Through the Looking Glass

RN:
Well put Mantra:Succint, to the point. I'll borrow that, and put it above my monitor.

"
"The most powerful and empowering sentence I know, and my mantra….

If it is to be – it is up to me"

I've enjoyed reading this thread, as well as the open exchange of ideas. It has given me pause to mull over what direction and effort I may want/ or need to put into my own trading. Not sure what decisions I will make, but change starts with dissatisfaction of the status quo.

Best of Luck-SD
 
Quote from sowterdad:

RN:
Well put Mantra:Succint, to the point. I'll borrow that, and put it above my monitor.

"
"The most powerful and empowering sentence I know, and my mantra….

If it is to be – it is up to me"

I've enjoyed reading this thread, as well as the open exchange of ideas. It has given me pause to mull over what direction and effort I may want/ or need to put into my own trading. Not sure what decisions I will make, but change starts with dissatisfaction of the status quo.

Best of Luck-SD
More...


Guys, I have to jump in on this. This thread is excellent, this is some deep mind jedi-warrior stuff.

I will reply with 2 parts here, that i think the last couple pages have been addressing.

Part 1. Motivation to Change: in this example Illiquid for one reason or another lacks the "motivation" to change. And i am obviously not picking on Illiquid, just an example, because of his most recent posts, i have been in his seats several times.

The motivation i am speaking of, is not the usual rah-rah,, 1000% discipline, to do my best etc.. The real motivation that matters is the one where Leverage comes in.

You try to loose weight for 5 years, you suffer a mini-heart attack, doctor tells you , you have a 95% chance of having another heart attack, which will be fatal, unless you change diet and start excersising today. Bam!, good diet and excersie begin right away, That leverage, thats a motivation, a reason to change. The leverage is: fear of death, fear of leaving your family with no income earner, heavy duty leverage makes you do anything you need to change. !!!

You have trouble quitting smoking, I stand over you with a gun to your temple, and tell you if you light that cigarette, i will pull the trigger. Bam!!, Leverage is the gun, you dont need nicotine gum, hypnosis, etc.. Look at the gun poined at your head, you wont light that cigarette.

Motivation from heavy leverage is where real change can be done. Leverage can be to think about where you will be if trading doesnt work, the loss of money, the loss of your dreams, the loss of goals, the loss of time you put it. Think of the cost of failure. You will do the opposite of failing, try to get as far away from the vision of failing as you can. The Leverage of how things will be if you fail is enough to cause change, Bam!, thats motivation.

You need Leverage to change,. REAL LEVERAGE, whether it is any of the above or simply saying "i only succeed, i dont do anything else, it doesnt fit who i am", and beleive it 100%, or anything that makes you feel the leverage, feel the motivation.

Find a reason to change, find someone to do it for(wife,mother,brother,sister,yourself), find a promise you gave someone, find a cause you stand for. A Reason to change and use the leverage to do it. If the leverage is heavy enough, you will have no options, but to change (gun example above).

And if you cant find something to give you a reason to change, then take time off until you do.

Part 2. To execute with out question, being consistent with your system/strategy.

The only thing that helped me, I mean really helped me was to go back years and years, looking at how my strategies worked in the markets. That gave me the confidence to take all triggers. At my best trading is a detached situation i find myself. Like people have stated in this thead, you remove yourself from he action, you are there to facilitate the odds of your system to work itself out, period, that is your only input.

I focus on two things; is my system getting ready to intiate a trigger and what size do i use for this trade. Period,

That being said at last once or twice a month, i have to brush up on all of the above again,lol,, The human mind is not created to perform or think in odds, so I slip, re-read things that help me get back in the zone, and plug away again, until the next slip comes by.


I hope this helps guys, I am glad to be part of an excellent thread, and maybe this is more what ET was supposed to be, than the junk that floods it sometimes.

Good trading fellas,

EF
 
Damn, no response in almost 24 hours,,haha Guys i hope I didint hit a nerve or something,lol,,

Good luck to all, my previous post is one way i look a the market. And it worked for me,

Also to add, i think the "change", betterment of yourself cant only happen in trading, i think it has to be a part of the rest of yor life as well,

Excersise, cut out bad habits, better attitude, better reationships, etc.

IT has to spilll over into both worlds, I found it to be eaiser like that as well.

EF
 
"The motivation i am speaking of, is not the usual rah-rah,, 1000% discipline, to do my best etc.. The real motivation that matters is the one where Leverage comes in. "

'and incorporate that change in the rest of your life as well'-
paraphrased. Balanced.

I think you are on the mark with your comments EF.
Strikes home as being true- I visited this thread & ET because I'm personally dissatisfied with my own pt trading under performance,
Net takeaway was to try to get myself on the path to get engaged again.
Develop some leverage as you call it, is a healthy thing.
Good Luck, SD
 
Quote from Eddiefl:

Motivation from heavy leverage is where real change can be done. Leverage can be to think about where you will be if trading doesnt work, the loss of money, the loss of your dreams, the loss of goals, the loss of time you put it. Think of the cost of failure. You will do the opposite of failing, try to get as far away from the vision of failing as you can. The Leverage of how things will be if you fail is enough to cause change, Bam!, thats motivation.

You need Leverage to change,. REAL LEVERAGE, whether it is any of the above or simply saying "i only succeed, i dont do anything else, it doesnt fit who i am", and beleive it 100%, or anything that makes you feel the leverage, feel the motivation.

...

Part 2. To execute with out question, being consistent with your system/strategy.

