This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com

I have decided to quit trading.

I have given this my best shot, but as Richard said earlier, “Trading is simple. YOU are complicated”. And I am indeed complicated.

I have gone from being up 25% in my prop account after two months to now down -80% after 6 months. There have been a variety of circumstances and mistakes, but I am responsible for my trading results. Period. I blame no one but myself. This is a hole I cannot trade my way out of. I have instructed my prop firm to trade the remains of my account for me. Better that they make 50% on my tiny amount of money than letting me lose it all. There’s something to be said for trying again and again when you fail, but there’s also something to be said for knowing when to pack it in.

Many have tried to help me over the years, and I am grateful. There has been more than enough good advice and help given to me to allow any less complicated person to be successful. Unfortunately, I was unwilling or unable to really follow it.

I realize that I have been pursuing my daytrading “dream” with all manner of emotional baggage, and for the wrong reasons. This has led me to disaster. I wanted an escape from my day job, and I wanted trading success to bail me out of these and other problems in my life. These feelings have pushed me to forced desperation trading so that I could escape from them. Instead of a bottle or a needle, I turned to charts and a mouse. An expensive “cure” to say the least.

So is daytrading impossible? Far from it! There are very many who are doing it right and making a good living from it. I am just not one of them. Maybe the answer for me would be automated system trading where emotion and discretion is left completely out of the equation. That’s one thing I have to consider. I was applying for a new job in the finance realm, which would force me to quit watching the markets and trading during the day, but it’s looking like that is not going to pan out as they have offered it to someone else. I may get a shot as a second choice should they turn it down, but I don’t think it’s likely. Either way, I’ve hit my personal stop loss point as a trader and I’m pulling the plug.

I don’t exactly know where I go from here. My every waking moment has been trading, markets and everything in between for the last few years. Podcasts, websites, books, talk-radio… Suddenly, my world seems to have gone silent. I’m a very driven person, and I don’t take much down time. Every spare second was spent doing something related to my goals. Now my driving purpose has faded away, and my life seems empty. That purpose and clear direction is destroyed. I plan on focusing now on those close to me who need that energy and attention that I’ve been spending elsewhere. Maybe this is the answer that I’ve been seeking all along, trying to find it in a few R’s when it was right in the walls of my own home.

I feel like I don’t have anything to contribute here anymore, so I don’t see myself posting much. This is a site for professional and developing traders, not washed-out ones. Should that change, I’ll be back. But if not, I wanted to thank everyone out there again for help and support over the last couple of years. I wish you success in trading and in your life.

This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com

This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com

So you thought I was a clown a few days ago? Today I was Chuckles McGuffaw the 3rd, Chief Clown and Grand Jester of the Market Clowns Union, M.C.U. No. 1337.

I had the day off today, and I had a couple of hours around lunchtime. I started scalping RIMM, and ended up making 16 scalps, moving over $200,000 of stock. End result: -$33 on the positions, and then $32 in commissions for about -$65 down, or roughly 6% of my current account balance. Yet again, I prove to myself that I have no business away from the 15 min chart and defined setups. Scalping also invariably loses me money. It’s comical how many times I pay for the same lesson. I did do better this time than I ever have before, though. At least I’m improving. :)

This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com

This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com

I’m stuck in my trading progress. I have no method. I try to trade what “looks good” since I have no method. I lose a little. Wash, rinse, repeat. My biggest problem in finding a method is that my head is so full of hundreds of different timeframes, methods, indicators, setups and philosophies that I can’t choose one. All I need is one that works, that I believe in, and that I can use consistently. I have a lot of trading skills and better discipline than I used to, but not a lot of trading focus and bad intuition. I feel like what I need now is a method that has a very high probability of win, even if it has a very low reward. Any suggestions?

I’m in the process of trying to get a new job, which would take me away from the part-time daytrading scene. I’d then be confined to swings managed by trading triggers. It seems to be working out well for Ugly, and we all know Pinoy rules in that arena. I just hate doing overnights because of the potential of a huge gap against you, and I can never seem to tell which way a stock is headed.

