Okay, another journal for you all. More introspective, less nuts-and-bolts, but complete with weekly P/L for all you voyeuristic pervs out there 
Bit of background: I'm a completely self-taught trader. I took one econ course in college and became a studio art major, mostly because I liked working alone and having complete control over my own success and failure. I've always been a bit outside the loop socially -- the independence and self-reliance of trading only served to magnify this later in life. But fortunately trading is one business where you can succeed and still get away with being a complete basket case if you'd like.
So it took me somewhat longer than most. 8 or 9 years thereabouts until I managed to figure a few things out that get the bills paid on a more or less consistent basis. But I'll have to say it first, learning about the markets in isolation with nothing but scrolling figures and some bank to test things out in real time is one hell of a fucked up way to make a living. As an individual trader you can never really be sure about most things in this business, much less why the market went this way or that. And so as one proceeds along that road of learning how to trade, one tends to fall into certain patterns of thinking that may or may not require medical attention in the future -- more on paranoia later.
But eventually, you settle upon a framework that works for you. Within that classic existential struggle between man (trader) and a seemingly meaningless (random) world (market), you really have no choice but to make something up and stick with what works. So keep in mind as you follow this journal-thread that there isn't really any point in asking so much about my methodology; it's the same as asking if I believed in god and if so whether he had blonde hair (so as to determine which portrait you were going to buy to put above the headboard in the master bedroom . . . get it?) Of course I'll get to which markets I trade, what time frames, etc. But those are all, for your own purposes, "incidental", as Dr. Lecter would say in that dismissive tone.
Bored? Well of course you are, it's Saturday and the markets are closed. Silly.
Bit of background: I'm a completely self-taught trader. I took one econ course in college and became a studio art major, mostly because I liked working alone and having complete control over my own success and failure. I've always been a bit outside the loop socially -- the independence and self-reliance of trading only served to magnify this later in life. But fortunately trading is one business where you can succeed and still get away with being a complete basket case if you'd like.
So it took me somewhat longer than most. 8 or 9 years thereabouts until I managed to figure a few things out that get the bills paid on a more or less consistent basis. But I'll have to say it first, learning about the markets in isolation with nothing but scrolling figures and some bank to test things out in real time is one hell of a fucked up way to make a living. As an individual trader you can never really be sure about most things in this business, much less why the market went this way or that. And so as one proceeds along that road of learning how to trade, one tends to fall into certain patterns of thinking that may or may not require medical attention in the future -- more on paranoia later.
But eventually, you settle upon a framework that works for you. Within that classic existential struggle between man (trader) and a seemingly meaningless (random) world (market), you really have no choice but to make something up and stick with what works. So keep in mind as you follow this journal-thread that there isn't really any point in asking so much about my methodology; it's the same as asking if I believed in god and if so whether he had blonde hair (so as to determine which portrait you were going to buy to put above the headboard in the master bedroom . . . get it?) Of course I'll get to which markets I trade, what time frames, etc. But those are all, for your own purposes, "incidental", as Dr. Lecter would say in that dismissive tone.
Bored? Well of course you are, it's Saturday and the markets are closed. Silly.
