Identifying trends and stuff
I lost control and I went against the trend, long again, and this time totally against the trend, with 2 contracts, with this sentence echoing in my mind: "I want my money back".
Classic revenge trade. Part of becoming a successful trader is being able to sit on your hands or walk away and not act on such impluses which almost always ends badly. And I say that as someone who also still is learning that lesson...
You need to add a rule to your trading plan. Maybe something like:
If at any point I have 2 consecutive losses on a day, or if my loss reaches x amount (say $500) then I switch the computer off and are not allowed to switch it back on until the next day since clearly I'm out of sync with the market and my system is not performing. Then, when the next day rolls round and you've regained your emotional control you reasses and take 2 more trades, following your system. Etc.
Now those two LONG trades are open, because today was a range today, and basically you get screwed if you follow the moving averages because you go with a trend that doesn't exist, and so each time you lose. Had I followed the system 100% today, I would have lost on both trades.
Let me know if you have any idea on how to discern range from trend days (which is basically the secret to making money all the time), at least approximately.
One way I could think is range, in the sense of high minus low. If it's a high range, then it should be trend, and viceversa. But you only find out it was a high range once the trend has happened, at the end of the day. I don't know.
Anyway, today big disappointment from myself. I don't know if I'll come back and type about all my trades again or if I'll manage to be disciplined on my own. I was tired of having to write everything down and having to take pictures.
My sympathies Travis, Trading is hard work, but keep at it. You're making lots of progress.
Well, interesting you should ask about discerning trend. As I mentioned the other day I started reading Bill William's book. His system seems to contain many elements of my own trading system, or maybe I should say the one I'm making my own that I'm being mentored on and using as a basis for my own system.
So, as a suggestion, how about you look into the ideas behind Bill's so called "Alligator" and "Fractals"? to help filter your trades?
His approach fistly involves the 3 MA's which represents an alligator to model what the market is doing, namely either sleeping (ranging/flat) with mouth closed (MA's closed/intertwining/close to each other) or waking up and opening it's mouth to eat bear or bull meat. (Not sure I'm 100% keen on the metaphor but there you go :whistling) Obviuosly you don't enter when the MA's are criss crossing or close to each other (or moving closer to each other.)
Secondly he uses price "fractals" which basically uses the wave like movements of the market to identify levels of support and resistance which become possible points of entries and stops depending on where they occur with respect to the alligator's lips/mouth (e.g. relative to the 3 MA's.)
Anyway there's potentially a lot else to say, but suffice for me to suggest at this point that perhaps it's an idea for you to try and get a hold of the "New Dimensions" book by Bill and see what ideas you can take from it. I'd be happy to discuss and help develop these ideas here particularly since as I say, they/it relates closely to several elements of my own system and so such discussions should be useful/insightful for me as well and should help motivate/interest me.
Cheers
Walter
Forget I said fractal. Frankly, I don't know why he calls them that. No wait, actually I do know (simply: he also shares the view that markets are not random, but rather chaotic systems, and in chaotic systems you get things called fractals.) Anyway, for now, just know that my mentor calls them "5 bar patterns" and from now forward I think I'll use the same term. Your reaction makes me think that his using that name rather than fractal is perhaps a good thing. 
