Institutional Equivalent Education?

I didn't start the new month well. At the tactical level my trading wasn't too poor ( I had a 76% win rate). But I got the market direction completely wrong and so ended the day with a loss of -7.5%. Making it my 3rd losing day this year (out of 24 trading days).
This is actually well within the boundaries of my Trading Plan, but it still hurts since it wiped out nearly 3 whole days profit.

Today I recovered some, but I am obviously still -ve for the new month.
Today's figures +4.7% with 76% wins.

Figures for this week: +5.4% profit and 72% wins.

Some valid points from Boris Schlossberg in his latest email, with my comments added in blue after each of his points:

"STOP the INSANITY! Making My Trades Less Stupid.
by Boris Schlossberg

If you trade long enough you know that it’s not the bad trades that hurt you -- it’s the stupid ones that always knock you out. This is especially so in day trading where the opportunity for truly boneheaded moves is available on a constant basis.
Tell me if this ever happened to you. You see a setup, but you are late to the chart. Maybe you were off the desk for coffee or someone IMed you and you had your eyes off the ball or you just hesitated to pull the trigger. Trading is timing and day-trading is the Swiss watch precision of timing. But you shrug off the feeling and plow into the trade anyway and like a weak tennis player that is wrong-footed you are almost always stopped out.
How about this. You see the setup forming. It right there, but not quite, According to your valuation model its a bit too early, but you can’t wait. You. Need. To. Be. In. That. Trade. Again like a tennis player that lunges too early and misjudges the ball, you get into the trade only to see it stop you out, and then reverse and hit your take profit.
Now, those are common mistakes, that all of us make. But what happens afterward -- at least with me, and perhaps with you -- is the true pinnacle of stupidity. Angered at the idea of an unforced error you double up and try to smack market right back. Of course, the market smacks you. Once. Twice. Sometimes even three times before you come to your senses and stop shoveling money into revenge trades. Now that is truly stupid and yet I do it all the time. So, here are my thoughts from the school of hard knocks on how to stop the insanity.

1. Define BEST. In the calm of the Asian session, after the day to day combat has ceased, mentally replay every trade you made. Go back to the charts and FORCE yourself to see what worked and what didn’t. Very quickly you will see the common properties of all your winners. Now slow it down and write out step by step what happened in each winning setup. Look at that list. Circle it. And then start each day writing out by hand. Yeah I know that sounds stupid, but that is the only way you will absorb the knowledge, Typing does not work. Memorizing does not work. Only writing out by hand will help you correct your behavior.

You should really define what a best trade criteria is before you start trading. You only need do it once and then refer to it every time you trade. Ray teaches a scoring method where you can give each potential trade a score by adding 1 for each of the favourable attributes and subtracting 1 for each of the unfavourable attributes.

2. Separate all trades into BEST and REST. No ambiguity. No subtlety. No gradations. It’s either best or rest. In the heat of the trading day, we don’t have the luxury to be nuanced. As human beings, we are naturally binary animals. So play to your instincts. Now here comes the most important part. Trade REST at one-fifth the size of the BEST trades. That means if your normal size is 50,000 units, trade REST setups at 10000 units. (I am assuming that in case of day trading all your setups have the same stop and take profit criteria.) Note I am not telling you to not take garbage trades. You will do it. I will do it. Everyone who trades will do it. I am just telling you to take garbage size. In trading there are only three ways to avoid bad losses -- you can wait it out. You can widen out and average out or you can stop out small. The first two choices will always lead to blow out. The third is the only pragmatic solution to trading.

While I agree that the way to stay in the game is to trade small and trade smaller still as the score for a potential trade decreases, I don't agree with his conclusion. Personally if I enter a less auspicious trade and/or if I have not been hitting > 60% wins that day, I will reduce my total risk by A). Scaling in less and B). Reducing my ultimate Stop Loss. However my 'ultimate Stop Loss' is only for emergencies - normally I will exit a trade when the odds (score) becomes -ve ! If I wouldn't take the trade (that I am already in ) now - then why the heck stay in it ????


