my journal

[wprins]

Hey Travis, another thing for you to consider, a video/webinar by Norman Hallet that I received in my mailbox today. (Norman's someone who works with traders to fix discipline and personal issues that affect their trading, I'm currently watching the webinar actually and it seems quite appropriate for both our journeys so I thought I'd share it.)

It should be accessible from here but if not let me know.

 

[Yamato]

What a coincidence, he's recommended by (he interviews him):
http://www.davidjenyns.com/trading/its-all-in-your-mind/

On that same page, a reader asks:

juan says:

hii!!

If you’re so successful trading why do you teach others? if you did a lot of money trading …… why do you sell automated trading system to others ?
its the same that i find a gold mine in africa and will sell their location……..

you can answer this question??????

thanks

His answer makes a lot of sense to me, I mean the youtube video in particular (remember our long discussion on this?):

David Jenyns says:

Thanks for your email.

I actually answered this question (and more) in a video I made 2 years ago… you can watch it here:
http://www.listofpennystocks.com/personalvideos/wealth.html

In short, the answer is multiple streams of income

Also, we don’t sell automated trading systems… we teach people how to design their own trading systems – there is a big difference.

Cheers,

Dave

Your link didn't work for me.

I found this link to a Norman Hallett advertising video:
http://www.thedisciplinedtrader.com/index.php?10011

Here's another video:

 

[Yamato]

Well, once again, we find out that the good stuff is all there, and that one only needs to focus on the stuff that he needs and leave out the stuff he doesn't need. The ingredients are all there, the only problem is to mix them correctly.

So far, in the last few days, the ingredient closest to what I need is this guy (even though the other two australians are the clearest and most comprehensive), with his concept of s/r:

http://www.youtube.com/user/OzTrader

 

[chilltrader]

Strange! he looks like David Robertson of the Mr Spreadbetting "fame" ?!

 

[Yamato]

I am starting to think about tomorrow's single daily trade: yes, because I've decided I will only make one trade per day. I am planning to make my trade at 22.00 CET, which is the best reversal time, unless some major s/r level is encountered before that, especially if it's reached by an overbought/oversold price.

 

[Yamato]

Brian Shannon

As recommended by wprins, I need to do some reading and watching and listening on this trader:

http://www.alphatrends.net/

http://www.technicalanalysisbook.com/

Nearly 900 videos uploaded by Shannon:
http://www.youtube.com/user/thermal1

And on page 130 of Elder's book, "Conflicting timeframes" and "Triple Screen" stuff.

It all regards what timeframe s/r levels I have to look at for my trading.



Ok, so far Brian Shannon agrees with my own analysis of the upcoming trades (up trend on the Dow Jones, so no SHORT allowed):

He's looking at too many things for my understanding. Moving averages, volume, s/r. Forget it for now.

 

[Yamato]

Back to Nial Fuller, so far my favorite talk specifically on s/r:
http://www.youtube.com/user/OzTrader

Here's one video on trading false breakout (i wrote a similar post recently), from his web site:
http://www.learntotradethemarket.com/

Daily commentary and predictions:
http://www.learntotradethemarket.com/category/forex-trading-commentary/


All his videos on support and resistance (found through the search function in youtube):

"...In trading we have to make at least two times our risk, preferably three times our risk or more, to be in front, because our win rate is going to be under 50%. Professional traders don't have a high win rate: we need our risk/reward to be higher..."

 

[wprins]

Your link didn't work for me.

My bad, I seem to have mangled it somehow previously. Try this: http://www.omnovia.com/movies/thedisciplinedtrader/43508 (BTW it's a replay of a webinar, so it asks for your name but it doesn't matter because it's just a replay.)

 

[Yamato]

Daily discretionary trade

I am going to look if I can make one trade now. It's like the best opportunity, right now. Only if it meets all requirements.

All work done here:
http://www.trade2win.com/boards/trading-journals/72598-my-journal-214.html#post1027916

And the rules and things said there apply here.

Ok, the currencies are flying, but no trades there, because i was expecting a long, and to go long I have to expect a bounce on support. So that's ruled out.

Some of them I can't even trade.

Only one left is ZN.

It's almost where I want it, on support. I will place a BUY LMT order just in case it falls right on support. I'll let you know tomorrow.

Actually I'll post the chart right here.

