Weekly wrap up

This week was a success. It wasn't a success because I made a huge amount of profit, which I didn't. This week was a success because I followed my trading plan and exercised patience every day. Not every trade was perfect, but progress was made. Also, I started to demo trade a new strategy picked up from Blue on his stream. Continuous improvement is the plan and this week fit into that plan.

Discipline

A guy that goes by the handle T4 on blue-point-trading's stream was sharing yesterday that discipline is one of the key ingredients in successful trading. He said that what people commonly refer to as emotional challenges with trading just come down to discipline, doing only what your plan allows and nothing more or less regardless of what you may be feeling at the time. This is probably not the trading revelation of a lifetime, but is still very interesting way to look at things. Am I disciplined as a trader? Admittedly, not as much as I should be. What is discipline as a trader? It probably comes in many forms and all situations but here are a few that seem important at this moment. Am I only taking trades that specifically conform to my daily trading plan? Is each trade exactly the size it should be according to my plan, neither smaller or larger? Have I been managing active trades exactly as I should be? Was my computer screen configured the way it ought to be for me to trade? Was I watching the market and ready to trade when I should be? Did I update my trading journal and review my performance at the end of the day/week/month? Did I get the amount of sleep that is necessary to be productive today? These, and many other, questions will help me identify if I've been disciplined today or not. Finally, if I haven't been disciplined today what am I going to do tomorrow to fix that? Again, no revelations here. If you follow Dr. Steenbarger, SMB Capital, the Mind of a Trader podcasts, or any other relevant and qualified trading resource you've probably heard all of these things a million times. A next step for me is to ask myself these questions every day and act upon the answers if they are anything other than a resounding and disciplined yes.

Learning to trade

Blue, from blue-point-trading, made a comment this morning when I was on his trading room at 3am. He said something to the effect that it was evident that I'm a serious trader because I'm up and at my desk every morning ready to go. I responded that what I lack in skill, at this point, I am trying to make for with determination. The concept of trading being a skill set that can be learned is interesting to me. As I was leaving my last appointment of the day I was trying to compare learning to trade to another job, and electrician came to mind. It seems to me that learning to trade is like learning to be an electrician. You can jump right it head first and risk certain (financial in the case of trading) death from the simplest mistake. Some might survive this trial by fire but there probably isn't much learning going on and they are setting themselves up for a devastating blow later on. The difference between learning to trade and learning to be an electrician is the opportunities for learning itself. Electricians, as with every other skilled trade, can go find a company or union to teach them the basics and what not to do, whereas a trader has to find all of this out on their own. There are some trading training programs but their cost or location are usually prohibitive. So we are left to our own devices to learn this business. That's what made Blue's comment so interesting to me. It reminded that while many people have blessed me by sharing of their hard-earned knowledge and experience it is up to me to put forth the effort necessary to grow as a trader. Determination might not be the sexiest way to approach a venture, but its what I have so it'll have to do.

Weekly wrap up

What a week. I ended up slightly negative on the P&L for the week but consider it an overall success. I've been listening to 'Mind of a Trader' podcasts downloaded for free from iTunes, keeping an actual trading journal, setting a clear goal for each day, and being patient enough to almost completely avoid the 10min charts all together. Not too bad. This is a business and I am structuring my business in a way that I feel will lead me to success. The EURCHF trades are still working, they're just few and far between due to the extremely low volatility in that pair recently. My focus on the longer time period charts has slowed down my trading significantly, and I'm ok with that. I remember Richard Regan of Pro Trading Course saying that if he doesn't take a single trade all day, he's done his job well that day. Part of the 'job' or 'business' of being a trader is to protect your capital. If I'm vigilant and don't take a trade then that day was a success. Mack, from Blue-Point-Trading's stream likes to say that "there's always another bus". Dr. Steenbarger continues to be a great resource with his blog and I intend on reading all of his books as soon as I can free up some time.

Patience

Today marks the second day in a row that no trades were taken. Now, yesterday was only a partial day since I took most of the day off to celebrate Veteran's Day. However, it is still important to note this lack of trading activity? Have the markets been stagnant? No, I've just been much more selective about my trading plan for the past 2 days. I've decided that my string of recent losses reflects an incomplete understanding of what I was specifically looking for so the best idea seemed to be to slow everything way down and focus on one specific trade setup on one time frame. With the help of Mack from the Bluepoint trading stream the one hour chart has become my new best friend and I'm only looking for reversal candles that are the color of the direction I would be trading (red for a topping or green for a bottoming reversal). There have been a couple opportunities for this, most notably in the euro and aud yesterday morning, but I wasn't completely comfortable with either setup so no trade was initiated. Hindsight being 20/20 the euro trade would have been stopped out and the aud trade would have gone to my take profit point for a successful trade. Not taking these trades was a success in and of itself because the ability to walk away from a potential trade had escaped me over the recent weeks which I believe has contributed significantly to my recent drawdown. What tomorrow holds I do not know but my goal will be the same as it has been over the past 2 days, to only take trades with this specific setup. Once this becomes a habit I plan to slowly introduce other trades or time frames, but to remain patient and only take whatever setups I am committed to for that day.

October wrap-up

This has been a challenging month. The challenge hasn't been from an excessively unpredictable market, but rather from my own personal challenge to grow as a trader. Trying new things always causes some level of discomfort and stress, but when you put money into the mix those results are magnified. I'd been practicing new trading tactics on a micro account and had mixed results. When I was patient and focused the results were positive, but when I got distracted from my plan things didn't go so well. This past week I decided it was time to move forward and start trading these new tactics in my regular account. Looking back on the week I'm glad I made that decision because I probably learned more this week than the previous 3 combined. Some pretty good trades were taken, and some really bad ones were taken as well. However, with each experience I've become more confident in what I'm trying to do and my ability to continue to grow as a trader. Thankfully some people in the chat room at www.blue-point-trading.blogspot.com have offered of themselves and their knowledge to help me grow. I'm very excited going forward at what the possibilities could be.