at youtube
DON'T automate your trading when your trade plan didn't call for that
NEVER EVER KEEP YOURSELF ENTERTAINED WHILE TRADING.


BE DISCIPLINED, SIMPLY CONCENTRATE AND STAY FOCUS ON TRADING.
In simple english, just do trading and nothing else.
And honestly speaking, it could be tough to be do only one thing at a time.

so before trading, cleanse your mind first.
have your minds centered first.
besides doing physical exercise,
we have to do mind exercise.

concentration problem is like a soft / software problem.
It cannot be fixed with hard / hardware solution (automation?)
 
Last edited:
maxinger said:
DURING TRADING,

DON'T leave trading desk
DON'T play games
DON'T play guitar
DON'T use ET while trading
DON'T eat
DON'T go toilet
DON'T use social media
DON'T even listen to music
DON'T attempt to multi task
DON'T peep at youtube
DON'T automate your trading when your trade plan didn't call for that
NEVER EVER KEEP YOURSELF ENTERTAINED WHILE TRADING.


BE DISCIPLINED, SIMPLY CONCENTRATE AND STAY FOCUS ON TRADING.
In simple english, just do trading and nothing else.
And honestly speaking, it could be tough to be do only one thing at a time.

so before trading, cleanse your mind first.
have your minds centered first.
besides doing physical exercise,
we have to do mind exercise.

concentration problem is like a soft / software problem.
It cannot be fixed with hard / hardware solution (automation?)
More...

So if you had a day with no valid signals, which you don't know in advance, you would just sit behind your desk from the open to the close and do nothing?
 
First of all - do you have a comfortable chair and nice home office?

I can get restless too, so I definitely can relate. And I've always enjoyed the development part and research more than the actual trade execution.

Maybe start by breaking the day up into parts and start by committing to staying focused for the 1st 3 hours and then grow into trading the full day.

I think a lot of people in today's society have short attention spans which is a direct cause of the environment we're living in with information and distractions thrown at us in abundance from we wake up to we go to bed.

Meditation can be helpful and focus/mental stamina can be trained.
 
DevBru said:
So if you had a day with no valid signals, which you don't know in advance, you would just sit behind your desk from the open to the close and do nothing?
More...


each of my trading session last for about 2 to 3 hours (early asian, early eur, early US session).
ie total of about 9 hours / day.


many people would walk away when there is no valid signal even before 2 hours trading session is up.
Honestly I am guilty of that.
because after walking away, there might be numerous good signals.


you are right; there is no way to know in advance when the signal is coming
though sometimes we can have a feel based on what has happened previous day.
Signal can come very early, very late, or none at all.
so it is important to glue ourselves to the chair and computer screens.
 
maxinger said:
each of my trading session last for about 2 to 3 hours (early asian, early eur, early US session).
ie total of about 9 hours / day.

many people would walk away when there is no valid signal even before 2 hours trading session is up.
More...

good pointers on zero distractions when trading.

interested in the time slots, so you basically have a pee break between each of the early 2-3 hr periods for the different markets & get to sleep in between?

as follows would these be your trading time slots in PT (not EST), a request to you to revise your trading times & post back?

Asia 3pm - 6pm
sleep time
Europe midnight - 3am
US 3am - 6:30am

unless the trading periods are longer, other than sleep time, what do you do between sessions?
 
DevBru said:
I am trading ES and probably get 2 or 3 trades a day and i find myself getting very distracted during the waiting, sometimes even missing trades because of it since i often leave my desk to do something. It sometimes results in me running out of patience and taking on trades that i shouldn't take on.

I tried playing some games but i am not really in to gaming. I do play some guitar and also work on and off on automated trading but nothing to serious so far.

What do you guys do to keep yourself entertained without losing to much focus?
More...



Honestly, this is a loaded question.

But for me, the best way to beat the focus problem is to have more set ups.

Unfortunately if you're trading 1 security, cant really do it without degrading performance.

Trade stocks and look at multiple charts throughout the day. Thats one way to do it.
 
Laissez Faire said:
First of all - do you have a comfortable chair and nice home office?

I can get restless too, so I definitely can relate. And I've always enjoyed the development part and research more than the actual trade execution.

Maybe start by breaking the day up into parts and start by committing to staying focused for the 1st 3 hours and then grow into trading the full day.

I think a lot of people in today's society have short attention spans which is a direct cause of the environment we're living in with information and distractions thrown at us in abundance from we wake up to we go to bed.

Meditation can be helpful and focus/mental stamina can be trained.
More...

Currently my desk is placed in my living room, i have no room to make a separate home office in the apartment i currently live in.

I have thought about moving to a bigger place, however this would also cause higher costs of living, currently my rent is fairly cheap and the location where i live now is (for my personal situation) perfect.

Moving to a bigger place with separate home office will happen once i managed to save up the $200k for the swing account, probably in a year or 2. That will be a huge improvement but doesn't help me right now.

So far i fill my trading hours with playing some guitar, a lot of reading (all kind of magazines and books), planning my next holiday, ...

I am currently looking at purchasing a new laptop to take around the apartment and find a layout so i can monitor the most important charts/information that i need to see my setups so i can do some other stuff away from the desk but keep an eye on the market in a way that i can still go back to my desk with my laptop, see all the charts i need to see and enter a position. Not sure if it will work but i will never know until i try.
 
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