use a screen recorder to record, review your trading behaviour...
you can record video & AUdIO...
its better than a blog...
coz it is like a real thing...and more lively, interesting..
it will never lie.
the cheapest one is faststone screen recorder.
icecream screen recorder,
whatever.
I use fastone screen recorder-- yesterday...I loike it
The essence of trading is this, and why trading is hard work. "Expert traders don’t know where the market will go, expert traders just take setups that have worked before and know how much to lose on a particular trade"
3 elements: Uncertainty in direction, calculated risk and working setup.
Always remember and aplly this in your trading, you're a trading rockstar sooner or later.
" Question which are specific to a trader asking the question should be asked via PM. Questions like, what is your OR, what is your indicator on your chart, what time did you enter the trade etc. should be asked via PM." Please
follow this next time. I will answer since i need to answer another question also.
Have been trading CL for 2 years. Yes.
I will take this opportunity to answer some related issues since lot of traders are struggling day after day and they
watch BTR411 clearing 100 ticks per set up, mf breakout clearing $500 here and $700 there etc.
I have said it many times but it's worth repeating. Without proper equity account a day trader makes his job harder
beyond imagination.
With a 20K account most brokers will let a trader trade 3-4 cars. My recommendation always has been
1 car for 25 K equity account. This means one need to have 50K account for 2 cars. I have traded myself and
see other traders push the envelope in terms of trading maximum size and then not been
able to handle the PRESSURE.
Even more important than equity account is ones financial situation outside trading account.
I personally ONLY know of 2 traders who are successful beyond anyone's imagination. One has a full time business
and trades 4-6 cars a set up and does very well. He has very little pressure to make money and does very well.
The other one is full time trader for last 30 years and it's tough to describe his success. I have compared
my trades with his. In majority of the cases we are on same side of the trade but his results are just out of this
WORLD. He has no pressure because most IMPORTANTLY he knows what he is doing plus financially he is like FORT KNOX.
He did not started with 10K, 20K to make millions. He started out financially VERY secure, learned his craft like all of us and never looked back.
He has NO FEAR. NONE. Why? because as long his premise and set up is correct market can move 100 ticks against
him and it will not make any difference whatsoever in his life, his account. He can loose 5 days in a row on full size
and it will not make a difference. By the way one will have to go way back in his trading career to find 5 loosing days in a row.
I am financially quite secure but have lost a life time of savings in REAL ESTATE during 2007 bubble. So i still have
SCARS left plus large losses during first year of trading.
I know every set up of these 2 traders and trade them daily but i can not match their performance primarily due to
losses i had in the past. The day i get over that HUMP watch out.
I got lot of e-mails from traders and they keep on struggling primarily due to in sufficient equity accounts and i am
pretty sure that their financial situation is not conducive to day trading . I will say to the traders who have reached out to me that you know everything you need to know. Take care of financial side first.
Bottom line day trading CL is not hard. It has ATR of 140-200 ticks on more than 70% of the days.
It should not be HARD to grab 40-70 ticks a day from this provided one is financially very secure and use
common sense in day trading.
3 traders. Same method, set ups but different execution based on fear.
Mfbreakout= Trading with moderate fear, moderate results.
Mentor #1= Some Fear, good results.
Mentor #2= No fear EXCEPTIONAL results.
I bet a traders execution gets screwed depending upon the level of FEAR on has while trading. A common sense trading approach
plus strong financial security will take care of FEAR and your method will look like the best in the WORLD.
(I keep writing this pyscho things because I wanna pushed something really simple edge that I overlooked before - the blindspots)
I think a small trader with small capital need to invest more time than traders with bigger capital, as his 1 lot trade cant move market. Traders with banks will require less hours, and psychologically, have more confidence.
Therefore, to build up his money and confidence, the small trader need to be satisfied with small profits. After a while he can hold the position, looking for trends.
Why ? the emotional capital (confidence) is more important than money.
OK, I need a clear goal : (I have no profit goal all this while...)
