4 years after you posted this question, would you please give a thoughtful response to your original question? A way for us to understand your way to consistency. Taken from this HOF thread: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=174550&perpage=6&pagenumber=5 08-28-09 06:03 PM Quote from NoDoji: These are two things I've found the most difficult to overcome and also very costly: changing the plan because of thinking about a trade after it's on, and chasing the trade that I was ready to put on but hesitated, thereby missing the entry price that made the trade a good one in the first place. When I miss an entry, my friend always tells me, "Don't worry about it, another boat will come along." This is what I strive to be, a purely technical trader. Tell me how long it takes to get "yourself" out of your own way and trade purely technical. Please leave me with a sense of hope this weekend by not telling me 5 years or 10,000 hours of screen time.
A specific answer is not possible. How committed are you? How much discipline do you have? What are you willing to give up? Are you employed currently? Do you work for yourself or have a boss? You need to be able to think outside the box, be a go-getter, have a never going to quit attitude. Don't allow yourself to go down this road: "Please leave me with a sense of hope this weekend by not telling me 5 years or 10,000 hours of screen time." Your words above have a victim-ish phrasing to them. Quit that. There is a thread NoDoji recommended from a poster named Geez, that person is from another planet, no matter how idiotic some of the reply's he got ( I assume he is a he) never does he be anything but polite, upbeat, friendly. Also check out anything from Dbphoenix, he is the man. Redneck is a special case, he reminds me of the Randy Travis song "Deeper than the holler" that dude comes up with some amazing insights.
Can I turn the question around, ashantt? You clearly don't want to budget "5 years and 10,000 hours of screen time" so, if you will, give us a sense of what you are prepared to budget? It might not take you anywhere near that time. Othes have done it in three years and 5,000 hours of screen time. I'm sure a few have done it in two years with only 3,000 hours of screen time. But, if you think a year and 1,500 hours of screen time is enough maybe you should rethink. I'm not saying it can't be done but I am saying we deal in probabilities. And the liklihood of that happening is slim if your goal is consistent profitability. That's not to say you need to commit to that 5 & 10 plan upfront. You can work at it a year and than take a hard look as to whether you think you can make it or want to. It might not be 5 & 10 to learn it in your case but it has been close to that for many others. And some never get it at all.
Sirs, the above question is from NoDoji from 2009 and not from me. I merely want to read her response about her journey to consistency.
I'm not NoDoji but there is a general answer: It takes as long as it takes for you to get a technical trading plan that you trust. I've lost track of how many posters I've seen post something like "I have a great plan but I just can't stick to it." Rule #1: stop being self-delusional. If they were really convinced that they had a great plan, they would stick to it automatically. People don't stick to a trading plan because they don't trust it. They don't trust it because their subconscious is telling them it's untrustworthy. Which means it either isn't really a great plan or they haven't seen enough evidence to be convinced it's a great plan. Rule #2: find a truly good trading plan that you trust implicitly. Everything falls in line after that.
This post might not be universally accurate but it is more than 90% true and very important. I'm testing a new approach to add into my mix and have recently gone live with it. I find myself hesitant to pull the trigger (not a common weakness for me), entering late and generally disjointed. I don't think I've yet nailed it in order to give me enough confidence to do it justice. I go back to the drawing board and search for what's missing. Trading is hard. Thinking while you trade is impossible. You need to trade it clean -- without pondering it -- and to do that you need to believe in it.
There are probably many traders who can trade successfully without a plan, but I found out the hard way that I'm not one of them. Trading without an exact plan and thinking while trading was, for me, a disaster. It was the cause of all my significant losses and it was the reason I cut winners short. It was the cause of hesitation followed by chasing entries at poor prices, and the cause of jumping the gun in order to keep my stop loss smaller. I realize now more than ever that Geez was the rarest sort of trader. He had a specific plan based on statistics compiled over time, and the ability to trade it manually like a machine. As soon as he got a valid signal, he placed his order, always adhering to appropriate size based on the R:R. It was amazing how consistent he was at simply trading every valid signal without allowing the result of any trade to influence the next trade in any way, and how he could just leave his trade alone until either the stop or target order was filled. When I first met him and watched him trade, I thought he was pretty dense because he'd allow trades to come within a penny of his profit target and then stop him out for the full loss. I asked him why he didn't move his stop to break even or just take profit a few pennies less than target if price stalled right there. And he told me something that I couldn't get my head around at the time because I didn't understand what good trading was about. He told me that his trading is based on specific statistics that demonstrated net profitability over time and if he were to start messing with his stops and targets it would lead him down a slippery slope and skew the odds of his plan. Even now it's a struggle for me every day to ignore my thoughts about setups. With few exceptions, the hard right edge always feels dangerous and my dear brain steps right up to protect me with thoughts such as "let's watch how price reacts first, then go from there" or "hmmm, it's starting to look a bit weak, why not move your stop to break even just in case". I've learned that my thoughts are nothing more than protective mechanisms trying to protect me from potential risk. Well, every trade involves risk and trading in general involves uncertainty, and I know from statistical analysis that if I simply trade what I see according to my plan no matter what I think, the outcome of every sufficient series of trades will always be positive (barring a black swan event or technical issues beyond my control). (A "sufficient" series of trades for me is 10 trades.)
good post NoDoji.. It makes perfect sense..although everyone has trouble actually carring out that plan. I found my biggest enemy was 1) Overtading(mostly out of boredom), 2) averaging ( outcome usually get back to break even or get crushed cuz I doubled down), 3) not letting winners run (very commom, the cash register sound is the best!! I have heard many comparisons between trading and poker...at first i thought it made no sense...but there are certain things i find to be compelling. 1) great poker players can seperate the money aspect out of the game... it is so easy to think about how much u can lose and not what the "proper" play is...we get clouded by doubt, greed, stupidity and worst of all fear. In a sense to be great you must not care about the trade...which is hard cuz its like going to a movie and not caring how it ends.