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  • #281
  • Jan 27, 2013 12:41pm Jan 27, 2013 12:41pm
Interesting as always SP.

In terms of screen time what would you say in your experience is optimal? I find that spending 10hrs (on a day off work) infront of the charts and reading FF lol can sometimes help in that you see something new in your charts but sometimes can be frustrating too if nothing is achieved in pip gain terms. Yes that's the over trading scenario. The morning can start off well then you get fatigued and maybe you get complacent after a nice win and bam 2 trades in a row fail then you try again and another two hit your stops! Arghhh!

So how many hours a day is enough? Would you recommend putting a limit on screen time? No looking at charts after dinner time? No checking charts on your phone when you are out shopping with the Misses? Only 3hr sessions then take a break?
  • #282
  • Jan 27, 2013 1:23pm Jan 27, 2013 1:23pm
Quoting Seneca pilot
You are alone alot. If you are a social animal who can't make it through a day without interacting with others you may find it incredibly hard to trade for yourself. If you are social it doesn't mean you can't trade. You may just need to focus on getting the necessary experience to trade for a prop firm or some other venue where you can have others to be around. I don't think it is a good practice to talk to others about trading. You don't want to have conflicting information enter your decision process. Another trader might take a position that...

You may see your fitness decline. In trading we seem to be sitting in front of a computer all the time. Even if you are a long term trader and don't babysit your positions, you will spend many hours testing and refining your methods. Traders often see that when they go full time they are afraid to be away from the computer. You find that one missed trade can represent a large portion of your profit potential for the week. You tend to eat quick unhealthy meals, especially if you trade short term. You often feel guilty taking time away from trading, missing profit opportunity, to do things like working out. It is important to make time for fitness but often not easy for the trader.

I wanted to comment on these two paragraphs specifically because I think it's honestly just one more thing that you can plan for and overcome. First off the solitary piece; I am absolutely a social animal. I need to interact with people on a daily basis. Whether it be for business or pleasure I don't enjoy being alone. With that said, when it comes to trading I am in my office with just my computer and monitors and my roommates know I am not to be disturbed. When it comes to trading, I want to be completely left alone so I can properly focus. So what I'm getting at is during the workday, yes I will be home alone while my roommates are at work, but I think a proper "life" outside the workday can be achieved. For instance, as military officers the 3 of us have very crazy schedules, but we have "required fun" during the week haha. Whether we go meet up with people for dive bar Wednesdays, or movie night Mondays, we force ourselves to be somewhere else besides work or home during the work week. I don't see this changing much when I go full time trading at the end of this year. Solitary trading by day, social being at night, even if only for a couple hours.

As for the physical fitness piece, I think it's an essential part of trading. Some holidays that we have off in the US, but of course the markets stay open 24 hours a day I can find myself trading for 8-14 hours. Around noon - 1:00 time frame, the second I am back to all cash I go physically train for about an hour. Not only does it serve to fight the calories built up sitting in the chair all day, but when I get back to my computer I feel refreshed, recharged, and have a clean mind for my next trade. As for the nutrition, proper planning again can go a long way. I often stock my fridge with cooked chicken, pasta, tuna, veggies, etc. so I can eat healthy in a moments notice.

The trick in my opinion is understanding this before you make the jump.
  • #283
  • Jan 27, 2013 1:32pm Jan 27, 2013 1:32pm
I do feel compelled to add that I have never relied solely on forex trading to pay the rent, so I do not have the perception of hindsight.
  • #284
  • Jan 27, 2013 1:55pm Jan 27, 2013 1:55pm
Quoting stevexyg
Interesting as always SP.