Anyway, that’s where I’m at. That BIDU blowup was kind of a death blow to me. My prop account is at about 55% of my initial finding level. I can’t be consistently profitable, even trading small. I lose 3 steps and gain back 1 it seems. I don’t have much to say lately, hence the lack of long rambling blog posts from me. I’m feeling pretty defeated as a trader, and it’s not an impulsive spike down that’s likely to bounce. It’s more of a gradual long-term downtrend in my feelings, if that makes any sense.

This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com

This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com

As I’ve been looking back at my trading history, I’m realizing how much I have lost over the three years I’ve been trading.

I started with $1000 in a Scottrade account, and I turned that into $300 through n00b trades, holding on to losers and buying cheap options. I literally knew nothing back then. I refunded and lost a couple hundred more. Then I funded up to $2000 in my Zecco account. Free trades, but PDT rules. I lost a few hundred of that, too. I took a $10k TD account that was only supposed to be safe money (like CD safe) and took it to $9000, refunded to $10k and back to $9000, where it sits now. And you know the story about how I took my $2000 Zecco money to the prop firm, turned it into $2600 and then down to $1200 where I am today, through overtrading, bad discipline and just a really unfortunate situation with BIDU and my order servers shutting down.

Adding it up in my head, after three years of active trading, I’ve lost around $3000. My trading accounts have been around $2000 most of the time that I’ve traded, so I’ve completely blown up 1.5 times so far. People (not on the internets) who know that I “trade” have no idea what my actual performance is, including my wife, sadly. If she did, I’d never trade again! Whether that would be good or bad I’ll leave for you to decide.

Why do I write this?

Part confession–I am Prospectus, and I am a net loser at trading. Honesty on the internet, a cloak in reality. Welcome to my sad world.

Part warning–Trading is NOT easy, and the trading education, especially the self-taught one, does not come fast, easy, or cheap.

Finally, to place these facts in front of me, where I have to face them. It’s so easy to zero the PnL meter and start again. Then being a couple hundred in the hole isn’t so bad. But that meter’s been running the whole time, and financially, as a trader, it would have been better if I had never been born, to use a figure of speech.

What have I gained for my $3000 and three years of effort?

Knowledge of myself–my flaws and weaknesses, but also some strengths.

Some knowledge of the markets, though admittedly I seem to know more about what doesn’t work than what does.

Ability to execute orders along with endless market jargon.

Friends in many traders throughout the world who have offered help and encouragement.

Have I learned how to be a profitable trader? No dice there. In the end, that’s the whole objective of trading, and so far, success has eluded me, or I’ve avoided success, depending on how you look at it.

So there’s a full inventory of where I stand. I’m not going to quit, so the only direction for me is forward.

This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com

This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com

I blew up 30% of my account today. I made some trades earlier in the day, a few -1R losers, you know, my usual.

I tried to scalp some BIDU after the close, making the spread. It was working pretty well–I had one good win and one scratch. I was long 30 shares when the earnings news came out, and BIDU collapsed. I tried to sell, but my platform’s servers apparently stop at 5:00 ET, and my order was stuck, unfilled, but I couldn’t cancel it either to try to sell.

I finally reached someone by phone, and they sold my shares around 319. That’s a $450 loss on my $1700 account.

It was dumb of me to be holding into the earnings report. It was not my fault that the order server screwed me. Still, I am responsible for my trading results, and I don’t blame anyone but me.

I look at this hole, and I think that it will take me years just to trade back to where I was when I started, and that assumes that I’m profitable from here, which doesn’t seem too likely from my past experiences.

On the other hand, I could re-fund to my original level fairly painlessly by adding more cash to my account. I even got a cash award at work recently for $300, which almost offsets this loss. But if I can turn a $2000 account into $1300, I could also turn a $200,000 account into $130,000, and that would ruin me. I’m playing small deliberately so that mistakes don’t ruin my life. But a loss of this % is still devastating.