I want to make nett $250 per week with 1 lot. That it . no more . no less with 40 sample trades
my mentor:
http://traderkingdom.com/trading-futures-education-topics/trading-futures-basics/2959-the-big-traders-secret-for-small-traders
Was talking to a friend of mine last night who had traded currencies professionally for eleven years and now trades exclusively for a few of his old clients. This guy is a machine, trading in size and regularly pulling in over 3% per month. He doesn’t sleep like the rest of us. He catches cat naps here and there — two hours in the afternoon, a few hours at night, and then sleeps like a log on holidays and weekends. He takes the summers off and recharges. He doesn’t head out to some exotic locale. He putters around his house outside of Asheville, NC, running his dogs and riding horses and hanging out at the BBQ pit with his family. He trades FX spot (majors and their crosses), ES, YM, ZB (T Bonds) and a few interest rate contracts, CL and WTI. I asked him once why he trades the little S&P over the big one — he said he prefers the E-mini S&P because it is traded electronically and he gets better fills. I know most of the people reading this will laugh about his returns – I have read rediculous statements about trading not being worth it if one isn’t making more than 100% per year. Most people reading this don’t make the money this guy does…in fact, it’s safe to say that NOBODY reading this blog makes the money this guy does. And I doubt the knuckleheads who made those statements — on EliteTrader.com, I think — are profitable traders. He isn’t a supermegaultimate trader, but he does make a very comfortable living for his family and probably contributes significantly to his clients’ standard of living.
Anyway, we were talking about correlations last night. I was on one of my usual rants about how correlations are not so important when trading on lower time frames. I have seen quite a few people commenting on blogs about the dangers of taking correlated trades. I have observed that most of the bloggers taking these trades are operating on very short time frames. I don’t see a problem on 5min, 3min, 1min and tick charts, as long as one’s method has been tested and the execution is consistent. He agreed, saying that people get confused about how to manage correlations. He trades highly correlated pairs all the time on intraday charts. He doesn’t try to enter the trades at the same time. He enters only when signals print. Often one will win and the other will lose. And he nets a gain. For example, he would take a short in EURUSD and a long in USDCHF (inversely correlated currency pairs), exiting one for a loss and one for a gain. Occasionally he loses on both. He also wins on both, with one often making an outsized gain. An outsized gain for him would be anything above 2R. (Another peeve of his is when traders harp on the 3:1 rule. His experience has been that if he is too insistent on making 3R, he gives back more profit than if he were to simple take 2R.) “Correlations,” he says, “are important for longer term strategies and portfolio managers. I am not a portfolio manager.” I recall having a similar conversation with him about the Sharpe ratio. He thinks it is useless for most traders.
I was on the East Coast for training a few years ago and had a chance to drive out to his house to see his operation. Very humble. Four screens, two computers, and a laptop in a small office. A cheap but comfortable chair, a foot riser, and a treadmill with a side table (for the laptop). He inspired my own setup, minus the treadmill — I have an elliptical machine in the garage, also with a side table for a laptop. (Have to use that elliptical machine more often! It was pricey!) I asked him why the blinds were closed when he had such a nice view. “Focus,” was his answer. I was there during the summer and he wasn’t trading but he still had charts and data up on the screens. We get along well because we are both critical of dogmatic people — whether they are religious zealots, scientists…or traders! When I ask a question, he always asks what I think. This strategy worked, because I don’t ask questions anymore. We end up discussing ideas, instead of one person imparting knowledge to another. Makes for a much more interesting conversation. We have two completely different styles of trading, but he enjoys talking about markets as much as I do and doesn’t seem to mind the vast difference between us in terms of our success as traders. He is genuinely interested in what people think about the markets, no matter who they are. (Another one of his peeves is when traders say they have no opinion about where the markets will go. “What the hell are they trading for, then? Don’t they have a method? Well that is a f@#%ing opinion! What are they doing? Don’t they know why the method is giving them a signal? Don’t they understand why they are long or short or out?”) He’s not a finance geek — he speaks in big blue arrow terms and in plain English. But he is extremely critical of people who don’t understand the simple math behind what they do and the myriad ways to interpret it. “Even if you use an MA or a stochastic, you gotta understand why you use it, what the damn squigglies are and aren’t telling you and whether any of that even makes sense in the moment according to your view of the market. And if you tell me MAs don’t work, I will tell you that you are a presumptuous, one-dimensional knuckle-dragger and you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
In case you’re wondering, he really did say “presumptuous, one-dimensional knuckle-dragger.” After talking to him, I write down the thoughts that stick. He ridiculed me once for this, but after he got his two or three shots in he muttered, ”I should do that.”
He asks: “Why don’t you trade bonds, Jay? Why don’t you trade crude?”
My reply: “I don’t have the capital or the time.”
His reply: “Well I guess you better get things right then, sonny-boy!”
Dontcha love this guy