In terms of screen time what would you say in your experience is optimal? I find that spending 10hrs (on a day off work) infront of the charts and reading FF lol can sometimes help in that you see something new in your charts but sometimes can be frustrating too if nothing is achieved in pip gain terms. Yes that's the over trading scenario. The morning can start off well then you get fatigued and maybe you get complacent after a nice win and bam 2 trades in a row fail then you try again and another two hit your stops!...
Your screen time needs are going to depend a lot on method. You can't take a trade if you aren't awake to enter. Some methods allow for pending orders to be used but if you aren't in front of the computer you can't reverse after a stop out. I think I am trying to say use the quiet times in the market to work on your own personal improvement. Maybe you are a person who likes to exercise regularly. Try to use the times during which your method tends not to produce entries to unwind. Be sure to make time to do things with your family. A great deal of success in trading will not be very fulfilling if you don't make time to enjoy it.

Personally I begin trading around midnight. Once I get an entry I will set the target and stop then set an alert to wake me up if I get stopped. I trade pretty much between midnight and around three or four AM then again after 8:30 news. I sleep when I can. I only monitor the market until I get an entry that sticks. If I am tired I have a variation of my methods that allows for me to sleep until 3AM and only look for entries after then. The markets are usually pretty dead after London close until Tokyo open. I tend to use that seven hour period to do other things. I tend to keep an eye on things but don't really stare at the screen during this time.

The sad truth, and the hardest thing about trading for a living is the realization that it consumes you if you let it. I only trade two or three times per day at the most but it often requires that I at least be paying attention to prices a large part of the night. The ideal for me would be to live in the GMT + 3 or GMT + 4 time zones. I am looking for a nice place in that zone but not sure if the wife will go for the move if I find it.

One of the toughest things for me as I went full time was to avoid overtrading. You just think you should be in a position making money when in fact you have to focus ever harder on trading in a surgical and exacting way. You no longer have a job to provide steady income and you no longer can afford to simply add to the account when you have a lapse in discipline and take a big loss.
  • #285
  • Jan 27, 2013 2:18pm Jan 27, 2013 2:18pm
Quoting SemperOorah
I wanted to comment on these two paragraphs specifically because I think it's honestly just one more thing that you can plan for and overcome. First off the solitary piece; I am absolutely a social animal. I need to interact with people on a daily basis. Whether it be for business or pleasure I don't enjoy being alone. With that said, when it comes to trading I am in my office with just my computer and monitors and my roommates know I am not to be disturbed. When it comes to trading, I want to be completely left alone so I can properly focus. So...
Yes these were things I didn't know. I didn't really know any traders when I started this and there aren't a lot of threads that address the realities of trading.

You will have a challenge in that you trade very short term for small targets. You will need intense screen time as you cannot let your attention stray any time you have a position.Price can touch one of your targets and retreat in a matter of seconds. You may change your view and method as you mature as a trader or you may have found your niche and happily scalp for the rest of your life. I am not here to discourage or cheerlead only to put out information but I will say that scalping can be a hard life.

You have made your plans which I would expect given your occupation. My point is most don't. Most see only dollar signs and don't really see the reality that awaits them when trading full time. Many think they will sharpen and improve when they trade full time when in fact the odds say they will crash and burn. One of the most important skills for a full time trader is to be able to walk away from the screen a loser on the day and not let that enter into their personal life or affect their approach to the market.

Are you retiring from the Marines or have you just reached the end of your commitment? Do you have a source of funds outside your trading account to pay bills? Are you married? Does your family know you trade and are they supportive? Do they feel it is gambling? If your losers outnumber your winners on a given day can you still finish in profit? These are things you must have sorted out and handled before you can really settle down to the business of trading.
  • #286
  • Jan 27, 2013 2:43pm Jan 27, 2013 2:43pm
I eased my transition to full time trading by taking a job working at night. I had a job which would allow me to trade my normal method as if I were trading full time. Most of the people around me thought I was nuts as I gave up a much larger sum of money and a job I had been in for years. My commitment was complete though, and the time trading while I worked the night job was crucial in my growth as a trader. I found that some of the assumptions I had made with regard to profitability and methodology needed some work and correction. I still had the support of some income but I had the time I needed to refine my trading and money management. This is something many should consider while making the transition to full time trading.
  • #287
  • Jan 27, 2013 6:15pm Jan 27, 2013 6:15pm
Quoting Seneca pilot
the hardest thing about trading for a living is the realization that it consumes you if you let it.