3. Never trade without a ROBOT. I never let an EA select my trades, but I always let an EA manage them. This does two things. It always protects my risk once I am ahead on the trade and it gives me the peace of mind to hold the trade completion. As I’ve said many times before, trailing trades is the least efficient way of trading except for all others. But here is where all of us get into trouble. How many times have you been away from the desk, take a look at your phone, see a setup and jump right in using the MT4 app. Don’t do it. Almost every major blow up I’ve ever had, started exactly that way. You are basically trading manually which almost always results in adding to the positions until the size swells and the losses mount into the thousands of dollars. Want a better way to trade by mobile? Put Microsoft Remote Desktop on your smartphone. Configure your VPS and place every trade via a Robot. This way risk will never get away from you.

I say use automation to manage your trade where you can, but feel free to override it because you are smarter than any computer - while it is faster than you and does not get distracted.


4. Never add money to your account. (This assumes you haven’t blown up, in which case by all means) This is actually a great piece of advice from Marty Schwartz -- an old 1980’s trader who wrote one of the best books on the subject. Marty believed that you never increased the size until you could recoup and then double your capital. This forced you to focus on your setup and hone it mercilessly until you had the skill to trade larger. Remember the only thing greater than winning is coming back from losing.

I agree, but there are lower limits as to how small an account your trading style works with. If you trade too small an account you will be over-leveraged and so blow it out completely.


5. Love your losses. If you took the BEST trade and it stopped out that not only natural but good. The best day trading systems are only 70%-80% accurate. That means every day at least 2 out of 10 of your best trades will be losers. Expect them. Accept them and know that control is the biggest trading skill of all.

I mostly agree, a profit doesn't mean it was a good trade or that you traded well. Just as a loss doesn't mean you traded badly. You have to examine your actual trading against your Trading Plan. If you followed your Trading Plan (assuming it is a good one), then you traded to the best of your current ability, if you didn't follow it then you traded badly.
Luck will tend to balance itself out, so if you trade well then profits and good results will follow. You will even find that you are luckier, because you will be positioning yourself for a lucky break. I know it sounds crazy but its true the harder/better you work, the luckier you get!

Its is nice when a member of the Self Help Group is successful. This one signed up for Ray's course and joined the SHG on the same day 8th January 2018. He has been busy asking lots of questions and spending time trying to find his ideal trading style, but he certainly seems to be well on his way as shown by his posts in Ray's room:

(12:36 pm) AJ : if I dont learn anything else from you (I doubt that will be the case) getting to learn the f***** a***** and the s****** was worth it
(12:37 pm) AJ : 8 from 10 today on YM 1min
(12:39 pm) Ian Foster: Well done AJ . I'm sure you can even improve on that win rate

I didn't manage that 80% win rate myself, but I did OK even though in hindsight I found I spent quite a lot of time fading against the trend on the equities. However my Crude Oil Inventory trade got me nicely into profit.

Overall 71 trade parts with a 64% win rate for a profit of +3.0% on the account.
Crude Inv alone: 6 trade parts, 100% win rate, profit of +2.1% on the account. Total time in the market was just under 10 minutes.

I was unable to trade on Monday (hospital appointment), but yesterday got the week off to a good start with a +9.2% profit on the account.

Some people just love high volatility, I only love it when it has some Value behind it!
In High Volatility some people just get lucky and some get very unlucky, but in Ray's room you can be sure that some skill is involved.

Posted in Ray's room this morning:
(06:38 am) M : fantastic sell in ES
(06:42 am) Ian Foster: @M: and nasty volatility - too fast for my comfort !
(06:43 am) L W: nice ym run of 3909 had ice, low vol and level
(06:44 am) M : Ian sold @2605.25 just out @ 2596.75 days done
(06:44 am) R B: yes the ES trade is a little ripper
(06:45 am) R B: suffering eye ball headache see you guys back in the US session
(06:45 am) P K: R, been there
(06:46 am) R B: just had to clear a trade go take a rest its killing me
(06:46 am) R B: 4.5 % today
(06:46 am) P K: well done
(06:46 am) Ian Foster: Seems like everybody making money except for me - only +1.4% so far for me
(06:47 am) Ian Foster: @R: Fantastic , you really seem to like this high Volatility market
(06:48 am) R B: I do
(07:05 am) Ian Foster: Now at +1.9% on the day, 87% winners, but I still don't like this extra high Volatility. I like my Volatility backed by strong fundamentals !


