Day #12 - This was a frustrating day for me. Looking back now I seemed to go into the day "fighting" rather than just going with the flow. I got into this headbutting with the market, rather than just calmly waiting for the right move. Then when I did catch a great trade, I would get worried and cover it. So at one point, I am down over $500 and about ready to call it quits for the day. I'm skyping with my psych coach, Mark, and he asks if I have a few mins to talk. So we talk, and during that time frame I see a great setup form... and I get long... I'm relaxed and I add to the position. I talk through it, and I am in the frame of mind that I don't really care... just trying to do the right thing. Close it out correctly. Here is what I think happened... what tilted me. On the weekend, my X invited me out for some drinks with just her, and I politely declined all though that wasn't easy. Her words was that it was Saturday night, and she just wanted to hang out... and then quite later that night she texted me where she was, and mentioned she was by herself. Vulnerable time for me, and I didn't go out. The "correct" thing to do... But then yesterday there were some comments by a family member, and I woke up to some texts from the X, and this time I did read them prior to trading. Nothing too serious, but just stirs up that emotion. Anyhow, looking back I can see how I was upset or angry and just wanted to take it out on something. Matter of fact, I am still feeling pissed off... and this is 7 hours after I took my last trade. Wish I could just step in and make widgets, but today I couldn't. So this is a "tell" that I need to watch for, and recognize. Still lots of emotion there that is affecting me in my trading. Need to really be careful. -149
Just a quick note from an observation over the last few days....Yukoner, it appears you are watching yourself too much, your psyche, your emotions appear to be too "tight". You are watching yourself in detail to avoid any mistake and when they happen you are trying to come up with an explanation why they happened, which may be fine if it helps in changing yourself. To me it looks like you may be chasing yourself and chasing the money. Imagine a puppy, little dog, very playful...when you start chasing him he wants to play and runs away from you, running all around just to avoid being captured. The moment you cease doing this, when you show that you don't care he comes closer, he may come even straight to you or he may start chasing you. What if the money in the market behave similarly...the more we chase them further away they run and when we care less they may start chasing us. However, I do understand the role of this psychological journal...to write down everything what goes through the mind and what is potentially effecting your decisions from your perspective. So perhaps at this point your exercise makes sense and you can analyse your thoughts even retrospectively and also get input from others, but imho down the road something has to change in the way of thinking (more relaxed...not only during the day but particularly during the trading) in order to be more profitable. Just my 2c...and good luck!!
Day #13 - Very interesting to just read @Puma 's points above as I went into today telling myself that I needed to be aware of emotional "arousal" and that it comes in many forms. I took my time even opening up the computer and here is the things I wanted to be monitoring and aware of: 1) Breathing. I need to breath more and stay relaxed during trading. The emotional arousal kicks in once in a trade or about to take a trade and I feel that stress hit. 2) Widget making. The more I think about @Handle123 commenting on this, the more it makes sense as a mindset to adopt. Just to do your job, and let the probabilities sort themselves out. 3) That as long as I manage my risk, the outcome of any single trade doesn't matter... so I shouldn't be so concerned about the uncertainty of outcome. This was indeed helpful today. 4) Do the correct thing in trading, not what feels good at the moment. So how did the day go. Well, I was seeing the market excellent. I was closing losing trades quickly, but still struggled with my winners. I did do better with managing my winners, as I actually added to a winning trade which was the right thing to do even though I got stopped out at breakeven. However, I did at least three trades that were excellent trades but I either got out too early or reduced my risk to breakeven +1 (Yea, that makes you feel good but always the incorrect thing to do) Any of those trades would have hit my default profit target and then some. All I had to do was believe in it... Analyzing the winner trades more, I realize I get too attached to the outcome. I want to be right. I want to be a winner. So it is like a part of my self worth is tied into whether this trade is successful or not, and if I just close it now... I am successful! Rather than asking myself what is the correct thing to do here, I get all fired up to just close it out. Summary : All of this, the last 13 days, are excellent road signs directing me where I need to go. Thanks to everyone who is following this, and for your support! +92
You quoted Rande Howell earlier in this journal and I have some of his stuff in my trading journal that might be helpful for you (underlining is mine): Trading “Not to Lose”, Rather Than Trading With an Edge When Steve began to examine beliefs that he brought into trading, he discovered he carried more emotional baggage than he initially thought. And, in his mindlessness, these deeply held beliefs directed what his rational mind saw. His hard-nosed approach to price and avoidance of loss, under close scrutiny, was not the product of rational, impartial problem solving. It was fear masquerading as reason. What Steve discovered was that he had been using “rationally thinking” as a way of avoiding his discomfort that trading forced into the conscious mind. Uncertainty and loss had become associated with one another in Steve’s brain/mind – his perceptual map. He carried this fear of loss in the face of uncertainty as self limiting belief now. But it was beneath the surface. It