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| i thought the stock was turning over.some nice doji's before hand. the question is, do i close it after it hammers on the 5 and 10 or wait for my stop to get taken out? |
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| i had drawn lines forming a pennant on that consolidation and set an alert. when i got the alert, it was breaking through the low side so i shorted it. apparently it was a long. i don't know what to do different there next time. if it cracked right there, i would like a genius. but it didn't. the only thing i can say is i should have gone after it again around noon time. |
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| i was trying to fade new highs. looks like it wanted to take a few more runs up first. |
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| just playing around with this one. |
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| shorted. i don't remember if i got stopped out or i had bought too much and closed some. needless to say, that hold felt like forever. i covered into a huge down tick. and then covered the rest a few bars later after it seemed to want to go back up. it looked like it was turning back over to go to lows around 2pm so i took it short. again here, should i wait for myself to get stopped out, or flip the position once i see some doji action. |
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| i was using this as my QLD hedge, but i think i screwed that up again. i think SSO is the bull. i should have been buying SDS, jeez. |
Heya - just reading over your captions.
ReplyDeleteDo you come back and add captions later? The same thing happened today, no text in reader, and then there was text the next time I checked.
One thought about your 'genius' comment; I am finding that thinking something along the terms (I did well, I did terrible) is a hint about what you are thinking about the market. If the market can do anything at any time, we can take absolutely no credit for what happened. Recall what Scott says about how he just considers himself available for the opportunity the market presents. If we start thinking that market movement can make us a genius or a fool, we are in for a world of hurt as soon as we start losing, or as soon as we start winning for that matter. The market is just moving. We take a guess based on our edge. Sometimes our edge works out, sometimes it doesn't.
Winning is what I faced in the afternoon session. I worked out over the lunch session and all I could think about was that this was really working - and 'What a great guy I am' kept sneaking in. I took pains to address those thoughts by repeating my little 'Market can do anything' mantra, but I wonder if I was a diligent as I thought I was - I am almost positive that the mild euphoria led to the 1000 share ramp - 'I knew what was going to happen'. And I didn't squash it. One step at a time.
Don't get me wrong - there are two sides to the 'genius' - the good side is the side that lends itself to true confidence; it is the 'I can stick to my trading plan' side. Did we do that? Yes we did - we envisioned the risk before entering the trade and placed our stop. The other side, the dark side gets wrapped up in the stock movement 'We are so smart because we just knew this would happen.' That is a false belief system - we can never know what will happen in the market.
You know - this is new for me and I am still working thru it - but I have gotten hints of it over the last two days and it has made me a true believer. I want to make it my second nature. True freedom to pay attention to the markets. Turning on a dime and riding the waves.
Anyhoo - my advice: kill those thoughts. Don't afford them any energy. Replace them with the neutral market and the idea of you just being there; the market would have moved just like it did whether you and I were there or not to take advantage of it. If you truly think the market can do anything at any time - with or without us, what can that possibly have to do with us being either fools or geniuses?
I hope you can think of this as a big 'Thank you' for all the ways you have helped me =)
And take it or leave it!
ReplyDeleteyes, wow! thank you for the great comment. i'm going to have to print that one out for sure. yes, i load the charts up off of my trading computer, and then add the captions later on in the day from my laptop.
ReplyDeleteyou know i actually thought twice about writing that "genius" line. there are times even in skype where i catch myself writing "those market makers got me again" or something to that effect but then i erase it. when i hear people say the same thing, i laugh at them and think to myself, "its just the market man".
on the surface, i see the argument that its just the market moving and i can say it. but if i was to be honest, deep down i don't believe it. sometimes, i feel like the market is out to get me. i don't know how to change those feelings. are you saying to just repeat to myself, "the market can do anything" and other affirmations. its so hard to not take the game personal and move beyond right/wrong and into a sense of probability.
and if my probability of being right is 30% or 40% (see there i again i write "right" but i should put "probability of being stopped out") should i even be trading? i think i need to get my probability over 50% winners in order to make money. i used to think i didn't have to. and the math works out that you don't. the problem lies in the fact that if i give up .20 i need to get .50 on the winners but usually the winners go up and come right back down. i can't ever get that long run. therefore, i need to get my winning probability (again i wrote winning which isn't correct) above 50%.
doesn't even NT put it in terms of winning and losing trades? which is basically right %/wrong %.
thanks again.
i'm taking it brother. keep it coming. i know i need to get past the point of right and wrong. i'm going to have to watch the douglas video again.
ReplyDeleteYeah buddy!
ReplyDeleteIn the beginning of Douglas' book he talks about how nearly all traders consider themselves risk takers - but they really don't - they assume because they put on trades and that trades are risky, they must be risk takers. But they do not fully embrace the risk (page 9 in my copy). Scott puts it as 'withdrawing the risk from the psychological bank', reminding us that there is more than just money involved in the risk.
I underlined almost all of chapter 3 in Douglas' book. It basically talks about why we blame the markets - because we don't want to take responsibility for the hurt we are feeling when we lose. We need to know what that hurt is and what it feels like - and before we enter the trade decide whether or not we will take responsibility for those feelings. If we do not want to, we should not enter the trade. Of course, for me this is still touch and go - sometimes I don't make the 'full withdrawal' before I make the trade, and this then surfaces as me blaming the market. Or sometimes I do decide to take the responsibility before the trade, but forget after the trade. Either way - if I find myself blaming the market; I stop that thought and replace it with - 'I decided to enter that trade. I take responsibility for it.' That stops the feelings immediately. They come creeping back of course - but I just take responsibility again. And again. Hopefully it becomes a habit.
If we are blaming the markets, we can know that we are harboring some expectations and not accepting full responsibility for what happened or the level of risk that is involved. We simply aren't. Mr. Douglas says this - but I know it now, because the times when I have taken responsibility, the 'market is out to get me' thoughts completely disappear. I made the decision to shift the energy from one belief (I can somehow know what the market is going to do) to another belief (I have no idea what the market is going to do). It is incredible - mind blowingly wonderful - how this happens.
I wrote something down at the end of chapter 3 that summed up my take on the chapter: 'The market is random. But what I take/give to the market is my responsibility.'
Not completely correct (the market isn't random) but it works.
I think I am going to read chapter 3 again tonight.
sweet post! i'm writing down that mantra and repeating it to myself today.
ReplyDelete