***Note that the last time R B posted yesterday he said he was up by just under +6%.

(11:26 am) Ian Foster: I had a really bad trade today, so my daily figures are a loss -12.2% , 48 trade portions, 75% winners. Weekly profit = + 2.0%
(11:26 am) Ian Foster: That was myt 4th losing day this year

Boris Schlossberg has been emailing weird stuff yet again. You have to wonder what planet he is on.

My comments are in Blue

**********************************************************************************
Three Trading Tactics That Get You Results
by Boris Schlossberg

The other day I realized that I could simplify my life by breaking everything into a list of three.
So far it’s been a very helpful exercise that forced me to focus on what truly matters whether it be my diet,
my health, my family life or my work. And when it comes to markets, I’ve distilled all of trading into the following three parts.

If you try hard enough things can always be broken into an arbitrary number of parts.
For example Boris just broke his life into 4 (yes 4 - count them: diet, health, family, work) sections.

1. Preparation.
Preparation can be best summarized by this question -- Why am I doing this trade? The true answer may take years to evolve,
but essentially this is your process for finding your edge. - This statement is either very deep, or very stupid depending upon whether its writer is a philosopher or not!
It depends on many factors that are not even market related -- such as your propensity for risk,
your preference for short-term versus long-term trades, your natural inclination towards greed or fear.
Trading is as much a journey to know yourself as it is to understand the market (Much more to know yourself than the market!),
yet there are some universal truths that apply to everyone. Don’t trade when you are sick. Don’t trade when you are angry.
Don’t trade when you are rushed. - How about Don't trade when you are tired, or Don't trade when the market action doesn't suit your trading style - oh, sorry, that is now more than 3 Don'ts.
In all those cases preparation means knowing when to walking away which is often more important than jumping into the market.



2. Execution
Finding a setup you like is just the start of the process. What pairs will you trade? What trade size will you do?
What time of day will you trade? What trade management structure will you use? Single entry single exit?
Scale in scale out? Trail stop trail profit? Every one of those questions needs to have an answer (Agreed, and that needs to be done before trade entry!),
but much more importantly than that -- YOU SHOULD LEAVE ALL TRADE EXECUTION to a Robot.
You will never be as quick, as efficient and as flawless as an MT4 EA or a script. You don’t have to make your entries automatic
(in fact I think that every automatic EA is a recipe for disaster) but making your exits automatic is a MUST.
Machines are much better than you. Learn how to harvest their power. Recently, I have started to reconfigure all of my
EAs to trigger a signal rather than a trade, but once I click yes the exit execution is completely managed by the machine. - Automation has its uses, but no robot or EA is going to tell you that your Value is just draining away so you had better either unload some or tighten your stop! Or that there is a related news event just about to happen! Or that the market is just about to close! etc.

3. Discipline
Contrary to popular opinion stops are not the most important part of trading discipline. Size is. - Agreed, but stops are still very important.
We will all pull stops no matter what we say, We will often trade with no set stop top begin with.
All of those are bad ideas but none of them are as bad as trading with size.
At just 10 times leverage your chance of blowing up your account is 75%.
-Not unless you have no idea how to trade, or are a reckless lunatic! Where did he get this from?
Broker count on it. -Only those Brokers who's business plan is burn and churn! Rather than those who just keep making the spread/commission.
Just 5 consecutive trading losses of 1% will wipe out 50% of your capital and that could easily happen in just one week.
-What?!!! Where did this guy go to school? 5 times 1% is only 5%. And strictly it isn't even that: 1% + 0.99%, +0.98%, +0.97%, +0.96% = 4.9%
The only way that 5 times a 1% will halve your account is if it is a 1% movement in the underlying and you are trading at 10 x leverage!
The single most important rule of trading discipline is to trade 1X times your equity. So that if you have 10,000 in your
account, no trade should be greater than 10,000 units. -WTF, this guy is investing, not trading-LOL !
Don’t worry you will lever naturally just by holding multiple trades or multiple positions in the same trade (The logic, if any, escapes me! -Multiple positions in the same trade is still in the same trade!!!), but you will be able to survive even the craziest market without losing your capital. - What makes him think that 2 separate trades are safer than a single trade of twice the units? A). It depends upon the Stop, B). It depends upon the quality (= value in Ray's terms) of the trade, C). Has he never heard of correlated markets?!!!

