2 years in the game... is it time to hang up my boots?

Jon4664 said:
I don't get it... is he selling forex training courses or something??
Click to expand...

Yup. He wants your $$$$.

Seriously - if you have only lost 4-5% you are ahead of so many people in your abilities to follow a plan and let things play out.

If you follow a plan and properly journal, you should soon get to the point where you recognise the nuances in how your approach works. If you don't journal and write down your thoughts & feelings at the time, you won't necessarily develop these skills.

Look to make incremental, steady performance improvements. Don't change your whole approach because you have more experience than anyone here in what you do. Sure the setup as a purely mechanical approach may not work straight out of the box. If it did - you'd be able to program it & sit back making $$$. It is what you add to it through observation & feedback that will make it work.

I don't normally like trading books but you could do worse than to take a look at "Enhancing Trader Perfromance by Brett N Steenbarger" - I hear there are even PDF copies of the book floating around on the web. :whistling :whistling

I was recommended another book recently which to be honest I didn't expect to be that good. I was told it was one of the best trading books around. It is called "Golf is not a game of perfect" by Dr Bob Rotella. It is not about trading but about golf. I do not play golf myself but I have to agree this is one of the best books for trading I have ever read.This is one I don't have an electronic copy of...
 
DionysusToast said:
I was recommended another book recently which to be honest I didn't expect to be that good. I was told it was one of the best trading books around. It is called "Golf is not a game of perfect" by Dr Bob Rotella. It is not about trading but about golf. I do not play golf myself but I have to agree this is one of the best books for trading I have ever read.
Click to expand...

His follow up book "Your 15th club" is also a good one. Slightly ironically, it makes much play of Rotella's work with Harrington, who went on to win 3 majors. Sadly, he is now in one of the worst slumps of his career, along with T Woods. Here's hoping they rediscover their form in 2011, golf is a better game when they're in the mix.
 
Well - Tiger is understandable - as for the other guy - never heard of him.

Has he just been on a massive beaver hunt, perhaps?

By the way - did you relate this to trading when you read it?
 
Jon4664 said:
I don't get it... is he selling forex training courses or something??
Click to expand...

Jon, ignore Dion. I'm not trying to sell you anything.

I traded very similar to you so I do know what I'm talking about.

If you follow the steps you will improve. It's plain and simple.

Tom
 
Jonm good idea, take the job and trade Daily candles placing trades in the evenings. this way you will still be involved in the market
 
DionysusToast said:
Well - Tiger is understandable - as for the other guy - never heard of him.

Has he just been on a massive beaver hunt, perhaps?

By the way - did you relate this to trading when you read it?
Click to expand...

Well it goes a little further than that. I always tell my wife that golf is a metaphor for life, to which she invariably rolls her eyes. I started playing in my mid 20's, and it quickly taught me to control my emotions, to know that perfect shots are few and far between, to appreciate "there are no pictures on a scorecard", if you cheat you're only cheating yourself, if you wrap your 6 iron around a tree you have to pay to get it straightened, if you work on your game and improve you have more fun, and so on.

I do see many similarities between golf and trading. There are also cognitive biases in golf, although I doubt they are called that. For example, on the backswing, the brain likes to keep the club in view as long as possible.. this encourages a steep up and down action, which leads to a slice, of which probably 80%+ of amateurs suffer.

I've seen a lot of different swings (trading systems) but that's not usually what determines the final score (profit). It's the ability to handle the poor shots (losses) that differentiates good players from average (positive vs zero/negative expectancy).
 
Great thread, lots of excellent discussion (especially using the example of golf!). Hope it all helps you out, Jon4664!
 
As stated before in this thread Jon, take the job to reduce your stress levels but continue to trade when you can. You have only been in the game for 2 years and broken even. Despite what you may think, breaking even is itself an acheivement and suggests you aren't too far away from becoming profitable - most can't even break even, so don't be so hard on yourself.

Never give up
 
As a matter of interest, Jon, where did you learn the strategy you outlined that got you to breakeven?
 