The only thing that helped me, I mean really helped me was to go back years and years, looking at how my strategies worked in the markets. That gave me the confidence to take all triggers. At my best trading is a detached situation i find myself. Like people have stated in this thead, you remove yourself from he action, you are there to facilitate the odds of your system to work itself out, period, that is your only input.
EF
More...

Both points that you make are very close to my own experience -- the first part being quite fresh in my mind. It was not much more than a few weeks ago that I sat down and realized what the alternatives would be if I could not find the discipline to trade what I know properly; these alternatives were quite horrific to me and readily provided more than enough of what you call "leverage". This kind of negative motivation was a far more effective whip at my back than any sort of positive reward -- I guess having achieved some level of success in the past which proved illusory in the end really puts a damper on any dangling of carrots in pulling me fowards.

The second part, about having confidence in one's edge, I think I've always had that in spades, and in one sense affected my trading negatively in that it really gave me an excuse to be sloppy, undisciplined, lazy etc -- because I always believed I could make it back no matter how cornered I was. But I really got to that point where that confidence was finally shaken to its core, the point where I realized that no edge could save me if I continued to let myself trade the way I did. So I suppose you could say that not only do you need to know how to do the right thing, you need to want to do it too, to the exclusion of all else.

Thanks for sharing your experience, I'm glad to see other traders have walked a similar path and found similar lessons, and it sounds like you've made it through the other side. Hopefully I can meet you there soon :)
 
P/L for the week: +18k on 434k shares traded

+4, +7, -2, +3, +6

I tried very hard to stick with the best of what I knew this week, of course there were still a few ugly episodes but the number of good trades (as well as opportunities I saw but missed) greatly outnumbered the losers, and I think that really gave me the confidence to brush off the losses quickly and refocus right away on looking for the next opportunity. One of my biggest weaknesses in the past was allowing good winners to turn into losers, letting the frustration of knowing what might-have-been paralyze me from dealing with a growing loss. More than a few times this week I managed to flip losing or near-losing trades into a decent winners -- cutting my position size in half was the key to that -- and this reinforced a new-found ability to forget the past quickly and focus on what needed to be done.

For next week I really need to maintain that focus and not let it casually slip away; wednesday morning I was encouraged by my early success but used it as an excuse to relax and "play around" a bit -- this led to me being down nearly 5k by an hour after the open, and I was mostly lucky to have cut that loss down by the close of after hours. To be honest each day I found my discipline slip on one or two names, so by no means do I consider the week a clean performance at all. These few weeks are pretty much peak season for me, so I know the outcome could have been much better, but given my recent trading I'll gladly take it.
 
Quote from illiquid:

Both points that you make are very close to my own experience -- the first part being quite fresh in my mind. It was not much more than a few weeks ago that I sat down and realized what the alternatives would be if I could not find the discipline to trade what I know properly; these alternatives were quite horrific to me and readily provided more than enough of what you call "leverage". This kind of negative motivation was a far more effective whip at my back than any sort of positive reward -- I guess having achieved some level of success in the past which proved illusory in the end really puts a damper on any dangling of carrots in pulling me fowards.

The second part, about having confidence in one's edge, I think I've always had that in spades, and in one sense affected my trading negatively in that it really gave me an excuse to be sloppy, undisciplined, lazy etc -- because I always believed I could make it back no matter how cornered I was. But I really got to that point where that confidence was finally shaken to its core, the point where I realized that no edge could save me if I continued to let myself trade the way I did. So I suppose you could say that not only do you need to know how to do the right thing, you need to want to do it too, to the exclusion of all else.

Thanks for sharing your experience, I'm glad to see other traders have walked a similar path and found similar lessons, and it sounds like you've made it through the other side. Hopefully I can meet you there soon :)
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Illiquid, Congrats on a good net positive week. Hey dont shake a stick at it, dont down play it, take it for what it is, a very healthy positive gain for the week. Every week will have nuances, faults, slips, slight errors, so when you come out on top at the end of the week, give yourself a pat in the back and move on to the next,

I am glad you got some good out of my post. And i think you summed it up, nicely, above, "suppose you could say not only do you need to know how to do the right thing, you need to want to do it too." ... Find your "leverage", your "reason" to want to do the right thing, the stronger the Leverage, the faster the ship will get back on its due course.

Take care man, and good trading,

EF
 
Quote from illiquid:

P/L for the week: +18k on 434k shares traded

+4, +7, -2, +3, +6
More...

It's a little off topic, but I thought I'll ask anyway. How many stocks do you trade per day on average (or do you trade futures?), do you prefer breakout trading, RTM, OPG, etc?
 
Congratulations on putting in a turn-a-round week!
Stay grounded - Build on that 'success.', even though you felt it wasn't perfect trading, you controlled the outcome to be a net positive, by controlling yourself. That's an outstanding reversal of trend!

Could you elaborate on :
" More than a few times this week I managed to flip losing or near-losing trades into a decent winners -- cutting my position size in half was the key to that -- and this reinforced a new-found ability to forget the past quickly and focus on what needed to be done."

Good Luck on your continued success!
SD
 
Quote from ytr30:

It's a little off topic, but I thought I'll ask anyway. How many stocks do you trade per day on average (or do you trade futures?), do you prefer breakout trading, RTM, OPG, etc?
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I just trade stocks, usually I'll trade anything in play that day, maybe 10-15 names on avg. I don't specialize or prefer any particular type of trading, but I guess you could say my initial instinct is looking to join the breakouts rather than fade them. But usually I'm not comfortable with any standalone blanket strategies like breakouts, rtm, pairs trading etc on the intraday time frame.
 
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