Each of these domains is a never-ending process of refinement and experimentation.
But it’s the right structure for your trading journey and will help you get better every single day.
BORIS SCHLOSSBERG
FEBRUARY 8, 2018
************************************************************************************************************************************

Well, at least all this idiocy keeps me entertained !

I had a good day's trading today, considering that there was no news either to move the markets or for me to news trade.
Profit +4.3% with 84% winners.

I hope that I am not giving the impression that my trading is always good or profitable. Although I am well up so far this year (just over +40%), I have had 4 losing days, one of which caused a losing week. They were -14%, -1.1%. -7.5% and Friday's -12.2%. My losing days last year were sometimes much bigger and even went in a series until I had recovered psychologically from them.

I sometimes wonder if when people say 'Well done' or such, whether they understand that there are also bad trades and bad days and even bad weeks. I try to be open and honest about those, but with my trading style they tend to be (hopefully) infrequent (though relatively large) and so can easily not be noticed.

I want to encourage people, rather than boast. In fact I am fairly certain that some in the room are doing much better than me, but don't want to talk about it - possibly in case that brings them some bad luck.

Boris Schlossberg's email this week is about how many traders judge each trade as being either 'right' or 'wrong' dependent solely on whether it made a profit or a loss.
But since it isn't a very good email I won't quote it here, just talk about how Ray and his students view the subject:

Institutions don't view trades in this profit = right trade , loss= wrong trade fashion.
Why? - Because even though all their traders should have a positive expectancy, that only applies to a series of trades -not to each individual trade!
Even if you have a win% of 75 with your method/system, you still expect to have on average 1 losing trade in 4 if you execute them perfectly!
Of course if you don't execute those trades well, then you will have an average of more than 1 losing trade in 4.

Thus the correct way to analyse past trades is to ask, did they meet the entry criteria? And were they trades according to the trade management plan?

Ray has talked about a trading colleague who was supposed to close all trades before going home. The guy made a mistake and left a trade on overnight, came in to find it had made a huge profit. He was sacked that day because his trade management was so terribly wrong - it didn't matter that the trade made a profit, since if he did that again it might just as easily make a bigger loss!

Success/Consistency - how can you go about achieving that?
This post is based upon questions from 2 new members of my 'Ray's students Self Help Group'.

The first question was this:
'Hi have been with Compassfx for 5 years , I think been working really hard to make this work at one training I have made about two millions screenshots with a makings before ,entry ,and take profits, any suggestions on one market to trade and making profit, currently work on the Sharp Edge 10 -day Class videos , Thank You'

My impressions from this are: 1). He feels he has already done more than enough work in order to be successful.
2). He feels that Ray's course is the answer.
3). He want to shortcut the work involved in going through all the recordings in the 10-Day Course. Plus absorbing the knowledge and applying it to his own trading. Plus experimenting in a demo account to find the best combination of Time of day + Trade Type + Market that suits him most.

My reply: Hi M****. There are an infinite number of combinations of market, styles, money management, timeframes, sessions, resources, platforms etc, to trade. Ray teaches pretty much all of the good ones (except for trading non-scalps using technichals alone). So I can't make suggestions without knowing some of your details. Such as What is your timezone, which periods of the day are you available to trade, are you fast, accurate and decisive, or do you need time to think about a trade, is your Broker a SpotFX only broker, a SpotFX and CFDs Broker, A Futures Broker, a plain old Stock Broker , what skills do you have, what resources do you have, how small a % of your account would 1 tick/pip cost on the minimum unit size your Broker offers etc.

If you think about this and supply at least some information, I will try to make some suggestions. But after 5 years I would have expected that you would already have at least figured out what WON'T work for you.


Now for the 2nd Question, it is from a different member, but is on the same theme:
'I welcome advice anyone might offer on the key(s) to becoming consistent.'