I feel, again, like quite a failure. I have no discipline, because I keep trading when I should be following my dumb 7 step plan. I hate my job, and so I force trades to have something to enjoy during the day, something to put my heart into. But this isn’t what I want. :(

Maybe now this pain of losing will be greater than the pain of change, and I’ll finally get my head together, start from the beginning and get discipline, a system to follow, and have a chance at success.

Thanks for reading.

This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com

This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com

This song from Incubus pretty much sums up my trading and life exactly. The video with it is kind of WTF, so ignore that and just listen:

Nowhere Fast by Incubus

Will I ever get to, to where it is that I am going
Will I ever follow through with what I… with what I have planned
I guess it’s possible, that I have been a bit distracted
And the directions for me are a lot less in demand.
In demand.
Will I ever get to where I’m going
If I do will I know when I’m there
If the wind blew me in the right direction. Yeah
Would I even care
I would.

I take a look around, it’s evident the scene has changed.
And there are times when I feel improved, improved upon the past.
And there are times when I can’t seem to understand at all.
And yes it seems as though I’m going nowhere really fucking fast.
Nowhere fast.

Will I ever get to where I’m going
If I do will I know when I’m there
If the wind blew me in the right direction. Yeah
Would I even care
I would.

Will I ever get to where I’m going
If I do, will I know when I am there
If the wind blew me in the right direction. Yeah
Would I even care
I would.

This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com

This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com

Here’s some charts of a great short trade Wallstreak user MarketMonk made in PTR:

Daily:

5-min:

He pulled in 8 points there! Nice work.

I got back from my work travel, and I have taken 7 trades in the last two days–6 losses and one (small) win. I continue to trade wrong, be on the wrong side of the market, enter and stop at the wrong places. I’ve failed at following my 7 step plan, since I’m just trading anyway and not working it anymore. On top of it all, changes are happening at my job, and not for the better. This is a pretty low time for me, but don’t try to catch a falling knife–it can always go lower…

I’m going to start to follow my seven step plan again. No trades until I get to that step in the plan. That’s where I’ve gone wrong here.

This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com

This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com

I’m on the road this week, traveling for my day job. I’ll not be trading much (if at all), or blogging, or even Wallstreaking. If you start to jones for your daily dose of emo, then just click my name to go to my blog reruns to tide you over ;)

Anyway, I was reading about Timothy Sikes, whose book Richard profiled a little while back. I was reading his latest blog post, and when I went to make a comment, something struck me to use as a disciplinary trick to keep me from forcing trades.

Timothy gave out his pick for trading in the next session (emphasis is mine):

You’ve been taught to think that you always need another play and that if your money is just sitting in your account, it’s not working for you. OK, here’s my pick for tomorrow:

Nothing!

You don’t need to trade stocks every day, or guess how the market will fare, or how oil will fare, or how Carl Icahn’s rumored blah blah blah might make you money. No! The way I built my wealth so quickly was to wait for opportunities to present themselves–not try to will them into existence. In fact, my largest losses have always occurred whenever I did try to play these guessing games. Yes, that’s correct–you’ve all been brainwashed into churning your accounts far too often and I have a lot of work to do to teach you the right way to trade. So, take some time and reflect, there will be further opportunities, you just need to have patience.

Most of my losers have come from forcing trades when I had no setup, no edge. I constantly struggle with sitting on my hands when there are no compelling setups to trade. I always want to be in a trade! I try to trade all throughout the session, every session. Timothy’s words from above further emphasized something I already knew I was doing wrong. But with my emotional makeup, I always want to be in a trade. Sitting out is painful! I’ve come to realize that for me, losing is actually less painful than sitting out, because I choose to do that rather than sit on the sidelines many times.