"Aerial" view, 3 months of daily candles:




Detail, 2 weeks of hourly candles, with order already sent:




So basically for my first daily trade i feel pretty proud. Everything executed (order sent but not executed) according to plan. I am only willing to buy ZN if it gets 150 dollars cheaper (10 ticks lower), and it bounces on an important support level. However, it won't be the bottom, because it has already bounced on it, and I consider it right now to be in an uptrend.

Stoploss of 150 dollars. Takeprofit 5 times as big, risk/reward of 1 to 5. I might miss a good trade by not entering right now, but these are the rules. No chasing trades, no rush in entering any trades.

All in accordance with picking the red circles on this chart below (to be precise, I'm picking, on the ZN 3 months daily chart, what looks below like the tenth red circle from the left), which I consider to be the least risky trades:

Please, god of the markets, make this a win, because I'm afraid that otherwise I will change my system. Do NOT make me barely miss the entry, and do NOT barely trigger my stoploss, and do NOT barely miss my takeprofit. Make the entry happen, the stoploss not be triggered, and the take profit be reached.

At any rate tomorrow morning even if the takeprofit is not reached, I will let it run. In other words I won't touch anything till the support is reached and then either stoploss or takeprofit are taken. Of course if it reaches takeprofit and goes beyond resistance without first entering, I'll have to cancel it because then the situation has changed and the old resistance has become the new support.

Right now the trade is only 90 dollars away from being triggered. I won't rush things. I will just go to sleep. My first such trade. 150 dollars stoploss, 700 dollars take profit.

[... sleeping... getting up again... turning laptop on... ]

I couldn't sleep. I got up, looked at it over and over again, and - still within all the rules - i decided to buy it more expensive, and bought it at about 130 dollars higher. Stoploss and takeprofit still in place, at the same exact levels (below support and below resistance), but now the takeprofit will give me 130 dollars less, and the stoploss will cost me 130 dollars more, so risk/reward has changed from 1 to 5, to 2 to 4.

Nonetheless, if I believe in the trade, I don't see why I should renounce to 600 dollars just because the ZN won't get any lower. The forex is all up and has started declining, so things will reverse soon and the ZN just won't fall any lower despite everything and now has started rising. So, I made the trade, and probably tomorrow I'll have 600 dollars more on my account, which would approach about 4300. And it was about time.

Tomorrow hopefully another 500 dollars trade, and then another one... and so on until I reach 10k. Then the systems should start trading again. Pretty soon I should get back to 30k. Once I get there, I can really say that I've turned "profitable", both for discretionary and automated trading (which has been working for 2 years). I can't wait. Money is not bad for once: it means having learned something. Having become good at something. Having overcome difficulties. Money for a trader is like a grade on an exam. 30k will feel like scoring 1600 on the SAT (on the old version).

This is interesting. I usually don't look at market depth, but today it seems to provide interesting information on support. I wonder if this is always the case with the ZN. With the other markets I found it to be useless (at least by naked eye):

 

[dimsdaletraders]

ok, I am very lost on what you are actually doing, because I'm just a babytrader and plus I don't understand forex, but as you know I read everything you post, and I just wanted to add my 2p-worth and say that since you made that big loss, you really seem to have turned yourself around, and now you are SOOOO looking like you have cracked it, and found the way forward!

WTG, travis!

Tess
x

 

[Yamato]

daily discretionary trade

ok, I am very lost on what you are actually doing, because I'm just a babytrader and plus I don't understand forex, but as you know I read everything you post, and I just wanted to add my 2p-worth and say that since you made that big loss, you really seem to have turned yourself around, and now you are SOOOO looking like you have cracked it, and found the way forward!

WTG, travis!

Tess
x

Thanks a lot for the encouraging words. I wish you good luck as well with everything.

One more thing. I wasn't trading forex but the ZN future, on the 10 year treasury bond.

Here's the strategy (see image below). I don't know if it's good, if I'll change it in the future, but the constant things must remain: that I only do one trade per day (to avoid my tendency to overtrade), and that I plan it ahead, carefully, with takeprofit (to avoid my tendency to exit early), stoploss (to avoid my tendency to gamble), and possibly even enter it ahead of time, not at MKT but with a limit order, like I did tonight.



It doesn't seem to catch much of the markets' moves, but it has the advantage of not risking false breakouts, not risking ranges (if it happens, it still makes money). It basically stays within support and resistance (so i don't have to look for past levels because it's all right there: there can be no interference from previous levels), and in the direction of the trend, so there should be no problems in the takeprofit getting hit. But maybe I am just fantasizing as usual. However, if I follow those three rules I mentioned, I don't think I'll lose money with this strategy.