My reply: '@B****: You don't tell us much to work from, but in case we are overlooking the obvious I suggest 3 things for your consideration:-
1). The content of the Hipchat rooms called 'How to Learn this' and 'Price Action and Volume'. 2). Any/all you can find of Ray's recordings on the 'Macro Process' or the 'Daily preparation/Routine/Process'. 3). You can't be consistent unless you have a trading plan of some sort. Do you: A). Know which type of trader you are? B). Know which Timeframe(s) , which Session(s) and which Market(s) suit you best.
- Do you have records which show your relative profitability for different specific trading styles and markets? Until you have 'Your' trading style and markets it isn't realistic to expect consistency, since there is nothing to base a consistent approach on.

One other thought on 'consistency':
Even with the best method/system and trading it 'perfectly', you can't expect 100% winning trades.

Thus any form of consistency will depend upon taking enough trades during the period under examination.
Say you only take 1 trade per day or 1 per week, well then any good or bad consistency per day or per week is more likely to be just good or bad luck!

Many people say they envy my consistency. This is probably because I can go for a long time between losing days.
But this is mainly because I take a relatively high number of trade portions per day. If I only took a single all-in/all-out trade per day, my consistency would be much worse and I would look like I was a different trader trading a different method.

This week my daily figures were: +4.3% with 84%wins, +3.6% with 70% wins, +4.2% with 92% wins, +1.3% with 80% wins and +1.4% with 90% wins.
And I was taking between 38 and 89 trade portions per day.
My trading style flatters my consistency on profitable days/weeks, but when I have very bad luck or I make a mistake or 3, my losses can wipe out up to a an average week's profits. So my long term consistency depends upon keeping those losing trades/losing days small/managable and infrequent.

One of the best retail traders around?
I was sent this trading record by a student of Ray's who is also a member of the Self Help Group.

A summary is: 1. No losing days.
2. No Futures trading.
3. Only 3 Markets but 90% trading the Gold CFDs.
4. From 11 Sept 2017 to 22ndFeb 2018 it says (and I believe it is possible) she traded a $19.3K account into a $1.26 Million



This was sent to me on 22nd February (last night), so that last entry is a software mistake (it looks suspiciously like the prior day so far as trades is concerned).
She said: “FYI Just thought you would be interested in my trading record so you can encourage others to do the work required”

My recent chats to her in Ray's room and in Skype chat:
January 2018:
Ian Foster: Hi V***: It's your last full week of trading in the Northern Hemisphere - for a while at least. Did you find it much different from your previous trading?
V.H.: The main difference is that we have to get up much earlier. Down south we can lie in as long as we like, spend the morning studying analysing etc, and then be ready to start proper in time for 7am GMT. In that respect it is harder here, but we can keep going longer. Down south we tend to stop about 12 GMT. But as Ray said 'your best trades should be all over by lunchtime. The biggest benefit of coming here {to the UK} was to be able to hear Ray live all day, and that has certainly been worthwhile. There are some real gems that come out outside the formal lessons.

22 February2018:
V.H.: Hi Ian Hope you are well
We are back in Australia off to NZ on the 1st March for a wedding on the 3rd. FYI Just thought you would be interested in my trading record so you can encourage others to do the work required.
25th Jan was my first successful moon shot trade.
Junior {her husband} is with another broker, to spread the risk. He has only just started trading with real money.
I trade 90 % Gold CFDs, 5% Dax CFDs and 5% EURUSD Fx not futures

Ian Foster: - Don't you find the spread on Gold too big?
V. H.: Gold moves so well I just have bigger stops.

Ian Foster: - Do you find any problem with the CFDs when trading larger size as your account grew?
V. H.: Not so far but tend to put on lots of smaller trades:- Pull backs and Squeezes, still get drawn in on Fades occasionally.
I always get out too soon.

More half-truths from Boris Schlossberg:

**************************************************************************************************
How Cheating Makes You a Better Trader
by Boris Schlossberg

