Why Is The Obvious Not So Obvious?

Laissez Faire said:
the ability to stay out when you don't know what's going on is a crucial skill in trading success, but it requires both patience and discipline. I do my best to not trade if I know I have something to attend to later on or if I'm feeling impatient. In the past, I've made trading mistakes when I start trading and really should be doing something else. I rush things and do stupid mistakes.

It's been said in this thread that The Obvious is something which is hard to do in practice even if you know what it is. So who knows...
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Exactly, the above is the key to my troubles, I can have up to 100% win rate (without risking much) for several days in a row and then, I get bored, impatient, overconfident, and for a moment I stop doing what I know is right and get the one bad trade and I stare at the screen while that bad trade eat up most of my previous profits.:banghead: It is a work in progress...:sneaky:
 
Laissez Faire said:
Sure. There's opportunity cost, but what if you had a really high win rate and knew you would pretty much win as long as you waited for conditions to be right? And could eliminate all the losses and frustrations you encountered when trading noisy or range bound markets?
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As I said, there is another way, which 'riskfreetrading' eluded to in point (3) of his "obvious but not obvious".

https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/why-is-the-obvious-not-so-obvious.151802/page-51#post-2380268

Oh, and joining a strong trend definitely satisfies his point (5).

Combine 3&5 with repetition, point (4), and you'd have something like the attached.
 

Attachments

Vindago said:
Exactly, the above is the key to my troubles, I can have up to 100% win rate (without risking much) for several days in a row and then, I get bored, impatient, overconfident, and for a moment I stop doing what I know is right and get the one bad trade and I stare at the screen while that bad trade eat up most of my previous profits.:banghead: It is a work in progress...:sneaky:
More...

It may seem silly, but at the start of the year I'm actually making some changes to my workspace / workstation to make it more comfortable and enjoyable. This should make it easier to stay in observation mode. Think relaxation, calmness and confidence.

I'm also enforcing rules to keep me out of the market at certain times and also not engaging the market when I don't have the time or state of mind to be fully focused for the next n hours. Coming in to the market rushed, un-prepared and agitated is a recipe for failure.

I'll finish off with a quote I posted earlier in the thread which seems like it went by un-noticed:

When I trade at home, I often watch the sparrows in my garden. When I feed them bread, they take just a little piece at a time and fly away. They keep on flying back and forth, taking small bits of bread. They may have to make a hundred stabs at a piece of bread to get what a pigeon gets at one time, but that is why a pigeon is a pigeon. You will never be able to shoot a sparrow, it is just too fast. That is the way I day trade. For example, there are times during the day when I am sure that the S&P is going up, but I don’t try to pick the bottom, and I am out before it tops. I just take the mid-range where the momentum is greatest. That, to me, is trading like a sparrow eats.
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Ed48 said:
As I said, there is another way, which 'riskfreetrading' eluded to in point (3) of his "obvious but not obvious".
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There are many ways to trade... :)

I don't know who riskfreetrading is, but it's hard to argue with any of his points in that post you're quoting.

I think point 3 could be interpreted in two ways:

a. Find one instrument which have ample opportunity and focus on that instrument only. If you want to master an instrument I think that's the only way to go.

All US indices (and many other markets too) have ample opportunity (volatility) these days.

b. Watch multiple instruments or a basket of stocks and filter for a specific condition (s) and then trade the strongest/weakest. I think that's how many stock day traders work.

Personally, I only know ES and I'm starting to learn NQ a bit better. It seems to me that one and certainly the two combined offer everything I need at the moment.
 
Laissez Faire said:
I think point 3 could be interpreted in two ways:

a. Find one instrument which have ample opportunity and focus on that instrument only. If you want to master an instrument I think that's the only way to go.

All US indices (and many other markets too) have ample opportunity (volatility) these days.

b. Watch multiple instruments or a basket of stocks and filter for a specific condition (s) and then trade the strongest/weakest. I think that's how many stock day traders work.
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Good point.

For (a), bitcoin seems like a possible candidate. It has volatility by the bucket load. :D
 
Lesson 1602

Where to enter:

Just pick a side.
Green is up, Red is down.
Stop loss: the other side of the range (of your selected time frame).
Find a narrow range and you will not loose much if wrong.

Really a no brainer, or am I wrong about this? Please tell me.

GO
 
odlareg said:
Lesson 1602

Where to enter:

Just pick a side.
Green is up, Red is down.
Stop loss: the other side of the range (of your selected time frame).
Find a narrow range and you will not loose much if wrong.

Really a no brainer, or am I wrong about this? Please tell me.

GO
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Would you say you look at your operations as trading AGAINST the retracement traders? Could you also do what you do and trade AGAINST BO traders?

If this question makes no sense, pls ignore.
 
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