Hi KP, first let me say thanks for weighing in on my journal, always appreciated. The points you raise are valid. So let me answer them.
1) Yes, I often have tracked trades to see where they ended up. For months, I used to screen shot every trade and adjustments along with journaling my "feelings" as that trade progressed and why I adjusted it the way that I did. To me it became more important to see where the trade would have ended up, than on where I exited. (Then I reviewed them at the end of the day, and all of them over the weekend)
2) The trading plan does have some wiggle room as you call it, because it allows for increased volatility. It isn't as simple as just risking 10 ticks and always going for 20 tick gains. I am placing stops at locations that would invalidate my working assumptions and I am exiting trades based on market structure, such as a high volume area for example. All the information I use for this is objective and robust, so that it will work in any time frame.
My challenge, as you probably know, has been with sticking to my trading plan and not allowing the emotion of a winning trade to highjack me and exit it early. It is easy to discuss in theory sticking with plans, and doing what you are supposed to do... but when you are down for the day, and suddenly you have a great winning trade on that right now if you exit could bring you back to breakeven (but that is the incorrect action), well, it is a struggle to trust your plan and continue to let it work. I think that is probably natural.
Hope that answers your question.
Thanks for the reply. What I am struggling with is actually having an objective trading plan that has a trading edge which I assume should be realized after 10 trades, or at least 20. My results to date have been terrible, but this is because I didn't have a trading plan, although I saw first hand how emotions came into this. I always thought that if I knew and tested my plan and saw that it was profitable that I would be able to just run it, not caring about any one trade since I knew that after a series of trades, certainly by the end of the week, I should be up.
Anyway, so when I was asking about how good your plan is (and not that I'm suggesting this), but do you think you could another trading your plan, and they could take it and trade it and make money? I asked because in a sense, this trader wouldn't in any way be emotionally connected to the plan as they didn't build it. They wouldn't care if it was stupid or not. It would very much be like how the experts in your journal say you have a job to do, which is to just carry out the plan as you should.
So I wonder that if the plan is indeed profitable, and if its easy enough to teach someone, then that someone should be able to trade it. Now if there is wiggle room as you confirm, then perhaps this new trader would also have trouble at this wiggle room stage because you didn't give him instructions about this wiggle room. So perhaps in real time, its this wiggle room where you are actually having to make a decision, and when you are forced to make a decision in real time, this is where it start to fall apart.
Another way I thought to look at it would be like this. If a trader told me he has a good plan, I'd say great, skype me, and tell me when to go long or short. I would just do as he says. You wouldn't have to worry cause it not your money on the line, so you could objectively tell me where the trade goes, and I would just take it. If though I see price moving against me, and you're not sure if I should get out or not, then to me this would tell me the problem is in the plan.
Anyway, I'm clearly no expert, but I fully understand how in the heat of the moment, I wasn't quite sure what to do and wish I had a plan to actually tell me. If I had that plan, then I wouldn't be worried because I would just take the quick loss and move on to the next trade, and I knew where the next trade would be because my plan told me. Heck, my plan should even tell me if after the loss, I should just take trade in the opposite direction since its moving the other way (this often of course doesn't work either and you get stopped out twice... LOL), but point being, it would be in the plan. So I just wonder if your plan has all of this, and if it does, then I'm very curious about where your deviation from the plan happens, where you start to wish or hope or pray or not exit as you should if your plan actually tells you to.
