If I weren’t so tired, I would write an article around a comment I made on JC, the NYSE Scalper’s site. But, I think the comment reads pretty well, so I will leave it at that for now and try to get some sleep. Maybe you’ve seen it already, since I hope a lot of you (the daytraders among you) read JC’s site. If not, give it a try… it’s really good.
I have a very irregular sleep schedule. I’m just naturally out of synch with the earth’s rotation. So, some weeks I’m up before the sun comes up, while others I’m just getting to bed when the sun comes up. Makes being at my screen during market hours a challenge sometimes, but it’s worth it!
October 12th, 2006 at 6:57 pm
Richard,
Thanks for all the support and advice you’ve given me over the last few months. Honestly, I really needed that extra guidance to help point out certain things about my trading. And many thanks for the encouragement to keep at it when things were rough for me.
I have always respected your advice and everything you’ve written and I will continue to do so. Keep up the great work on your site!
I wish you continued good trading!
October 12th, 2006 at 7:51 pm
That was a good comment on JC’s blog. We all falter on that every now and then. One of the reasons, I believe, is the short term randomness of the markets. Trading bad setups *will* sometimes work, so the positive/negative reinforcement feedback people are used to is screwed up in trading. Another reason is that it’s almost impossible to have a 100% locked down way to classify good and bad setups so classifying a setup as bad is often a hindsight thing and if it did work then it would never would have made it to the bad setups list. So what’s one to do? Decide in advance what makes a good or bad setup for you, and if you think a setup is bad (or good), whether before or after the trade, then specify why you think it’s bad or good so you get a loopback to your own rules. It’s a long and tedious process, not without issues since it has the potential risk of resulting in endless tweaks and overly complex rules. Not sure I’m making sense or not. It’s the probably the sleep thing, I have the same problem with being out of sync :)
October 13th, 2006 at 2:13 am
Thanks Eyal. Stuff about luck reinforcing bad decisions was one of the things I’d definitely mention if/when I wrote a full article.
October 13th, 2006 at 9:25 am
eyal: great comment
richard: i am with u on the sleep thing…between work and trading, i found myself today googling “home remedies bags under eyes”