Back to the Future – My Freewheeling Journal

The battlefield.

Killers and sharks at work... at 390... I missed to STRESS that level on my previous chart. MY FAULT!!!
(Remember always that a "level" is never a fixed price/line... but it's more a sort of "area" around that price!)

EDIT -tightened my stop and sold some more @397!!!

Sorry. Lost patience.
Squared.

@12.400
Come on... show your generous hands.
Lead and I'll follow.

@12.400 again.
Quick change of costume... and now I'm a bull!
Come on, Mum... let's run up for a while.

Scale out... only scouts in @12.397.

@12.401 aggressive retrace (there are good reasons!) ... ready to lose.

... I saw the white of their eyes... ROFL!

Second attempt on retrace. My scouts under new enemy attack.

If they want to go, I let them Bears pass...
I don't fight.
We'll see.

Ready for the spike... third attempt on m1!
They really want my stop... LOL

@418... ... push... push through! Let's go!
@422... ... come on!

DAX m5

Scale out something.

you again !

I was a bear and got punished for my confidence

difficult today... for me

... dance the dance... scale in and scale out.

well done

I feel like a one-legged dancer today..lol

Squared!
It's OK... Mummy. Thank you!

Quoting a wonderful alexandria's private message.
“Is it that we get so good at pattern reading that it becomes the feel ie the skill?
Is it that depending on what price does determines what I will do and this is the feel?”


Objects for a nice and useful meditation.
From my Moleskines' Archive (B. Steenbarger: cut&paste&digest&rewrite)

Focus on chart configurations. (An idea that, to me, is larger than the simple “patterns”...)
The importance of pattern recognition and model definition.
(That is it: “Extracting patterns/behaviours from markets that are associated with specific price movement...”)

Much of trading expertise consists of seeing so many variations of these patterns that they become internalized, creating a "feel for the market".

Note that I'm not talking of guts, predictions, intuition and so on... I'm talking of experienced knowledge.
Please get all my significant doubts about the odds of achieving long-term success as a pure intuitive, discretionary trader.
Please get my “concerns” that markets change their trading patterns faster than most traders can see/understand/internalize them.
And note that I'm talking of “variations”... “mutations”... “transformations”!
Never forget the opposition between rigidity and flexibility. Never.
Modeling and remodeling create the number of trials needed for skilled traders to acquire a feel for changing markets.
This accumulated exposure accelerates the learning process, allowing the trader to more rapidly adapt to shifting market conditions.

And never forget the opposition between rigidity and flexibility. Never.
I am interested only in agile traders who adapt to changing market conditions and find success year after year, on different terrains.
I would love to study their learning processes and understand the secret of their agility!!!

Screen time is paramount. Of course.
Traders need to see enough examples of patterns to create what psychologists call "implicit learning".
This is the learning that characterizes athletes, fighter pilots, chess masters and other trained professionals.
The performer's knowledge cannot be verbalized and yet can result in expert performance. “They don't know what they know...”

Two factors hinder the acquisition of expertise among traders:
1) A lack of screen time – (no need to be discussed: it is obvious!)
2) Information overload - Traders who watch too many patterns run the risk of internalizing none of them.
A high level of cognitive focus is needed for implicit learning.
By jumping from chart to chart, indicator to indicator, traders create what researchers call “interference effects”.
Information obtained before and after the occurrence of a key pattern interferes with the processing and internalizing of that pattern.

So... try to reduce your Trading Universe. And stay always focused.

When Mama calls she means business!
She raised her voice.
She promised to whip me if I stayed out longer than I'm supposed to.

I'll call it a day.
See you.
Trade safe... always in control!