Well, I posted the following comment to Tim’s blog post:

Most of my losses come from forced trades. This is good advice, Tim. I need to take it more often! I want to trade all during the day, every day. If I’m not in a trade, I feel that I’m missing out! I was up 30% in two months starting in July, but then I ground it all away back to 0 by trading day in and day out through the September chop.

As I typed in the text in bold above, that thought finally came into my conscious mind. I knew I always wanted to be in a trade, but I hadn’t really thought about it. Writing things down helps to solidify vague ethereal ideas into concrete ideas. This is one of the main reasons I blog about my trading–it helps me to realize things about myself that I didn’t “know”. Many times, when I write something, that’s the first time I really even thought about it!

So what was my big idea to help my discipline problem? Since I always want to be in a trade, that’s exactly what I’ll do. I’ll always have a trade on! I’ve been playing around with the idea of trading several systems simultaneously, one range-bound and one trending, instead of trying to guess which kind of a market we’ll get each day. I’ll implement one of these systems right away. I’ll carve off some small portion of my equity, and continuously trade a trend-following system in something like QQQQ. That way, I’ll always be long or short a small position in the markets, and if I see a good setup elsewhere, one that’s good enough to take my attention away from the system trade I’m in, then I’ll jump on it. Otherwise, I’ll just watch my system trade. No need to sit on my hands, no fighting my urge to be in a trade. I see it as emotional judo–take my weakness and use its power against itself. This should really help the quality of my trades increase. When I’m in a trade, I don’t tend to take other trades at the same time, even some that look good, and that should work in my favor in this scenario!

I’ll post more about my thoughts for this system over the next week. Please feel free to comment about any of this, whether you agree or disagree! And thanks, Tim, for the inspiration!

This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com

This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com

-3.6R today. 7 trades, 7 losses. It was a low volume choppy day, and I pushed for trades instead of trading good setups that I saw (because I didn’t see any). I’m not practicing what I’m supposed to be practicing anymore, I’m just starting to get back into trading as usual. I need to get back to focusing on my plan, and working the foundation first. The funny thing is that I’m not in despair over these results. I’m handling it quite well, actually. I think that is a victory for my new mindset–being okay to lose, deep down. Not racing anyone else or even myself. More introspection to come shortly on my Seven Step Plan page.

This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com

This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com

The comments from my two posts have really changed my thinking around. I’ve been focusing so much on trying to trade my way out of the hole I’m in, and I need to stop digging and take a breather. I need to refocus on different things. I need a big paradigm shift, and I need to change a lot of thought and behavior patterns. And this will take time.

Here’s my seven-step plan for myself:

1. Accept myself right where I am, as a trader, and in every other way in my life. This could easily be the hardest part for me!
2. Address my personal weaknesses outside of the markets. The markets will not solve my problems or change my flaws–it will exploit them. First and foremost will be discipline; without this I will fail.
3. Plan out my vision for my journey as a trader, including goals and milestones. Describe specifically what my criteria for success are, and what events will require a correction. Success is not simply profit and loss, or “winning” or being “right” on each trade, either.
4. Re-fund my account to start fresh. Reset the whole situation–it’ll only take a little over $100. (Yes, all of this over a $100 drawdown. It is -5% under my initial funding level, down from a peak of 30% profit, regardless of the $ amount, though)
5. Select a trading system that includes formal setups and rules that specifically address my weaknesses and keep them from undermining me.
6. Implement the system and practice it, trading small. Trading not for money, but trading to not lose money, trading to increase my skill and consistency.
7. Continue to follow my vision and my plan for myself as a trader, which will take over from here.

