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Trading Psychology

why don’t you stop?

by Gav Leave a Comment

So often I hear about people unable to execute their stops, and keep the loser, hope to make a come back in a losing trade. Here is a paragraph written by Anthony Robbins in his book Awaken the giant within. I find it useful to explain why trader unable to act on stop loss.

What is this force that is controlling you even now and will continue to do so for the rest of your life? PAIN and PLEASURE! Everything you and I do, we do either out of our need to avoid pain or our desire to gain pleasure.

So often I hear people talk about changes they want to make in their lives. But they can’t get themselves to follow through. They feel frustrated, overwhelmed, even angry with themselves because they know they need to take action, but they can’t get themselves to do it. There is one elementary reason: they keep trying to change their behaviour, which is the effect, instead of dealing with the cause behind it.

Understanding and utilizing the forces of pain and pleasure will allow you once and for all to create the lasting changes and improvements you desire for yourself and those you care about. Failure to understand this force dooms you to a future of living in reaction, like an animal or a machine. Perhaps this sounds like a complete oversimplification, but think about it. Why don’t you do some of the things you know you should do?

After all, What is procrastination? It’s when you know you should do something, but you still don’t do it. Why not? The answer is simple: at some level you believe that taking action in this moment would be more painful than just putting it off. Yet, have you ever had the experience of putting something off for so long that suddenly you felt pressure to just do it, to get it done? What happended? You changed what you linked pain and pleasure to. Suddenly, not taking action became more painful than putting it off.

A man who suffers before it is neccessary, suffers more than is necessary.

Filed Under: Rant Tagged With: Trading Psychology

Postmortem 26-September-2006

by Gav Leave a Comment

Dear diary,

Well, I was chopped out. Market again played some tricks. E-mini Nasdaq took out my stop level and, in fact, went lower than swing low in 15-min chart. The rest of story is the same, it went up.

Scared? No. Frustrated? Well, a little bit. But, this kinda days are really part of business. I went through again the trade, I just have to take the trade, though I ended up with a 1-R loss.

I browsed through few blogs, though they are trading stocks, most of them were chopped out by market as well. (Ok, I am using other’s pain to console myself ๐Ÿ™‚ )

Let’s fight another day.

Know that it?s your decisions, and not your conditions, that determine your destiny.

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Filed Under: Rant Tagged With: Trading Psychology

Postmortem 25-September-2006

by Gav Leave a Comment

Dear diary,

Well, the market was making fun of me. Gapped up, went down, flat then up big. Ok, I was wrong this time. [Read more…] about Postmortem 25-September-2006

Filed Under: Rant Tagged With: Trading Psychology

Postmortem 13-September-2006

by Gav Leave a Comment

Dear diary,

What am I doing here? I am indeed having some bad days recently, both my personal life and trading. Both hit me hard , emotionally. Well, that’s not the point of this post.

I was chopped out by E-mini Nasdaq today. And I missed out the trade of Dow mini. The problem here is not the effectiveness of trading strategy (i.e for me, it is dummy trading), it is the sharpness of a trader that counts. I was not paying enough attention to YM (Dow mini).

Dummyspots.com has some good articles on dummy trading and dummy spots illustration. Go and have a look.

So, do the bad results recently prompt me to stop posting my trades on the blog? Not at all. In fact, I found it useful and I will continue doing that for the time being.

If you are unwilling to fail, sometimes publicly, and even catastrophically, you stand little chance of ever getting rich.

Anyway, this should be a light week, and I will be flying to Taiwan next week for a break.

Success truly is the result of good judment. Good judgment is the result of experience, and experience is often the result of bad judgment!

Filed Under: Rant Tagged With: Trading Psychology

No trade: 13-September-2006 (AGAIN!?!?!)

by Gav Leave a Comment

Dear diary,

Ah..it was a trending day! Great.

Good thing: Not a single dummy setup in 30-min chart across E-mini S&P, E-mini Nasdaq, mini-size Dow, and even E-mini Ruselle 2000! before 12pm NY time. So, I was being disciplined, no setup, no trade. Bad thing: I didn’t make any money.
Worst thing: I didn’t make any money during trending day.

Just as part of my observation, I noticed chances appeared in 15-min charts for the past 2 days. I was not trying to monkey around timeframes, it was the strong day with strong opening volume analysis led me to think about looking at 15-min chart for faster and safer entry.

For consideration, if opening volume analysis shows a volatile or strong day ahead, I am keen to look at shorter time frame (15-min chart). Well, it is just a consideration.

Bottom line, I need to have a couple of different trading strategies in addition to dummy trading. I can’t make a living with just one strategy.

Anyway, let’s fight another day.

Filed Under: Rant Tagged With: Trading Psychology

Postmortem 06-September-2006

by Gav Leave a Comment

It was a trending day. But, I did not make much money. Was I frustrated? I was. I was trying very hard to jump out from the recent lousy days. Vincent told me a fact that (thru IM) I was not paying enough attention to other indices. I have to admit that. I sticked my eyes on DOW, and ignored E-mini S&P and E-mini Nasdaq. Dummy setup appeared in all of them, and I did not notice.

I made an early exit on Dow trade at Pivot S2 level. As mentioned in my previous post, my mini-sized Dow position was flat for 2 hours, and in fact, S2 level was tested twice. I decided to close the position. It appeared to me that the probability for Dow to play a catch up was low.
(Looking at the chart retrospectively, I would be stopped out with 1-R loss if I were to hold on the position)

I was not sharp enough today. So, I was not good enough to trade today.

Let’s fight another day.

A good news for me is that my Tradestation application is finally completed I should be able to start trading on Tradestation 8 next week. I am long to implement Gap play, Pivot play and tick fade in addition to my dummy trading. (I can’t do that with my current trading platform).

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Filed Under: Rant Tagged With: Trading Psychology

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