One of the toughest things for me as I went full time was to avoid overtrading. You just think you should be in a position making money when in fact you have to focus ever harder on trading in a surgical and exacting way..
Excellent advice thanks. Avoid overtrading and avoid spending too much time trading or thinking about trading. These are two things I tend to do already on my weekdays off work demo trading so something to work on. I suppose your sys as outlined here helps in that you only see your entry criteria once or twice a day so over trading would be more difficult than it is say trend following on short TF. Also be a precise trader, makes sense.
  • #288
  • Jan 27, 2013 7:11pm Jan 27, 2013 7:11pm
Quoting stevexyg
Excellent advice thanks. Avoid overtrading and avoid spending too much time trading or thinking about trading. These are two things I tend to do already on my weekdays off work demo trading so something to work on. I suppose your sys as outlined here helps in that you only see your entry criteria once or twice a day so over trading would be more difficult than it is say trend following on short TF. Also be a precise trader, makes sense.
Exactly, everything I am saying is in the context of the information that I have put out. I only trade at specific locations on the chart (specific prices). Its possible to put up a five minute chart and your minds eye will see support and resistance everywhere. The market doesn't work that way. Just because price stalls at a level and rebounds a little doesn't make it a S&R level. It gets a lot of traders in trouble. Suddenly you are full time and you see what you think is opportunity everywhere, next thing you know your hundreds in the hole trying to figure out what happened. Its also why I think its dangerous to have a bias. Sometimes on a one way day, price action traders get slaughtered because they have a bias and keep trying to trade against the flow with every pin bar and engulfing. Price action does work but only at important places not in no mans land. I just don't wait for the bars to complete, I know why the level is good so I trade it. I sound like a broken record but it all comes back to the same thing. If you trade at levels that matter you will make it. If you trade all over the chart you won't.
  • #289
  • Jan 27, 2013 8:11pm Jan 27, 2013 8:11pm
Youngsters these day won't know what the hell you are on about SP when you say 'broken record'. They will say 'What's a record? Do you mean a World Record?' Might be better to say you sound like a 'skipping CD'? Or a 'corrupt mp3 d/l from the itunes'??

So on this levels thing you keep banging on about, lets look at EurUsd H1 if we can. I've just drawn in a range starting 11 days ago bottom at 1.3246 top at 1.3403 which price broke out of last Friday morning GMT. I got the top of the range from the support on Friday morning GMT. Now is that a valid range and would you play the levels? Would you change those level a bit or make them narrow zones? I say that because the bottom level is based on all the support around 10/11th but price hasn't touched that line since then. I don't think they match any open close levels you might note?

Also on my H4 this range is consolidation in an accending channel going back to mid Nov so you were saying last few weeks price has been bouncing inside levels well for you I wonder if that's because price has been consolidating rather than ranging? You might not care about that though but by my reckoning I would be expecting more breaks rather than bounces over next few weeks.
  • #290
  • Jan 27, 2013 8:34pm Jan 27, 2013 8:34pm
Hello Everyone,

SP, Semper, Stevexyq, et. al., this thread is GOLD. I'm going to print many of the excellent posts and make two copies. One for my desk and other for my meditation chamber (aka the crapper).

I wish the other 25,000 members would read this stuff, practice it, learn it, and reap the rewards.

SP, I have decided to abandon my policy of not sharing in favor of following your good example. I have used data mining and the subsequent analysis to define "edges" that have served me well. The greatest benefit has been to have confidence in my trade due to understanding the true basis for the move I am trading, and not be shaken out where the big fish eat the little fish. That also incorporates your wisdom about leverage, possy size, knowing the price levels that make sense, and knowing when it's time to pull the plug.

All of that may be off topic so let me know if it is OK to proceed. Also, I'd like to rent a bed room or the guest house when you choose the right location and time zone.
  • #291
  • Jan 27, 2013 8:54pm Jan 27, 2013 8:54pm
Quoting stevexyg
Youngsters these day won't know what the hell you are on about SP when you say 'broken record'. They will say 'What's a record? Do you mean a World Record?' Might be better to say you sound like a 'skipping CD'? Or a 'corrupt mp3 d/l from the itunes'??

