TheChalleger's Journal - My Trading Journey

OK. I have stayed most of London session today. It was the first day I could stay for most of the London session, but it was also the first day I could not take any trade. I tried to set a pending order, but it was not triggered. I had the below setup waiting, but it did not trigger before the end of London session.

Overall, good discipline, I did not attempt to enter any low-conviction trade. My stress level reduced, and that was why I could stay for most of the London session.

Hi mate,

Thanks a lot for your sharing. It is hard to trade London session as a resident in Toronto! I think your determination is strong. Glad that you don't have too much stress problem to overcome like me.

I am gradually overcoming my stress problem!

cheers,

Legitimate failed trade. -1R

BE Trade 0R

I think concern should be more to our reaction rather to what market can do. if we can control ourselves market can do nothing.

I day trade only London from 2:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m. and I only trade eur/usd. I think to trad emore is to lose focus but gbp/usd had nice moves tonight.

had a coupl eof trades, first ended BE, second 2:1 r:r. i usually try to take partial at 2:1 and let the rest run to up to 3-4:1. if it can, I also trail by stop.
here is example:

Another BE trade 0R

1hr about London Close, Need to go. so BE it.

Will it be a failed setup????

There was some family issue this morning, and I was not able to be in front of the screen at London open. Now, it is 1 hour after London Open. Instead of starting daily preparation immediately, I want to take some time to review the work in the last two days.

There were some personal issues in the last two days, and I was not able to be in front of the screen. I want to take some time to review the work on the first two working days of this week.

I have spend 7 hours of Demo Trading on Mon and 10.5 hours on Tue. This was a bit unimaginable last week. Last week, I could only manage to trade for 2.5 - 4.5 hours per day. This means I have successful overcame my intense relectance to sit in front of the screen lasted for the last few years. This apparently small achievement has taken me incredibly long to make!

Meanwhile, I got the poorest result in the these two days

Wk29: (-1), +1 / -1, +1
Wk30: -1, +1 / +1 / +1 / +1 / 0
Wk31: X / -1, 0, 0

There was no trade on Mon and 1 loser and 2 drawer on Tue. Tue was the first losing day in the round of trading. About Wk32.2, I have made 3 trades. The first loser was a legatimate loser. The second trade, a drawer, was a good setup, but TP was 1 pip away from hitting. The spread of my account has made this trade and the last trade on last trade drawers instead of winners. The third trade, a drawer, was not a good setup, I have made a mistake called MTF pattern.


Nevertheless, I see a significant improvement in mental. The goals that I have set for the week:

- to stick to the screen over London session
- to trade reasonably
- and most importantly on top of these two, to overcome fear of trading

I feel that I have already achieved the goals set above satisfactorily. I do feel a bit bored after long hours of trading, but I think I can overcome boredom in trading without too much difficulty. In conclusion, although my P/L performance was not good so far this week, my mental improvement is good, and that is the actual goal of my effort.

Psychological elements and achievements:

Realistic expectation

Done! Complete reduced my expectation to realistic level
Faith in the edge

OK! I am 100% confident of having an edge, but not sure how strong it is

Emotion controlability
(Stress & Negativity)

OK! Stress will be completely overcame! It has been largely overcame. Has been comfortable with reasonable trading. Not much hard feeling with losing.
Approaching emotionless trading!

Patience

Done! Successfully bring a position to pre-target level. Successfully trade for most of London Session

Damn! what a contrast to what you were not too long ago!

Not too long ago you were trying to convince me that psychology is not important(look at you now lol).

If the use of a method doesn't has an edge, discipline is absolutely unimportant. I think I have been absolutely clear in making this point to you.

When I was trying to learn how kostas1 traded, I wasn't able to see any edge even in hindsight.

-1R

Don't know what I have done today. Messy trading... Start next round of demotrading next week!

One difficulty in trading

One difficulty in trading is that success relies on your own judgement - there are hardly any simple clear-cut rules or situations for you to judge. Judgement can be good or bad depending on your performance. It takes hard work to improve the quality of your judgement. And even when your judgement is good, outcome can be bad sometimes.


Perception of edge and its internalization

With a sound trading method, most of the time it works and sometimes it doesn’t. As the screen time of using or observing it increases, the fluctuation between highly confident and greatly disappointed reduces. The emotional reactions to working out and not will assimilate. You genuinely realize that trading is a probability game.


Success is in us not in the methods

As my trading method develops, now I genuinely understand the meaning in the statement that “Edge (success) is in the person (judgmentally or emotionally) not in the method.” It is because sound judgment of a setup involves multiple factors and a number of qualitative and quantitative discretions, and traders should only take high conviction setups.


Secret in Trading

When I heard about quick and big success in trading by someone, I immediately thought of some secrets or special techniques has been decoded by the people. If I know the secrets or special techniques, I will have big success. Even now, sometimes I cannot stop myself thinking like this. In fact, survival bias and selective reporting by others create the illusion of quick success. Today, I no longer believe and quick success methods or simple trading methods.

It might sound like a joke, but try good coffee and some good dark chocolate before trading.
I am coming to PC practically brain dead as I am getting up sometimes even at 1:45 a.m. New York time.
it helps a lot.



I stayed in this trade for about 7 hours. My gosh, what happened to London session. would not be able to stay through this mess for 7 hours. my time is also limited.

Thanks for sharing. Do share more

as I said man, coffee and dark chocloat, doing just this now



i wonder will it help

more coffee!

lol, bad coffee, back to bed.

I have missed the logging of my trade issues for many days. Now it is time to be back.

Wk31.5

The last record of trade activities was Wk31.5. I have a messy trading day with a lot of experimental trades. I got 90% losing rate on that day. Ok. I made the same mistake as I have half year ago. After some evaluation, I found that the reason I wanted to experimenting with some momentary seen setup was to test my hypotheses I had at the moment. This was a good motive, without actual getting in the experiments were not real enough. Nevertheless, experimental trading do more harm than good. It destoryed my effort in building up a good track record. The negative feeling afterwards is also strong. Next time, I would use a arrow mark to highlight a possible entry, instead of actually getting in. This marking should be good enough for studying possible setups evaluation.

Wk32.1 (2012.08.06) +0.5R


-1.5R : GU Failed Touch trade, possibly caused by the breakout blocking (Attachment 1)
+1R : EJ TL Cross Bounce (Attachment 2)
+1R : EU Crack TL Bounce (Attachment 3)

Wk32.2-Wk32.3 (No Trading)

The past two days I felt negative about trading, and I was not in mood to trade. I doubted the way to success. After some evaluaton, I found that I am a bit exhausted these days, and the lack of energy made me reluctant to trade, when my energy return I would be back to being positive.


Wk32.4 (No trades)

Missed 4 opportunity - 2 due to absence and 2 due to triggering gap
No failed setup seen

W32.4 Missed a EU setup, already watch chart every 20 min, why???? (Attachment 4)