I see this as the path I must follow. The steps cannot be skipped, but must be fulfilled in order. It will not be traveled in a day. I will not expect to arrive soon. I’ll arrive when I get there. It may be weeks from now, or it may be years. But I believe I can get there, and so I will. And I will not travel this road only to get to my destination, but because I like traveling the path. And I’ll continue to blog about my journey, because it helps solidify and clarify things in my mind when I write them down. If anyone else suffers from similar trials, I hope that what I write will be helpful to them. Thanks for reading and for your support. :)

This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com

This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com

So what was all that for? I traded again today, did okay, pulled off a good StreetSmack scalp, was up 1R, lost on a couple more, ended up down -0.5% and then decided I should start scalping big to make it back. Just to get green. I lost another -1R going short. Quick, reverse! Went long, traded a size way too big and lost -2.6R on that scalp. So instead of ending the day down -0.5%, I’m ending the day down -4.5%. All for stupid revenge scalps.

All that personality profiling for nothing, because I went and did the same thing and ignored it all. I traded at least 4 different styles today and some just from the hip. I’m dangerous and out of control. I don’t want to implode my account, but I have to stop trading or else I will. I’m so mad at myself. Trying to race is getting me killed.

I better just paper-trade until I figure stuff out.

This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com

This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com

As suggested by many commenters after my long losing streak, I’m conducting a focused and thorough inventory of myself. I want to get everything out in the open–my strengths, preferences, personality, resources, constraints, and my flaws and weaknesses. I also want to put together all of the good trading principles and wisdom that I’ve collected in the hopes that I can integrate them into a system for myself–one that I truly understand, that I believe in and will stick to. I hope to take this assessment and develop a personal strategy to give me the best chance at success.

Jesse Livermore said:

Following the dictates of experience may possibly fool you, now and then. But not following them invariably makes an ass of you.

I have not followed the dictates of my experience for a long time now, so you know what that makes me. My experience tells me time and again that I need to really examine myself. I try a new system, get banged up, and decide that I need to examine myself, don’t do it, try a new system, repeat the cycle. I’m ending the cycle with this personal inventory.

If a trading method is in conflict with my personal characteristics, I won’t be successful with it. Conversely, if a trading method is in tune with my personality and strengths, I should be able to do very well with it. So, here are some of my traits:

PERSONALITY
•Ambitious and Driven–I want to accomplish things. I read, trade, write, think about stocks from the time I get up until I go to bed. I put a lot of my free time into the study of trading. I even read eBooks and articles on my PDA when I walk my dog!
•Spontaneous–I hate drudgery, monotonous tasks, grunt work, rigid schedules. I’ll shirk things if they are a chore.
•Helpful–I like to help others!
•Self-Critical–I really get down on myself for “failure”.
•Performer–I look for feedback from others, and I live for praise and recognition. I “need” reinforcement from others, like an actor or a musician.
•My Meyers-Briggs type is eNFP (formally tested at work), so I’m barely extroverted, strong intuitive, strong feeling and strong perceiving. (Here’s a link to what all that stuff is.) I consider special circumstances, am open to and await new information, interpret and add meaning rather than focusing on the basic information. Basically, my personality is a direct opposite to what a good engineer should be! I just don’t fit in that profession.

PREFERENCES
•I like movement. I like to chase strength and weakness, not fade them–momentum and breakouts are my preference.
•I like to be profitable RIGHT AWAY in a trade, even if it’s small. Then I am the most comfortable.
•I like to win. I like to “be right”, even though I know it isn’t the most important thing. I like to finish out periods in the green (day, week, month, year, etc.)
•I like to trade often, every day if possible.

STRENGTHS
•Programming–I can program well, and I understand computers and computational things.
•Thinking / Analysis–I can look at facts and data, formulas and laws and come to conclusions.
•Mathematics–I have a graduate degree in Engineering. I got the whole “Math” thing down.
•Communication skills–I fancy myself a good writer and communicator…
•Humility–I can acknowledge where I am deficient and also acknowledge when others are superior in their skills
•Ability to learn–I can learn very well if I am guided, less so if I’m all on my own.
•Self Awareness (to some extent)–I stop to ask myself why things are the way they are with me. I am not oblivious to my faults (most of them).