So on this levels thing you keep banging on about, lets look at EurUsd H1 if we can. I've just drawn in a range starting 11 days ago bottom at 1.3246 top at 1.3403 which price broke out of last Friday morning GMT. I got the top of the range from the support on Friday morning GMT. Now is that a...
Much bigger area than I trade but: I would put the boundarys at 1.32995 and 1.3403ish. Yes if it was the type of trading I do I would have a pending buy at 1.34. The stop would have to be under 1.3350 to be below the last swing low. Target would logically be 1.3500. As I have said I play daily levels in a much smaller space. Price may retrace to that level and I may be short for part or all of the move down to there if I get an entry in the normal course of my trading. If I were short though when price trades to that breakout level I would take profit for sure. Go back and take a look at the charts I posted on Friday. I was in on the breakout. Why? because I got one of my normal entries long. Remember I have no bias. I don't really anticipate breakouts from consolidation just not my thing. BRV and The wizard are both teachers of the breakout retrace trades on large timeframes and larger areas. It basically boils down to how long you want to hold a trade and how much time you can afford to spend on trading. I have time and don't seem to be able to hold trades too long so I use levels that produce 30 to 80 ish pip trades. If you want longer hold times trading the retrace of the breakout last week would be a good strategy. You are looking at the right things. By the way I would have a high level of confidence in the long there because its a weekly high. Of course now that I said that it will fail .
  • #292
  • Jan 27, 2013 8:58pm Jan 27, 2013 8:58pm
Quoting 2ii2c
Hello Everyone,

SP, Semper, Stevexyq, et. al., this thread is GOLD. I'm going to print many of the excellent posts and make two copies. One for my desk and other for my meditation chamber (aka the crapper).

I wish the other 25,000 members would read this stuff, practice it, learn it, and reap the rewards.

SP, I have decided to abandon my policy of not sharing in favor of following your good example. I have used data mining and the subsequent analysis to define "edges" that have served me well. The greatest benefit has been to have confidence...
Feel free to share any knowledge you feel is important. Just be ready to back it up, these guys are pretty good and ask tough questions.
  • #293
  • Jan 27, 2013 8:59pm Jan 27, 2013 8:59pm
Quoting stevexyg
Youngsters these day won't know what the hell you are on about SP when you say 'broken record'. They will say 'What's a record? Do you mean a World Record?' Might be better to say you sound like a 'skipping CD'? Or a 'corrupt mp3 d/l from the itunes'??

So on this levels thing you keep banging on about, lets look at EurUsd H1 if we can. I've just drawn in a range starting 11 days ago bottom at 1.3246 top at 1.3403 which price broke out of last Friday morning GMT. I got the top of the range from the support on Friday morning GMT. Now is that a...
Why did I choose 1.32995 for the bottom?
  • #294
  • Jan 27, 2013 9:16pm Jan 27, 2013 9:16pm
Quoting 2ii2c
Hello Everyone,

SP, Semper, Stevexyq, et. al., this thread is GOLD. I'm going to print many of the excellent posts and make two copies. One for my desk and other for my meditation chamber (aka the crapper).

I wish the other 25,000 members would read this stuff, practice it, learn it, and reap the rewards.

SP, I have decided to abandon my policy of not sharing in favor of following your good example. I have used data mining and the subsequent analysis to define "edges" that have served me well. The greatest benefit has been to have confidence...
Well GMT+4 is probably out, not my favorite part of the world Maldives would be the only possibility. I like Fiji and Tahiti though GMT-12 or 11. Also like Ecuador. Still wrong time zone but beautiful place and very low cost of living. Internet speed and reliability is, of course, a concern too.
  • #295
  • Jan 27, 2013 9:49pm Jan 27, 2013 9:49pm
Quoting Seneca pilot
Why did I choose 1.32995 for the bottom?
Umm Either low of the weekly close bar on 20th or low of monday 21st??
lol I bet that's bonkersly wrong.