On the other hand, the chart above doesn't look very good because the ZN is peculiar in its way of going straight up and straight down without normal retracements like you'd get on the EUR (the JPY and the GBP tend to do the same as the ZN).

 

[Yamato]

This guy knows his ****. He's in good faith, he's intelligent (genius), he speaks clearly, he explains the stuff in a simple way:

Read my post from before (20 posts ago) for more on him, or check his web sites. Best trading educator overall that I've ever seen. Even without subscribing to anything at all.

 

[Yamato]

His buddy stuart mcphee, very wise guy as well:

I cannot stop praising both of these guys.

 

[Yamato]

Very wise.

"...jumping from one system to the next...": it's been my problem. But less and less recently, thanks to automated systems, and to backtesting. I've basically conformed more and more to my automated systems (which are not as good as me at entering, but are better at exiting).

 

[Yamato]

Fascinating video by Brian McAboy (I feel that he's talking about me): some of us trade like we watch a movie, to be thrilled, not as a means to make money.

His web site looks like a scamster's - he's got the scamster style of selling you courses and programs, nothing to share with the two australians, but he knows his stuff:
http://www.insideouttrading.com/

Wise fellow and interesting videos (not the usual psycho-babble: original way of presenting stuff):
http://www.youtube.com/user/TraderBrian#p/u

 

[Yamato]

 

[Yamato]

Another video by stuart mcphee on s/r, very clear and complete (best one so far, except for the good ones in the long seiden's videos):

 

[Yamato]

Intelligent fellows, even though their youtube channel looks like an ad for their web site:
http://www.youtube.com/user/TradersChoiceFX#p/u

Good point: "support and resistance are zones and not lines"

 

[Yamato]

daily discretionary trade

Regarding my daily trade:
http://www.trade2win.com/boards/trading-journals/72598-my-journal-217.html#post1028808

I moved my stop below today's low, since it's been holding so well (for 10 hours) despite all that's been going on in the other markets. S/R really do work.

Stoploss will now cost me about 80 dollars, and takeprofit always at about 600. Pretty good risk/reward, of about 1 to 7, especially good because i should be getting more than 50% of these trades right.

Profit Factor = (win_rate * avg_win) / (loss_rate * avg_loss)

If it were always like this, i'd have a profit factor of 7 or higher. That's really good, because all my systems have a profit factor of 1.5 to 2, and understandably so because i am such a bad programmer (and trader).

It's hard to trade according to s/r and do it properly, without imagining trendlines. At least until I'll have a univocal way of identifying s/r, or even better a software. Until then, if I made more than one trade per day, i would be seeing s/r levels that are not there. I am sure that software exists, only I never heard about it.

TWS gives me pivots, but those only work on the EUR, as far as I can see.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...=&as_occt=any&cr=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&safe=images

No software, or I'd have heard about it by now.

Anyway, look at how well pivots work on the EUR. Too bad they don't work on the other markets. Now if the EUR is oversold, if it's up against a past resistance both from trendlines and pivots, and if it starts reversing, like it's doing now, it's definitely a sell opportunity. Only problem: I can only make one trade per day and also I don't have the capital for doing it. However, right now it really looks like a great short trade. Except that I just checked and it's not up against any horizontal resistance line, so one of those elements is actually missing. Besides, we'd be going against what I perceive to be an uptrend (on the timeframe I trade), AND it's before 14.30 CET, when some wild swings usually take place. However, if I had the capital and was in my overtrading mode, I'd make the short trade any time. Actually I would have made it hours ago and right now I'd be losing money. And i'd be as entertained as the first time I watched Taxi Driver. How boring it is to be a profitable trader... I don't know for how long I'll be able to do this. The problem has increased ever since I uninstalled Combat Flight Simulator 3, because it has been discontinued by Microsoft and the server has been down for years. So as a consequence, I've relapsed into compulsive gambling. As a matter of fact, when I do my compulsive gambling/trading, I look exactly like when I am playing Combat Flight Simulator. So maybe I should sue microsoft, because they stopped the server, and made me lose money by trading. Anyway, this guy was really right: some of us trade to be thrilled.

 

[j2a_aj]

Re: daily discretionary trade

Hey Trav,

Without jinxing it too much.. Lookin good T!

Btw, how is ur ZN position doing ? Profitable yet?