my journal

I understand - Its hard enough learning your faults and psychological problems - Especially when a particular fault i feel we share is that we don't like people pointing out our faults.
Therefore, the mental energy and time and effort it takes to try to re-establish and develop new thoughts and behaviours in regards to our emotions and beliefs is such a hard obstacle considering that your motives for wanting to be good at trading were probably the same motives and beliefs you are trying to get rid of - Creating a demotivation for ridding yourself from them and furthermore, making trading pointless, because to develop your discretionary trading you have to get over wanting to prove everyone wrong and if that goes - Your motivation for trading goes. And we need trading, a hiding place away from having to deal with our emotions in a real social work place environments, an excuse for your behaviours and gambling and laziness and a way to hide all your deep-rooted fears of everything else in life.

It seems its all one big contradiction.

Developing psychological manifesto's in life is maybe inevitable for everyone; everyone has different degrees ofcourse - I imagine those who are happy are those who haven't got these fears. For example, when i played football, i couldn't accept my manager shouting at me - I took it very personally and i was so sensitive about it; i just kept hiding it away and never dealing with it; eventually it was such a big part of my sub-conscious that i would avoid trying to get the ball in fear of failing and getting shouted at and in turn this made me worse at football and made the shouting worse... I think even now these things affect individual - Massive frustration hide away, the pain and experiences are still there existing and manipulating our perception and decisions. In coming to the market, having such problems... I found that the market was like my manager - Every failure as if being shouted at 'Your rubbish' and the way i've dealed with this in life is through avoiding the shouting rather than dealing with my inherent problems... In trading however i've very much had to face these problems and overcome them than hide from them in order to achieve my goals.

I do genuinely believe all these beliefs, feelings and emotions can be heavily manipulated through our own effort and mind. I think its probably one of the hardest challenge i have ever attempted. Taking your mental mind apart, analysing yourself and your insecurities, really understanding all the things that make you sensitive and then trying to change these thoughts through consistantly thinking about it; thinking about things that are painful 24/7

Ooops, i ranted again!

It is indeed one big contradiction: if we were all happy and serene we would just sit instead of striving to get things accomplished. One good example is my father - he accomplished a lot, but has been frustrated, negative, and unsatisfied his entire life. So, in a sense, achieving means you were unhappy, and not achieving means you were satisfied. But maybe this is the only example of achieving that I know, and I am ignoring that people may achieve and be serene, happy and satisfied at the same time. Is Obama a happy and serene guy or a frustrated person whose life is ruined by his ambition? I don't know.

We can discuss longer about this. Also: am I here to ask for solutions to my problems, or am I here to solve my problems by writing? I think that by reasoning out loud and hearing your opinions I get insight about what my problems are and what the solutions may be. But certainly I am not here just to look for solutions. I partly solve my problems by the mere process of writing. It's the same with people complaining (and almost everyone has complained at least once in his life). They are not asking for a solution often. They are solving their problem by venting out their frustration, and the actual problem that had to be solved was preventing themselves from going on a shooting rampage or something like that.

[QUOTE=GladiatorX;913950]

Heh, just noticed your personal statement at the footer of your posts, nice one.

A whole two weeks of successful interfering... got cockier and cockier... more and more reckless... and finally today they got all the money back plus a lot of extra money (overall, as usual, twice as much as I had made with all my interfering). Now I'll try to get it back (I shouldn't but I will, most likely). It'll work for a while, till they'll get it all back plus more of it. On and on... It's been this way ever since I started automated trading. I just can't find a way to stay off of it, and find other things to do. Unbelievable. Un****ing believable.

A good point at which to close the thread?

I'm coming to the conclusion that you don't really want any solution - you just love the thrill of the chase too much. You know you're going to crash and burn but, what the hell, the excitement of flooring the pedal and going faster and faster round the bends is worth it .

cheers

jon

Time will tell. And time has told. So far. If anyone gets annoyed by my posts, don't read them. I am sure many have stopped reading already. I am annoyed by myself as well.

The point is that I don't have to figure out everything that is wrong with me. I can also stop doing it without first figuring it all out. Yes, I have this tendency to do this and that. I don't know why. But I can stop it. I don't first have to figure everything out in my psyche in order to simply stop trading discretionary.