can i try again - monday close? tuesday open? I'm not sure how your period seperators look on your chart it could be anything?! do you just like the number 1.32995? sorry.
  • #296
  • Jan 27, 2013 10:12pm Jan 27, 2013 10:12pm
Quoting Seneca pilot
Much bigger area than I trade but: I would put the boundarys at 1.32995 and 1.3403ish. Yes if it was the type of trading I do I would have a pending buy at 1.34. The stop would have to be under 1.3350 to be below the last swing low. Target would logically be 1.3500. .
mmm yes that's a big stop and with 2:1 RR target (which would bring price close to the top of ascending channel which I see) it's too big a risk for me based on potential returns. Nice to see what's going on on the long term but like you I couldn't sleep with a big trade underwater possibly for days. Having an open trade shouldn't be torture but if it is then the bigger the SL the bigger the potential headache. What do you say when you're 300pips exposed and asked 'good day trading Dear?'.
  • #297
  • Jan 27, 2013 10:16pm Jan 27, 2013 10:16pm
Quoting stevexyg
Umm Either low of the weekly close bar on 20th or low of monday 21st??
lol I bet that's bonkersly wrong.

can i try again - monday close? tuesday open? I'm not sure how your period seperators look on your chart it could be anything?! do you just like the number 1.32995? sorry.
Its a four hour chart. Two weekly highs line up around that number.

Spend a little time with a EUR/USD four hour chart with period separators. Go back several years. Check your weekly ATR. for the time period you are researching. Look what happens if you simply sell every weekly high and buy every weekly low. Stop is 20% ATR target 40 or 60%. If you get stopped reverse on a retest of the level and go for the target plus stop. You will be pleasantly surprised with the results. Trading is simple. I'll say it again, no indicators needed trading is simple.
  • #298
  • Jan 27, 2013 10:19pm Jan 27, 2013 10:19pm
Quoting stevexyg
mmm yes that's a big stop and with 2:1 RR target (which would bring price close to the top of ascending channel which I see) it's too big a risk for me based on potential returns. Nice to see what's going on on the long term but like you I couldn't sleep with a big trade underwater possibly for days. Having an open trade shouldn't be torture but if it is then the bigger the SL the bigger the potential headache. What do you say when you're 300pips exposed and asked 'good day trading Dear?'.
I would NEVER have a stop even close to 300 pips. I can trade weekly levels with the info I just gave in the previous post. The stop right now would be fiftyish pips. Biggest stop I can remember using in the recent past trading weekly price levels was maybe 70 pips.
  • #299
  • Jan 27, 2013 10:26pm Jan 27, 2013 10:26pm
Quoting Seneca pilot
its dangerous to have a bias.
Worth repeating. Yes any ideas about market direction based on apparent trend or fundamentals can become irrational belief and it's only when you've had a massive hit to your account that you reluctantly admit you were wrong and this market really is turning. Then your anger quickly turns to a plan of revenge and before long you empty out the other half of your account. Trade what you see not what you think/believe is a good saying.
  • #300
  • Edited 10:53pm Jan 27, 2013 10:52pm | Edited 10:53pm
Quoting Seneca pilot
Its a four hour chart. Two weekly highs line up around that number.
Ahhh right yes I wasn't looking far enough back! So there we have or rather had, some big sellers positioned. Price repeatedly rejected around that level for 3 weeks (1.3280-99) then came the breakthrough on the 11th and now that area has become supportive and has been tested several times and held for two weeks. So now we have buyers in this area so we accept that as a buy zone until or unless price dips through and retraces from the underside to test? In the mean time 1.3299 has become a launch pad for a break of 1.3400. This is making sense, you can almost visualize the orders and so the big boys are using the weekly high to place their orders or their orders create the weekly high? It's a bit of a chicken and egg scenario is it not? Oh I think you may have answered that earlier when you mentioned client target orders/requested deal levels.
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