Disliked{quote} Yes, absolutely, but that leaves a couple of questions to be answered: How do you find and validate a strategy that lives up to this? This website seems to be full of people trying to do just that but with little success. Is one week of practice really all you need? driven18, for example, seems to have struggled with "MindFuck" for more than a week. And some people speak of 10000 hours being required.Ignored
Admittedly, the wheels did fall off after about a six or seven week run during which I Made more money trading than I had over any previous three-month quarter of trading. I was baffled. I fell into old habits: I jumped from strategy to strategy, timeframe to timeframe, instrument to instrument.
Finally, after forcing myself to step away from trading and back into mere watching, I was able to figure out how and why the wheels came off. And here it is: My money management was not based on price action, but was arbitrarily chosen by me and was based on what I wanted it to be, rather than what it should have been. It was by good fortune alone that the money management I selected initially just happened to match the then current state of the NQ, which was the instrument I was trading. When the volatility of the NQ increased toward the end of December, it simply crushed my results, because my stop loss was too small. My take profit was likewise too small.
So, the roulette epiphany abides. I fixed my trading plan by incorporating a money management plan that self-adjusts to the current market without me having to think about it.
Almost any method will have a positive expectancy edge. The edge is the structure of your trading plan. What it needs is to be powered with the correct engine, and that engine is money management. It's fuel is the self-discipline of the operator himself or herself.
DislikedOne week is a very very short time to learn to trade. Took me several years. But it takes more time apparently for an old monkey like me.Ignored
If one has such a strategy (and I assert there are hundreds of such strategies right here at FF to choose from) then all one needs to do is practice that strategy, and only that strategy, on one's chosen market, and only on one's chosen market, for just one week, and a lifestyle will be born.
It will take weeks and years for that lifestyle to mature and become self-perpetuating. However, that one week is where it all starts. I'm not implying that you will have a million dollars after just one week of discipline. But with the one week of discipline to build upon, that million dollars is already yours. Now you just have to stick with it to get it.
No one here needs to read yet another book on trading psychology. No one here needs yet another book on technical analysis. All anyone needs is to choose a market, a method (with money management), and then go at it with discipline for one week. Don't trade all day. Choose a market whose highest volume and volatility during the day occurs when you are available to trade, and get at it.
A word on money management: In my opinion, you simply must not only have a pre-planned stop loss for each trade, but you must have a pre-planned take profit. I read so many posts at FF that bemoan the fact that the trader was up 30 pips and then the market reversed and took out their stop loss.
That is NOT the failure of the methodology. That is the failure of the trader to pay himself as the market makes profits available, which is one of Mark Douglas's rules for a trading plan
I've watched the five hour Mark Douglas seminar many times over the years. It wasn't until the roulette epiphany that it truly did me any good.
Life itself is a privilege, but to live life to the fullest is a choice
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