Below is a journal entry I just made using this approach:
"08262010
trade 1: 1:34pm EST. I just earned $44.38 on my simulator.
If I earn $40, then I want to buy a (moderately expensive, semi-healthy snack mix). Okay, only $4 over $40. Maybe a soda for ___ and then a (cheaper, still-healthy snack) from the Dollar ___ store, if willing to go. No cash to go to bills -- Not enough.
trade 2: 1:44 pm EST. $20.99 earnings on simulator.
Forget it. Put it in that bank and fuggitaboutit. That's $65 in one day!! Put $20 into the gas tank.
net: $40. Pretty dang good.
trade 3: Lost the account. $111 gone. At least I got to spend a little.
Next time, I want to put what I lost this time as padding on my account, and ONLY THEN use SL's to protect my money.
That's +25% to earn first."
See the progression in my mm skill? And I'll DO it, because I put it in the language and emotion of my everyday activities. I want to protect my money, because I understand immediately and tangibly the value of doing so.
Continued:
"
trade 4: Won 1700 * .04 .
trade 5: Lost account: Lost 3600*.04, net 76.
Next time, I must accept close enough, because it's the emotional upburst that gets me that buffer.
It's now 63% BE.
1440
trade 6: won 1100 * .04 .
trade 7: losing 1600 * .04 currently, decide to sell a little and hope for return -- TL set did
well, only played through differently than I expected -- or take another loss.
A backup trading plan, angles and the general solidity of reaction to the TL set, worked and so I won 800 * .04 .
(Rounding all #'s to nearest 100 by dropping the two digits regardless of their amount.) "
I paid the price for letting go of profit, and now I ... wait, that's for the journal.
trade 8: Lost account: Lost 2200*.04, net of account -8 so 66% BE.
What now? There seem to be no guarantees. The reality sets in.
I try SL TL's and some kind of chart-study overview checking next.
trades 9 10 11 12: Lost account: Down to $105. 380% or bust.
Okay, reality check. 400% is my recent top score, reached only 3-4 times in the past few months.
It's very doubtful I'll get it on the fly.
I didn't install SL's as promised. I was too afraid.
I shouldn't stop now. Maybe this is all I get.
No, I'm not ready for an all-or-nothing account yet.
I throw away this account and restart with a pennies account. $40, or .004 of a $10,000 simulator account.
I buy gas, pay a credit card finance charge, eat out with __, and give __ the rest.
1513
trade 1: + 7.12 . This one was weird for me, because I, instead of jumping right in on impulse, waited until the pt line ran up 10 pips. It didn't, just went straight down; when price settled, I had a good hunch regular modulation through the entire course of the drop allowed price to return to its former position and then 10 pips above the spot I thought I would enter. So I entered here instead.Talk about a mind-bender.
trade 2: +2.08 . Took advantage of the last trade's return: put TP just above where 0 pips would be on the last trade. Did it almost immediately.
The last two trades, I felt comfortable without SL's. From here, I'd be better off, considering my mindset needs refreshing, using SL's at the latest TL.
1533
1909
trade 3: +3.16 .
trade 4: +2.64 . That's $15. I want a snack. $1.75 + tax. $13.05 .
trade 5: +2.12 . $15.17 .
trade 6 to 13: 9.20 - 14 = -4.80 . 40 - 4.80 = 35.20 . Lost account, net is 35.20 .
trade 14 to 25: + 37.38 . Net 72.58 .
2022
Last account lost 2/3s, this account gained 3/4's.
Observations --
Too high a margin; if more even, then I could keep the same account and have made a tiny profit.
Also, concentration is a factor: Any improvement in increasing consistency in trade reason worth would help this.
Oh, and we get to eat out. 72.58 - 12.00 = 60.58 .
08272010
0512
trades 1,2 60.58 + 9.45 (NOTE each 780) = 70.03.
pragmaticism, impulsiveness --
A big problem with discretionary trading is that I foreshorten my reason from summary of several directions. I take the pragmatic view that, overall, it's going This way; maybe 80% of the time it will, only when I'm wrong, I lose all because of the pragmaticism. I need to dig in to all those moves I knew and skipped and see which ones I trust the most, before I enter at the impulsive moment the current one must always be.
trades 3,4,5,6,7
Was shy of looking at it all, somewhat opposite of pragmaticism: Too little overview and missed the point, rather than enough overview and blunted the point.
trades 8-13 and the rest
Lost account. 45.6% left, so 27.60 .
During the consecutive losses, reestablished an old pattern, bird o' prey, that worked for me. It's in the category of diff(erentiation). Pivot is more likely...no, it reacts like a cl or lc.
1101
trade
If the first trade apparently worked on a minor or simple reason, it's fairly straightforward to understand that, eventually, one can lose, unless one is adept enough to center with all reasons available unconsciously before committing to one of them. (No mean feat.)
A gap from this often forms in-trade drawdown; if the reason is sure and the DD greater, mc is more likely.
Lost the pennies account, since it went down to 40% again, which is 11.04, eerily matching what I did on the bigger account.
So it's not the size of the account that matters. It may still be the leverage size, only I suspect it's my negative reason-that-trade-on cycle between trades, sets of trades and accounts of sets of trades.
And it's my attitude, how I decide my life is going from the past few hours, that decides what I make.
1350
I'm not kidding. It literally is the last thing I said that makes or breaks my trades. And I've traded for 14 years, with lots of examples of this phenomenon.
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