WEAKNESSES
•Emotional– get overly emotional about things, good and bad. Probably influences why I always seem to be on the wrong side of the market when I trade without a system.
•Manic-Depressive–While not diagnosed :P, I go from carefree highs, taking too much risk, to pessimistic lows where it’s all gloom.
•Impatient–I hate waiting.
•Lack of Self Control / Impulsive–I don’t follow through with my plans. I don’t stick to my resolutions. I change on a whim, even when it’s against what I’ve resolved.
•Inconsistent–I change things up when they aren’t working, and I don’t stick to a good plan.
•Rash–I rush to judgments and conclusions without sufficient time or data
•Wishy-washy–I easily change my mind, back and forth, based on circumstances.
•Self worth & emotions tied to market success or failure–I am heavily long emotionally in my performance in the market. I want to succeed here so badly, that if I fail in this, I feel I have failed in life. Too much pressure!
•Lazy–In contrast to my drive and ambition, I also have a lazy streak, where I will try to take the easy way out of anything that is in front of me.
•Sense of Urgency–I’m always racing! I want to turn my tiny account into enough so that I can quit my job and trade full time tomorrow. Not realistic, and self-defeating! I’m always trying to race too fast.

CONSTRAINTS
•Part time trading–I can’t devote my full time to the markets (that pesky day job thing)
•Low equity level–My balance is $2k. There, now everybody knows. My commissions are per-share, so they are not the drag that I have faced in the past, but that means I also have to play small. It also means that I’m stuck with free tools, since large fixed costs will eat me alive.
•Distractions during day–Coworkers, bosses, meetings, etc.

RESOURCES
•Buying Power–I’m leveraged 25:1 in my prop account. I have plenty of buying power, way more than I need.
•Trading mentors–That’s all of you out there. :)
•Trading skills–I’m no novice when it comes to actually carrying out trades. I’m comfortable executing orders. I’m also moderately skilled at in-trade management, choosing partial and full exits and stop management.
•Good trading principles–I’ve learned a lot of good principles in my study of the markets, and I’ve internalized a few of them.

Here’s a few quotes and paraphrased general principles that I want to implement more:

Quotes:

HCPG: “You don’t suck, you just need a system. After you find a system, just stick with it and become better at it. Your energies now should focus simply on that — what kind of trading do I want to do? A scalper? Futures? Swing-trading? Momentum break-outs? etc.”

Pinoy: “It seems that you just need to focus on fewer set-ups instead of jumping from one system to another…when I was at point of giving up many years ago just like where you are now, a very wise trader advised me to go back to all my trades and remember which of these trades did I feel like I was most relaxed and calm (whether taking profit or cutting losses). And I found that I’m most relaxed when trading breakouts and chasing momentums…you need to find that trader inside you and trading will be more pleasurable”

Born2Code: “Look at the charts the night before, look for a breakout to a new high, or a retracement. Buy the follow-through using a stop-order with a profit target and a stop loss. You would still be “day trading” but using the daily charts.
The amount of noise in this market is incredible. Watching the daily chart during market hours (not the 15/30 minute chart, but literally the daily candles) shows me very clearly how difficult it is to day-trade this market these days. The signal-to-noise is very high.”

Johnson: “Find something that you are good at now - looking at your 30% run up seems to fit :) - and become great at it. Know exactly when to jump into that type of trading. What type of environment was the market in when you experienced those gains? Once you have one strategy that is successful you can begin to experiment with new techniques. Paper trade, or start very small, in techniques which you are unfamiliar with and go from there. I think you’ll find that if you stick to what you know you are good at your account size will prosper.”

Zoomie: “As per Jamie’s comment, eons ago, in a post forgotten because it conjured up too many painful memories, said it takes 3 years to become a proficient daytrader.”

Richard: “It’s not a race!”