The pattern is always the same, and now it's very clear. I make money for a few days, then I incur one big loss that wipes out all my gains, plus another thousand dollars. So it is not worth it for me to interfere with my system nor discretionary trade. Period. I don't know why I kept doing it, I don't know what went wrong in my head or life, but it simply does not work, and that's been the case for more than a year now. At the same time, the systems make money week after week, if I leave them alone. I simply have to stop doing this, unless I want to stay at the office forever. I have to sit, do nothing, and just be patient, and whenever the money will be there, then I'll be able to quit my job. In the meanwhile, I can't try to speed things up, because I will just **** things up. Yes, tomorrow I may make another good discretionary trade. But then I'll inevitably get cockier, and sooner or later I'll make that trade that will blow out my account, as it's been the case for the past 12 years. When I touch the platform, I ruin everything. It's so unbelievable that I'm the one who created the systems, that that's the way it is. Do I want to stay here and write until I figure out why I lose money while the systems I created make money? Do I have to keep on losing until I figure this contradiction out? Have I not figured it out yet maybe? (See above posts). Just do it, as they say. I don't have to think all the time. It can be done. I can do it, without having to write an essay about it. I simply cannot do any discretionary trading that is anywhere near profitable. Except on Italian stocks, which I am doing, but that's another thing, because I just go long, and I just make overnight trades and very diversified. And even there I might lose in the end. But that's stocks and not futures. It's an entirely different thing.

I don't know if this is relevant to you but in analysing myself, one of the main problems i found was that deep inside i wanted to trade to avoid the responsability of having a job, at the same time, making money in the market would cause a pressure and responsability to continue to perform and continue consistancy and this deep-inside, the pressure, was something i wanted to avoid in fear of failing on everyones high expectations; Therefore i have a motive to actually not make money and a total contradiction -
When i won trades; i would feel a pressure to do it again and this pressure would be too much for my objective mind to deal with and when i lost trades my conscious lack of self-acceptance would cause more self-punishment.

So it really was a big battle inside! Maybe you've something similar

Oh btw, the main thing that allowed me to move past feeling emotions and stopping my psychology to affect my ability to make appropriate decisions for myself was when i worked hard to improve myself in other departments of life; so i intensely started jogging and doing weights and going on a muscle gain diet... This in turn made me feel good about myself from day one and i do really think these aspects have hugely improved my trading. Maybe something like that could help you; changing your habits and ridding yourself of laziness.

Another important aspect was changing my attitude and behaviour towards things i am impatient to in life; such as the dish washer, crap tv, eating breakfast - Small things but trying to change my behaviour and lose the impatient. Also losing my negative frame of mind where i would be was be a critic. I found that persisting in fighting my self-conscious motives in small things in life it was easier to control them in trading; Like i would have extreme impatience on eating my breakfast and it would result in me not finishing it so that i could move on and by making myself finish it - Although trivial - Allowed me to face the underlying issues and try control them in an environment where there was no risk or importance.

So my suggestions would be
- Lose little habits face on to try master the forces controlling your actions
- Try feel good inside/about yourself through working out and jogging/excercising (Depends on your age lol)
- Place yourself on a diet and stick to it with disclpine; therefore creating self-trust
(Btw, i don't know how old you are so i don't know how realistic getting pumped is and spending all your time jogging is; i have other ideas though to improve yourself and feel better)
- Structure your discretionary trading so that you do actually know what your looking for and really implicate impatience; The way i got over the impatience factor was 1. Through applying patience in all other areas of life and 2. Accepting that one trade per week was enough.
- Focus your setups on trends; therefore eradicting the possibility of always trying to be right about where the market will turn.
- Don't trade every condition; wait until the condition suits you



X

Ultimately you've got to weigh up WHY and whether you WANT to change, against the underlying issues that don't want you to change; but i would really recommend trying to break free of them constraints. Since facing my psychology and challenging my sub-conscious motives and trying to change, i've really made myself a lot happier and i think this just comes mostly through self-acceptance and also through changing my perception of how i could make myself happy - Where before i percieved succesful trading and being able to show off about it as rewarding and worthwhile; i moved my focus to becomming happy with my physical appearance and positivity and this allowed me to focus on the actual setups without having a load of expectations and hopes hanging on each trade...

My biggest irony is that i started trading because of depression; believed it would be something i could prove myself in to compensate for my lack of self-acceptance however quickly realised that being depressed and having such issues was actually very detrimental to my trading and that set me on a huge path to improve myself. Looking back; i still don't know why i was so determined to face my psychology, afterall my original reasons for wanting to trade where to compensate for my lack of psychological acceptance and if i faced these problems and got rid of them; surely i would have no reason to trade! That one still confuses me I guess its because i did genuinely love trading and i did genuinely want to make money, not to show-off, but because i wanted to give myself the opportunity i knew i could make possible to have the finance i want, to make myself happy

I'm rambling again, i'm very, very bad at expressing myself through writing; i envy those who can get a point across in a sentence, i'm the opposite.

Its interesting; I'm rubbish at making systems... I have made systems that have worked very well for a short limited amount of time; One month or so but never one that i've found to have a logical reason of why it should work. Do you recommend focusing on daily charts for systems or intra-day?
I have a good system sitting on a shelf that i stopped trading because it would annoy me when signals came overnight and i was in bed.