From BBC.com
“Marissa Sharif, an assistant professor of marketing at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania believes that cheating can help you reach your goals.
An all-or-nothing approach to goals is all wrong, Sharif’s research suggests. She says we should instead be building ‘emergency reserves’ into our goal-setting process.
In one field study, 273 people used a smartphone app to count their steps for a month. The first group was asked to reach an individualized specific step goal, for example, 7,000 or 10,000 steps per day, seven days a week. A second group needed to hit their goal on five days or more. A third group targeted their steps over seven days, but with two ‘emergency skip days’ per week (that didn’t roll over). A fourth group’s skip days were spread across the month.
The people who were allowed cheat days reached their step goal more days per week on average than those without them. They also took more steps on average.
Sharif says this type of cheating works in two ways. First, people resist using up their reserves, in case they’re needed later. They also feel bad about wasting them in a non-emergency scenario. Second, if you do need to use your ‘cheat,’ you feel less guilty about falling off the wagon in the first place and are thus less likely to give up on the overall goal, she adds.
This ‘cheating’ mindset helps people to keep sight of their longer-term vision, says Leena Rinne, productivity expert at US consultancy FranklinCovey. “While goals are initiated by making a choice to achieve something, it’s the choices in the moment that get you there. And, one of those choices is to allow yourself some ‘emergency reserves’.”
This week I ran an interesting poll on my Twitter page which collected nearly 400 answers. I asked, “For traders what’s worse -- being impatient with wins or impatient with losses?” The responses were almost split down the middle with the latter just edging out the former by 53% to 47% and I’ve got to say that I strongly agree with the majority in this case. It’s worse to be impatient with your losses and the reason has a lot to do with Ms. Sharif’s research.
First of all, I think we can all agree that being impatient with your wins or losses is bad. But that’s really not the point. We are not trying to achieve an ideal. We are trying to find practical ways to generate profit as real flawed human beings. And if that’s our goal then letting your losses run to their stops is actually better than cutting them short.
The reason, of course, is that the more we cut our losses short, the more losses we will have. Only someone who has never traded in the markets is under the illusion that having tiny stops and large targets is the way to trading riches. If you have a 10 pip stop and a 100 pip target your chance of losing is 95% or more. You chance of winning is about as good as lotto. Markets simply don’t give you money for nothing. Prices ebb and flow all day -- FX dealers do their best to make sure of that because that’s how they make their money. Add on top of that the general randomness of newsflow and your chances of timing a 10/100 trade are virtually nil. Maybe you’ll get lucky for the first few times but eventually, the market will just grind you out with a thousand paper cuts. Try it for a month and see for yourself.
But cutting losses short is not only bad math, it’s also bad behavior. Remember, what Ms. Sharif’s experiment proves -- if we give ourselves a small reservoir of failure we are much more like to continue our tasks. The single biggest problem with being impatient with your losses is that it will quickly drain the reservoir of failure. In my experience, most traders can only tolerate 3 stops in a row. By the fifth consecutive stop they begin to question the whole enterprise and by seventh most quit.
That’s why if you are going to cheat in trading, it’s much better to do it on the profit side. It’s better to take profits early (even though that is of course not optimal) simply because it will encourage you to stay in the game. And the longer you stay in the game, the better you’ll become at reading the market and the better trader you will be. Being patient with losses will not guarantee profits, but it will buy you time and build the emotional reservoir to persist in your pursuit of trading mastery.
PS -- let me just be perfectly clear. Being patient with losses DOES NOT mean letting losses float indefinitely. It simply means not closing out prematirely before trades hit their stop.
***************************************************************************************************

My views on this strange idea of trying to decide on is it better to cut your profits or to cut your losses.
What kind of crazy thinking is this? With all else equal it is obvious that it is better to run your profits and to cut your losses - just the reverse of what Boris is saying!

However things aren't equal: Are you dumbly trading to a fixed formula of so-called Risk to Reward like Boris?
Are you crippling your trading instincts and hurting your psyche by trading single unit All-In/ All-Out?
Or do you have an actual edge (e.g. having Value, Price Action, Liquidity Levels, Order Flow) on your side?
Do you have an emergency Stop Loss and several well thought out Profit Targets?

If you answer yes to the first 2 questions then it isn't worth my time to comment.
If you answer yes to the second 2 questions, then congratulations you are trading flexibly within an overall plan, just as Ray encourages his students to do. And indeed partially how 'probably the best retail trader in the world' teaches his The MAX students to trade.

When you enter a trade, the only thing you have any control over is your re-entries or scale-ins, scale-outs or exits.
So how can it possibly make sense to stick to a Stop Loss and single Profit Take exit when the conditions both for and against your trade are changing as the trade progresses?