I thought you were mates with TIMSK :p

DionysusToast said:
Yup. He wants your $$$$.

Seriously - if you have only lost 4-5% you are ahead of so many people in your abilities to follow a plan and let things play out.

If you follow a plan and properly journal, you should soon get to the point where you recognise the nuances in how your approach works. If you don't journal and write down your thoughts & feelings at the time, you won't necessarily develop these skills.

Look to make incremental, steady performance improvements. Don't change your whole approach because you have more experience than anyone here in what you do. Sure the setup as a purely mechanical approach may not work straight out of the box. If it did - you'd be able to program it & sit back making $$$. It is what you add to it through observation & feedback that will make it work.

I don't normally like trading books but you could do worse than to take a look at "Enhancing Trader Perfromance by Brett N Steenbarger" - I hear there are even PDF copies of the book floating around on the web. :whistling :whistling

I was recommended another book recently which to be honest I didn't expect to be that good. I was told it was one of the best trading books around. It is called "Golf is not a game of perfect" by Dr Bob Rotella. It is not about trading but about golf. I do not play golf myself but I have to agree this is one of the best books for trading I have ever read.This is one I don't have an electronic copy of...
Click to expand...
 
trader_dante said:
As a matter of interest, Jon, where did you learn the strategy you outlined that got you to breakeven?
Click to expand...

I got the basic system from a guy who does youtube videos, has a website, sells his course online, etc , his thing is to 'trade price action.' Focusing on inside bar breakouts, false breakouts, and pinbars.
As a beginner in forex, it just seemed to make a lot of sense at the time, so I went with it.

Over the years I refined the system to fit my own style and use more of a discretionary approach.
Now I tend to visualise the breakouts happening more on the 15min or 1hr chart, rather than the daily chart, and I use some different levels to get entry/stop (rather than just doing 3day HH LL or outside bar high/low)
 
bbmac said:
Average Win: $322
Average Loss: $155
Win%: 31%

From your stats replicated above, compiled from your 650+ trade sample, yYour average r:r here is 2.07:1 not the 3:1 you are aiming for, so at this actual average r:r achieved there is no edge. This may be because your trade management is not lalowing winning trades to run to the 3:1 (which would be a profitable edge @ the 31% strike rate) or that there is just no edge, ie the methodology is flawed and this is not achievable. Only you will know the answer to that.

G/L
Click to expand...

Hi,
the reason for this is because I would raise my stop loss during the trades to 'swing lows' (and other relevant areas of support), so I would rarely walk away with a full 3:1 payout.
 
Hi all, I really appreciate all the points of view,
here is a bit more insight .

A chart from Jan 2009 - July 2010
Daily balance as a % of initial deposit.

6hn9K.gif


Until October 2009, I really felt like I was 'slowly but surely' gaining.
I plotted a moving average so that you can see it more clearly.
Unfortunately November 09 - March 10 just really sucked, I went from +120% to 80% I lost a lot of trades, I think this was because of me expecting every trade to be a 3:1 winner and not taking modest profits when I had the chance.

or it could be because I had poor judgement and made bad trades :)
 
Jon - specifically, what steps have you taken to improve?

A day trading setup won't make you money. It's only half the battle. The other half is getting a feel for the market(s) you trade and becoming better at recognising the conditions of the market/price action that will make a trade work out.

Serious question - what have you done to ensure you improve?
 
is that Nail Fuller PA site you used ? at least you didn't lose money but you would have been better with it in the bank !
 
Hi Jon. I don't write in very often but I hope this helps: Buy in to MTPredictor and trade the automatic setups. Do exactly as they advise. Do not deviate. Now you have income coming in. Join ProRealtime.com. Use the excellent Realtime Paper Trading facility to get your own personal methods together for a small known loss (your subscription). Trade again after only after your record seriously improves. MTP Works & the people behind it are genuine. I do not work for them. I make no money recommending them. Same for ProRealTime. Good Luck.
 
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