Though I did read the cautious words from Mike’s blog about options expiration, I decided to trade if any dummy set up was found. Short position of E-mini Nasdaq was established below 10am (chicago time) candle. It took 1 hour to stop me out. Darn! However, everything was done by following my rules.
One trade closed with 1-R loss.
Technorati Tags: E-mini, Nasdaq, trading journal
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I decided to relook again my previous posting on “Next trade is more important‘. I discussed briefly on experience of having a string of winning days. Now I am looking at the losing experience. It seems to be a common problem among traders. Well, I made the same mistake on tuesday’s trade as well. Coincidently, ugly was having the similar problem yesterday.
What is the relationship between my E-mini S&P trade and Gold trade? Absolutely NO. But, at the psychological side, trader has a tendency to relate them. This is similar to the theory of points and line.
In the same dimension, it is easily for one to connect two points and make it a line, though these two points are, in fact, have no logical relationship
I find it to be so true in trading. When I had one or two losses in a row within a trading day, unintentionally, I become cautious. I do not want to lose money again and I do think that the probability to success today is low, since I had made two losing trades before. So, I assess the third trade in a different approach, (though I still think that I am following the darn trading rules!). I am eager to take profit now when I see the candle is narrow at the top of chart, (well, that’s lucky if the position is in the money) or I am moving stop loss to break even point far too early, just to avoid losing money, again. Oh, not again!
I do not have a concrete treatment for this kinda of psychological problem, since I am not a psychiatrist. To me, the best solution so far, is to stop trading for the day if I have two 1-R losses in a row. Because, I KNOW MYSELF. I am just not cool enough to make another trade immediately after 2 losses.
Anyway, market is always there, let’s fight another day.
Ok, Let’s get straight forward (Again?!?). I did not make any money today. But, neither did I lose a penny. Enough of BS. I did not make any trade today. Reason? Well, I was physically tired., and secondly I did not have any good dummy set up and good feeling across the market. In the morning, Nasdaq just kept running without me (it basically meant I did not have entry point at all). All right, it got the punishment it deserved in the afternoon, ended the rally and retraced gave back some early gain . I called it a day after 1130am NY time to catch some sleep.
This is not an easy week, for me.
We continued our discussion on profit taking. And Mike posted his reply to Vince on partial profit taking here. Jason did some recaps of his recent performance as well. Traders might find something familiar…
Yup, I switched again. No, not trading, I mean blogging tools. After introduced by Trader Eyal, I have a look at Performancing for FireFox. Let’s try some Foxy style of blogging.
Well, first impression. Performancing is lighter and faster. It basically means it is faster to load the editor. I am not sure why did Windows Live take me so long to load.
But something is missing here…I can’t find smiley faces. 🙁 Or maybe I just missed out some setting? Leave a comment to me if your know the trick. Please… 🙂
Anyway, it is still a great tool to blog. It integrated Performancing metrics at the sidebar. So you can immediately view yoru visitors statistics.
Here is a snapshot of Performancing for Firefox. (I am still trying to figure how to configure in order to upload my image to my server…)
[photopress:perfomancing.jpg,full,centered]
In short, impressive blogging tool. 🙂
This is my first posting by using Microsoft Windows Live writer (Beta). So far so good. It is a cool tool for blogging.
I came across this tool from Trader Eyal
More on blogging later.
Let?s get it straight forward. I earned some money today. But, the problem is, according to plan, I should have earned more. Instead of closing the day with 3.5-R profit, I should have closed it with 5-R or maybe a little bit more.
Dow mini trade was the mistake of the day. I again closed the trade prematurely due to my psychological weakness. In fact, I did plan the trade before that, however, I decided to chicken out again, forgetting the darn rules.
Well, on the hindsight, I did see the improvement after when I start to work the plan, follow the rules and let the profit run. E-mini Nasdaq trade went pretty well with 3-R gain. My main problem now is EXIT. I have no problem with my stop loss execution. However, when it comes to exit a profitable trade, I do not have a concrete plan yet.
I had some discussion with Vincent on the topic of profit taking. We review some strategies used by bloggers like Mike and Maoxian. Maoxian was right by saying that
?in the end, everyone is different. i might be comfortable walking away from the screens and do OK and someone else finds they do best by never missing a tick … you have to know yourself, figure out what makes you tick.?
No single strategy is perfect, it comes down to trader?s personality and his/her ?Needs? of profit. Here are some links I have found related to this topic.
Taylor tree?s Scale Fish Not trade Part I
Taylor tree’s Scale Fish Not trade Part II
Trader Mike?s Note to self: Look to sell half