You need an emergency or hard Stop Loss to protect your account, but if Value and Order Flow move against you it is just plain stupid not to exit at the appropriate place rather than wait for your Stop Loss to be taken out!
Similarly before you enter a trade you must have an idea as to where you will take profit. Otherwise what are you going to do - leave your profit to fate by using a trailing stop?
Trading isn't a spectator sport - so get busy and actually manage your trades, both on the profit side as well as the losses!
And remember, the Institutions need liquidity both for entries and exits, so their entry is often the Stop Loss of many retail traders and the Institution's Profit Take or final exit is often where many retail traders are entering too late having waited for confirmation.

Having said all that, both the trader in the post above ( V.H.) and I tend to 'get out too soon'. Why is this?
Well it is because of our psychology. We feel better about making a total of say 50 ticks from 7 trades with 5 winners than we do making 50 ticks from 7 trades with just 1 big winner and the other 6 being losses. We always feel better if our %win is bigger than our %loss:

"So V. H. you also say you always get out 'too soon'. For me that is a better habit than when I used to stay in and see my profit get smaller and smaller until I would think ' I will hold on for it to reverse',
then it would turn into a loss and I would think ' I have given back too much to fold now'
until it finally it would hit my hard Stop Loss."

Naturally, both V.H and I would like to reduce the amount by which we 'get out too early'. But that is a work in progress.

On 25/02/2018 at 02:12, {V.H.} wrote:
> Whow that has caused a storm can't do a session on how I trade live as travelling but I will put together a PDF of what I do which everyone {in the Self Help Group} can have but it is basically what Ray has been teaching for ever...


We have been told that Ray is planning to do another course in the next few weeks/months.
Compass have said that they are offering their usual 'Early Bird' deal:
Anybody who signs up and pays before the course starts will get immediate and continuing access to the room and the previous course plus the new course when it happens, through to the end of the new course.
Based on previous courses, this could mean a whole month or more of extra access for no extra cost!

V.H. told us that she traded a $19K account into $1.26Million from September 2017- see Post # 472
L.W. made 4.6% in just a few minutes trading the YM at the Open.
R.B has had some 6% days.
And I don't do too badly myself:

Ray will be teaching again in the next few weeks.
Never heard of Ray?...check out videos from the webinars last summer, see the difference.


Here is a very small sample of what you will learn in the Institutional Sharp Edge Trade Program...

Technicals - the auction process - how to draw levels - price action - deltas - volume range analysis - market profile – 5 main institutional set ups (fade and liquidity hunt) - order flow analysis - program trades and targets

Forex - global market movers - curves, fundamentals - market maker levels

Index Trading - the ES - market internals - drivers - how to recognize corrections before they happen

Oil and Gold - market drivers - crack spread - relative value trading

Bonds - spreads, outrights and the hunt for the grail, bond and curve logic

Because I have not been posting past few weeks I have had a few enquiries as to how my trading is going.

I am hardly trading at all in my live account. I was already concentrating on changing much of my trading style (moving away from the short-term fades), when my long-term skin condition flared up. It is a painful itchy rash on the backs of my legs, on my arms and around my waist and lower abdomen. This prevents me getting much sleep and often means that I can't remain seated for more than a few minutes at a time.

However I have been trying to continue trading the Oil Inventories and still do OK on it. (See following post - email from Boris Schlossberg saying become a master of one trade not a Jack of all trades).
Last week I made +8.4% on the Inventories, but was then tempted by an NZ news event later that day and lost almost all of that gain.
Today I made 5.8% on the Inventories and then traded the Fed announcement for another +3.7%.

An email from Boris Schlossberg with which I can totally agree (if only he wasn't simultaneously plugging many other trade techniques and EAs):

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Jack of No Trades Master of One
by Boris Schlossberg