was like a submarine, beneath the surface, torpedoing a ship on the surface. Fear was the submarine. Rational was the ship on the surface. His trading was the casualty. When he traded, he triggered to this perceptual map that had become a self-fulfilling prophesy. The truth, beneath his rational exterior, was that he believed that the uncertainty of the markets would lead to loss if he were not very careful. Out of this deeply held and unconscious, fear-based belief, he created a rational cover up to avoid the potential for loss. By never getting the price he wanted, he avoided the fear of uncertainty that kept blowing up this trading plan. With his rational mind doing the bidding of his fear-based beliefs, he avoided the potential for loss in his trading. There was nothing wrong with his trading plan, he discovered. The limitation to his trading was based on the rules of uncertainty and loss he had learned as he grew up in a family that experienced terrible financial losses in his formative years. These years had been tough on the family. In the face of survival, they had learned the hard way to avoid uncertainty and to only risk when you could not lose. This way of seeing the world (that the world is a dangerous place and you’d better be careful) became the hidden assumption that guided Steve’s development of risk management. And in his profession prior to trading, as a corporate comptroller, this perceptual map worked well. Steve did not see his perspective as a personal bias though; he saw it “as the way it is”. This is because it had become a familiar pattern and was pushed into the background of his awareness. The very skill set that gave Steve an “edge” in corporate finance had become a liability in trading. He had developed a habit of trading “not to lose”, rather than a mindset of accepting and managing the risk of probabilities that trading demands Steve came to recognize that it was not his trading plan that needed to change – it was him. This is not to say that his trading plan does not need to evolve, along with him, as he moves deeper into his journey of trading. What Steve came to understand was that he is an inseparable element from his trading. Each element – from platform to methodology to personal psychology – has to be woven together with care to create successful trading. And without a close examination of the beliefs in which his psychology is rooted, he was missing the access to a key element to successful trading. He fell into the deception that he was rational and that “rational” was normal – even superior. It felt emotionless, which he had been taught was how a trader needed to trade. This was also a stumbling block to his growth as a trader. What he discovered was that “rational” is an emotional state among other emotional states. And that he could hide his discomfort behind the façade of “being emotionless” that a rational emotional state provides. Rational became a defense that allowed him to avoid looking deeper into himself. After closer inspection he discovered that a deeply rooted fear of loss had caused him to stay out of trades. Demanding a price that the market was not willing to give became a way for him to avoid his fear that he might lose. And with his logic and rational thinking captured by this fear, he produced a trading plan of elaborate criterion that looked good and keep him out of trades. And because it was so familiar to him, he never saw the self limiting beliefs operating within him. Mindfulness as Part of a Psychological Trading Plan You have just read about a trader wakening up from his mindlessness. He was so absorbed by his logic that he could not see that it was blinding him to the core problem. It kept him focused on the surface of the problem. He saw symptoms of the deeper problem, but the symptoms so pre-occupied him that he thought the symptoms were the problem. He was lost in his direction, but making good time. Questions for Developing Your Mindfulness: (1) If you take a look at the symptoms of your trading, what do you discover? (2) What is the consistent behavioral performance that keeps repeating itself? Then let’s go a little deeper. (3) What kind of game plan seems to be in place? For the trader in the example above, for instance, the game plan was “not to lose”. His game plan did not include managing the risk of uncertainty so that probability was on his side. He kept telling himself that in his self deception he was trading to win, but his behavioral performances over time told a different story. His logic actually covered up the deeper self-limiting belief that was at the core of his lackluster trading performance. The second part of his game plan was to hide from his fear, and he accomplished that by staying stuck in a kind of “logical thinking” that produces merely surface evaluation – projecting the problem outside of the self – rather than a mindful attitude that looks for the beliefs beneath the performance. (4) Based on your trading performances, not on your rhetoric, what beliefs actually drive your trading? No one is going to be looking at your answers to these questions. The questions are designed to help you discover the current psychological organization of self that trades your platform and methodology. Becoming mindful of them is a major step in changing them into more effective beliefs that open up the possibility of peak performance trading. As long as hidden beliefs stay out of sight, they are out of mind. But, they still influence your trading performance. You are simply mindless of (i.e. blind to) their influence much like a horse with blinders on never sees the green grass on each side of the path. The blinders become the “tunnel vision” that limits what the horse (or the trader) sees and can act upon. Developing this kind of mindfulness is a major element in the evolution of a trader. Without its development, you stay stuck in the pattern of seeking answers “out there”. With it, the trader becomes aware of the tunnel vision that has blinded his development. Blinders off, a new vision of trading emerges where platform, methodology, and personal psychology coalesce into a dynamic new possibility of peak performance trading.
