The Bucking Bronco

Joe Ross: "Some people give more thought to choosing which flavour ice cream to eat than to which market to enter and how and when to do it."

Some confusion exists over the difference between a "Trading Plan" (or system) and a "Trading Strategy".

Trading Plan is a complete set of rules that governs every aspect of your trading life.
It goes into great detail and may, for example, stipulate the amount of time devoted to reading threads on FF!

The term ‘trading strategy’ tends to be used to describe trade entry and exit criteria.
However, these are merely elements of an overall trading plan and possibly not even the most important ones.
It is perfectly desirable to include several different trading strategies (i.e. entry and exit criteria) within an overall trading plan.

A plan is your roadmap which will enable you to get from wherever you are now to wherever you want to be!

Good morning Jupiter, trust you and your family are well in these difficult times.
I am in the process of rewriting my trading plan, still got a way to go. I have recently transitioned from an indicator based trader to a "naked" trader and so my plan of action needed to change dramatically. I must say that It actually feels quite liberating looking at a chart without all the fancy trimmings except maybe a moving average and a couple of S and R lines. It is a total new ball game for me.

So, getting back to your questions, yes, I had and almost have a trading plan and I do keep a journal of all my trades and thoughts. I sometimes cant believe some of the trades I take, and that is where my journal helps me to reflect on those bad trades and I try not to repeat them.

Keep well.

Perfect.
Now take your time to define your new horizons.
Most important: clarify and deepen your set-ups and the use you intend to make of the MAs (1, 2 or 3?)

Use this occasion to put some order in your mind!
Strategies vary according to market conditions, the time of day and the timeframe in which they are traded.
Arguably, virtually all strategies fall into one of four generic groups: Ranging, Breakouts, Trend Retracements and Reversals.
Within these groups are individual strategies.

Which Strategies Will You Trade?
What are Your Set-ups?
Which Signals Will Trigger Your Entry?
How Will You Determine Your Position Size?
Where Will You Place Your Stop Loss Orders?
Losing trades - Will You Exit Before Your Stop is Hit?
Winning Trades – Which Signals Will See You Exit Partially/Completely?

What are Your Promises to Yourself?
What Steps do You Take to Learn More About Trading?

Obviously, a plan does not guarantee success; that would be too simple.
While a plan cannot predict the future, it can lay down how a trader reacts to the possible outcomes.
This is why a plan is essential. It is a list of strategic responses to events beyond our control.
We control the only thing we can control – ourself and our trade...

B. Steenbarger - How can traders reduce their level of performance anxiety? (excerpts...)

Focus on process goals when thinking about trading, rather than profits/losses –
More effective goals are ones that focus on the process of trading,
such as limiting losses to two ticks if you’re a scalper or holding trades until a trailing stop is hit.
A nice mindset is, “If I just trade the right way, the profits will come.”

Use mental rehearsals to make threatening situations familiar.
This is perhaps the single most effective technique I have found for reducing and eliminating performance fears.
By using guided imagery to repeatedly face threatening situations and mentally rehearse how one would like to respond,
one can eliminate much of the stress when those situations actually occur.
The goal is to so often face the performance fears in your mind that the coping response becomes automatic, like a habit pattern.

Anchor mental rehearsals to distinctive mind states.
By learning to place oneself in a state of unusual calm and focus, and then by repeatedly rehearsing coping strategies for threatening situations,
a trader can create a link between the mental state and the coping response.
When there is a stressful performance situation, all the trader needs to do is invoke the rehearsed mental state
and the coping behaviors that have been overlearned will come to the fore.
For instance, if you continually mentally rehearse a strategy for holding onto winning trades while sustaining a calm focus,
recreating the calm focus during the next winning trade will make it easier to summon the self-talk and behavior associated with holding the position.

Something to read and to meditate on...

Thank you for laying it all out so nicely in these last couple of posts. It certainly is a lot of food for thought and will take me a while to process it all and to put into action. I used to trade the 4 hourly charts exclusively but now since the beginning of this year due to all that is happening in the global markets,I have migrated down to the 5 minute and sometimes even the 1 minute chart where things really happen fast, sometimes too fast and I find myself closing trades out to soon. So, I need to stay focused on the process goals as you mentioned. The mental part is the most difficult part and that is something that I struggle with the most. Will one ever have a perfect mental state ?

Thanks again for your journal Jupiter, I have learned much here and from you other threads. It really makes a difference to my trading in a big way.
Thanks for the pdf.

Don't laugh... the idea is that a trader must learn to be the THERAPIST of himself.

It is probably useful to remember that we have already discussed the concept of "being your own coach" in some previous posts.
See Back to the Future #312 and #313.
After all, psychological assistance is one of the most important tasks of a good coach!

I hope everything is clear.
I can assure you that self-help techniques alone will never enable you to master the markets.
The answer will always be in finding the correct, appropriate rules and techniques to guide your entries and exits.
What psychological methods can do is provide you with the self-control necessary to implement your well-researched trading strategies.

Brett Steenbarger again. "Trading Psychology" - p104
I'm perfectly alligned. We two see things in the same way.
I can say, with great proud, that my pages are in line with the thought of one of the major expert in all the world.

And... how do we learn? In two different ways. Explicit and Implicit.
And that produce two types of knowledge. Explicit and Implicit.
So we need: (correct) study and (correct) practice.
But we are abandon to ourself in this immense ocean. We need to find the right path to our personal education.
.

Good morning, all. Banking almost all.

And now we'll see...

And you all are still there watching, I bet!

Banking! Before London.

Don't say it again... it was just intended as an incitement! I have nothing to show off.
Do you think I wrote 200 pages like these only to brag?

Anyway. Trailing stop hit in large profit!
Sold 9935 again. Stop +1.

You wrote and deleted that it seemed patronizing.

I must assume you got all wrong! All I have written in two threads.
Don't worry.
It is not for everyone!

Banking!