Do less. Do it much more intensely.
That was the advice I read in a self-help article the other day, and the idea hit me like a Mike Tyson power punch.
Those of you who know me, know that consistency is not my strong suit. I get bored in an instant, distracted by new ideas all the time and am constantly in search of new trading systems to replace my current ones.
Over the years, I’ve received scores of emails from traders across the world thanking me for trading systems I have long forgotten about while attaching proof of unbelievably long profitable trading runs
I was happy that people traded well off my strategies but I was also frustrated feeling like a hamster on a flywheel -- lots and lots of creative energy, but little progress.
So a little while back I decided do a trading cleanse. No more side hustles. No more experimentations with indicators. No more 5-minute scalps with complex multiple entries or 4-hour swing setups across the 28 combo pairs.
Instead, I would just trade my core price flow strategies that I have been trading on and off for more than a decade.
I can’t say it easy. Some days I am bored out of mind and it takes serious discipline to stay on target. But…
The more I focus on one set up -- just one set up -- the more knowledgeable I become. I am able to read market flow with much greater clarity. I am able to step back from making mediocre trades and I am able to understand the weakness in the setup.
This is critical. Because the skill value of a trader is not in creating a strategy, but in knowing when NOT to use it.
All trading strategies fail. That’s why there has never been an automated EA that could make money in perpetuity. The success of the strategy is always dependent on the ability of the trader to use it properly.
By focusing on just one strategy, I am -- often against my own will -- becoming more and more skillful at all facets of its execution.
Bruce Lee once said, “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”
He was spot on.
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The wisdom in above email from Boris is just what many students of Ray still need to accept.

Even though Ray keeps saying the same thing, and has said it frequently starting back in 2014, some students (including myself) are so arrogant they think that they can trade in every way and in every market that Ray shows - when even Ray can't do that alone! He is employed as a quant/strategist and so passes on the instructions to his 24hr Trade Desk, and is only free to trade after most of the Desk's more macro trades are exited - they are the ones that make his employer the big bucks. Only then does he chat to us and do some scalps during the US Session.

If you read my prior post you will know that I am attempting to change/reduce my trade repetoire. Indeed I only started having some success last year after I cut out most markets and trade types that I had previously been determined to master.

I encourage people to become students of Ray because he teaches EVERY type of Institutional style trading that is possible for a retail trader - so there is no need to look elsewhere. But the downside is the temptation to try to learn and implement ALL of it!

He is going to teach a fresh course in a few weeks time. Get a head start at no extra cost by signing up with CompassFX for the 'EarlyBird' deal.

I've noticed that Mark Coe now has been given his own trade room, probably because Dean Malone seems to have moved on.

Why I believe that ALL traders need to at least consider (if not actively work on) their own psychology in order to improve their trading.

Snow Days and Trades (Or How to Avoid a de Blasio)
by Boris Schlossberg

As I write this, on FOMC day, New York City public schools are closed. The weather forecasters predicted a massive snowstorm (12 inches!) and yet at 10 o’clock in the morning the flakes aren’t even sticking and all we have is slush on Broadway.

Still, I completely understand why Mayor de Blasio made the call, although disgruntled parents will now hold him in even greater contempt for messing up their workweek.

The storm was initially forecast to hit at midnight but didn’t arrive until 8 in the morning so making a last minute decision was impossible.
The city hasn’t had many snow days this year, so there was room in the budget as well as in the school calendar to call one.
Yesterday marked Spring Equinox -- so really how many more snow storms can there be?
Better safe than sorry.
So Snow day it is.

Notice that in all that chain of reasoning the one question not addressed -- will it actually snow storm bad enough to close schools?
As human beings, we make decisions for a whole host of reasons that have nothing to do with the problem at hand. We are always surrounded by exigent circumstances that muddy up our logic and often produce suboptimal results.
How many times as trader did you pull a trigger on an idea because you were bored and “it was good enough” or you had a good day and built up a nice P&L, and then made a spec trade that wouldn’t pass muster under normal circumstances? Now that it was on the books you watched it with all the possessiveness of jealous lover, convinced that it was the best idea ever.
We THINK we make the trades for the right reasons, but I bet that at least 30-40% of the time we are in the trade for every other reason except the one that matters. There is not much we can do about it. It’s human nature.
As Jeff Goldblum and Kevin Kline said in the Big Chill,

Goldblum: I don’t know anyone who could get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations. They’re more important than sex.
Kline: Ah, come on. Nothing’s more important than sex.
Goldblum: Oh yeah? Ever gone a week without a rationalization?

We can, however, at least be aware that we are often lying to ourselves when we are trading. That could help us to avoid making too many “de Blasio’s” going forward.