Hi yuk, Just my 2 cents worth (CDN). Your over thinking things. You have a lot going on in your life.Appreciate the thinking as you go along.
You got a lot of work to do on yourself man, good luck! That was a joke! Seriously, people from rigid families (like myself) tend to demand perfection from themselves and that is a big problem in trading. Your problem is very common, you refuse to loose and you confuse losing a trade as being a loser, believe it or not! You have to get yourself to accept a loss, it is not easy but it can be done. I spent more than 10 years fixing myself. I think I had a winning strategy starting day 1, but a lot of personal problems, social pressure and a sense a failure (to have a lot of money) did a lot of damage on my self-esteem and kept me from winning. If you want to win you have to love yourself and RESPECT yourself and the market. If you have that, a simple strategy as this one: 1- don't get in a trade if you don't know where to get out losing or winning 2- After a losing trade don't trade for let say 1 hour. This simple strategy can get you to positive territory. If you have discipline problems, you should not day trade, period! Trade longer time frames; I know I have been told this here, few years ago and I laughed at them, I can find the posts; those guys were so right. If you cannot discipline yourself to trade a longer time frame you are here for the thrill or for escaping your real responsibilities: work and therefore daytrading or trading all together is not for you. Save your money, fix yourself, you'll come back stronger, with money left. Don't do my mistake, I lost a lot of money day trading than I dare to disclose, it almost cost me my marriage, the problem was me, I needed to fix myself first. Do things you love that make you happy about yourself, find them it could be as simple as gardening. Good luck, hope this will help you.
I have GF who has big family, I said long ago I am off limits between Sunday night and Friday mid-day, unless someone croaks, I am unavailable for anything negative and took some time for her to realize, but I would politely end phone call or leave if any of that was in conversation. I am not a sounding board for other people and their drama. She is your "ex" as in past. This might sound cruel to most, but to me ex's and I don't stay friends, if I wanted a friend I'd buy a dog. Whether she ended it or I did, once relationship is over, it goes right into dumpster, I don't go back in dumpster to bring it back out as that will just mess me all up and not do right decisions. Negative anything messes my trading up, I have to have my head on straight to concentrate on mental aspects of performing my rules. I need a boring way of life for 5.5 days, it is time to work and do all the vanilla parts of life that everyone else does, come Friday mid day, lay it on me Reality Show and then show me all the bullshit other people need in their lives. Out with the OLD and in with the new. Am glad this forum has "Ignore", have a bunch of #GH&^#@!!! on it, so they don't mess me up either, ROFLMAO. Most trades don't feel good and the ones that do, whole world feels good too are often crap trades, but if they are part of the rules, I have to take them, I am not the boss, my trading rules are, I am just a Monkey pushing buttons. I mean really, how fricking hard is it to follow the rules? Let's make the game so BORING and just keep doing it. You want entertainment? Go to Vegas.
@NoDoji Thanks for this, and taking the time to share it with me. I'll read it a few times for sure. (Big fan of Howell's work) Told my psych coach this week, that it feels like I am learning on a fast track. Key is to move forward and change old habits of behavior. I do know it takes time to change habits and belief systems, every day though, I can feel myself getting closer... I think a big part of it is getting my overall confidence back since the breakup. Probably affecting me more than I realize... Good Trades, Yukoner
I'd get rid of that BE+1 stuff (use to kill me), place a stop outside the noise on your time frame and then let the trade develop or not, once it moves enough you can adjust your stop or trail up to whatever seems correct given what price action has developed, be flexible. Good damage to ones psyche can happen if you get a string of BE+1's and then have the instrument hit your targets.