Paraphrased:

Trader-X: Just look for one high quality setup consistently and you can do well with only a couple of trades per week.
Jamie: Volume spikes, capitulation, pivot points, daily/intraday interactions, base-and-break
00NR7: Truly understand your trading system, bring a structure to the trade (he uses fib retracements)
Teresa Lo: Test your strategy for confidence
HCPG: Follow a system, stick with it and become better at it
Muddy: Price and volume! Trade what’s moving, don’t force trades
Zoomie: Unlimited trading is a double-edged sword

During my 30% run-up, I was trading momentum and breakouts. I was watching gappers and trading from very short timeframes (1 min) with structure and targets set up on a higher timeframe (15 min or daily). Maybe that style just matched the markets well at the time. I used the same strategy to grind back down to 0, when the volume was low and breakouts failed.

What strategy to try now? How best to address my flaws? Not sure, but with all of this out there it should help me to work that out. I’ll read and re-read this post to let it all sink in.

This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com

This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com

Traded 8 times today, 4 losses, 2 scratch, 2 wins, total -1.5% for the day. Bad way to start the week.

I tried taking Muddy momo plays, as I talked about on Friday, but nothing was following through this morning. I guess the low volume day before the Fed sets rates is a dumb time to try to chase moves. Took a 1% loss my first trade in CFC and then nickel and dime the rest. I stopped chasing momo halfway through the day and started looking to fade strength. I did take one good trade in EMC that I’m proud of. There was a big selloff down to 18.50, which was a prior pivot point from the daily. I went long after a big volume spike, but I took the first partial way too early. I was already shaken because of my earlier losses, and I was also playing by ear instead of following a system. If I would have held, I would have made +2R, but since I sold half early I only got +1R out of the trade. Here’s the chart:

I’m not skilled enough yet to be a true discretionary trader, and I need to follow a system. I think I need to put Muddy’s trading style in the “get to it later when you get more skills” category. I don’t know. Even if I follow a system 100%, I need discretion to know when to use it and when to sit on the sidelines!

I’m a wreck. I’m scattered and unfocused. I started working on an inventory of my personality and such, but didn’t finish it. I keep thinking the next new system is going to solve my problems, but the root of the problem is me. I’ll put my energy into finishing that inventory of myself and I’ll post it before I take any more trades. I need a solid foundation under my feet before risking any more money in the markets. After I really understand myself, I can attack my weaknesses and play to my strengths, and maybe I’ll have a chance to succeed then.

This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com

This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com

I finished the week out +2.69R, though I’m still down -10.15R for the month, up from a max drawdown of -12.85R. Turned a corner, anyway! Charts of my trades today are farther down the page. Read the rest of this entry »

This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com

This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com

Not me, the markets got pummeled! I paper-traded my variation of a system inspired by 00NR7’s system as I said yesterday that I would. There were so many Briefing gappers that I didn’t even use my Prophet.net scan. I did make some changes to my plans, though. I watched 5, 10 and 15 minute charts for the setups, and I took setups that weren’t strictly hammers, and I also faded some gaps rather than trading the direction of the gap. I took 4 trades, 3 wins and 1 loss, for a total of +5.2R for the day. I met my +5R goal in one day! Awesome.

Thanks to everyone who commented on my rant from yesterday. I was humbled and blown away by all the support I received, and it really helped. I know this is only one day, but I plan to stick with it and keep my focus, so I’m optimistic about the future. It kind of proves to me that I do have some skills; I was just out of whack for the last two weeks. This pace and style of trading seems to fit my personality much better than shooting from the hip 17 times a day. Maybe someday I’ll get there, but I don’t need to start there!

The charts of my “trades” are below, with the usual orange=entry, red=stop, light blue=partial, blue=exit format:

CHINA 5′ Short Continuation

MGG 5′ Long Gap Fade

PSUN 15′ Short Gap Fade (I got whipsawed out, but the trade did eventually go in my intended direction. I entered based on a break from an inside NR7 candle)

AAPL 10′ Long Gap Fade

This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com