my journal

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Ok, so basically I spent a whole month off my compulsive gambling addiction (middle of September to middle of October), and then, once I resumed the habit, as expected, I was screwed and it was only a matter of time until I got screwed for real, which happened today. I don't even mind any more. I am so used to this happening. Once I broke my non-tampering rule, I knew I'd be trading discretionary once a day, and that ultimately it would lead me to making that one trade that would wipe out not just my discretionary profits but also my automated profits.

There's no solution that I can see. Quitting is very very hard. There's many forces within me making me go back to it, relentlessly. Essentially what leads me back to it is my frustrations that I experience daily, my frustrations from a whole life of frustrations, and my negative attitude, which all put together make a pretty bad mixture. And, after saying this, I'll go to the living room, because I told mr catostrophe, my dad, that I'd be right back. He probably has to talk to me about some impending disaster.

Oh, hi claudia, keep telling me about your trading: I enjoy your posts. But just don't ask me to write my journal the way you expect it to be. Don't worry about me. I don't know how to trade and I will never learn how to. It's hopeless. My only hope is to just let the systems run and do nothing, but after losing for 12 years I haven't learned it yet.
 
Claudia123 said:
Well I know ya gonna shout at me again and say 'this is my journal' but to lose money today would be difficult. See them big red candles? Follow the trend and watch the pa. Sorry you had a bad day but ...........
Click to expand...

claudia, is that you in your avatar?

if so, will you marry me? :cheesy:

regards,

kim
 
I left an order open last night and that way I partially recovered from my losses (the GBP finally bounced during the night), so that for the day I only lost 800, rather than 2500 as it looked at some point yesterday. I got lucky again.

Now it's a matter of just trying to stay away from the computer as much as I can but without pushing it too much, because I've noticed that I can't stop cold turkey. I can't say "never again", but I should say "I'm overwhelmed by these negative forces, but let's try to limit this problem". It's like for scratching my head: you can't just say "yes, I am frustrated as hell, but let's stop scratching my head for the rest of my life". It just won't happen, unless your frustrations go away. I mean I've got to work on the situation causing the trading, and not the trading itself. You can't put a starving boy alone in a room in front of pastries and tell him to control himself. This is the situation I am in. Frustration is just too much and it leads me to trading discretionary, to scratching my head... I've got to get rid of the causes.
 
Lots and lots to say and investigate about this link:
http://zulutrades.com/Performance.aspx

WHAT "PIP" MEANS
First of all, I have learned that pips are the same as ticks in my own trading of CME forex futures. I've always wondered what the hell this word meant. Second of all, I've looked it up all over the web and finally found that it is an "abbreviation of percentage in point":
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pip
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percentage_in_point

So I can finally understand people when they talk about pips, and pretend they're talking about ticks.

LowestDD and the other systems on zulutrades.com
I have then found out that these systems are amazing. Their % of wins is really high, so much higher than my systems, and this is very interesting. Not that I'll subscribe and follow their signals, but I am very curious to see all these systems and how they perform. For example the system with the most subscribers, 1986, is LowestDD, and it has a win rate of 98%.

I need to investigate a lot more about this, especially on ET and wherever people are talking about these systems, because I can't figure out how someone would have a win rate of 98% when my win rate is about 60%. Also: are the subscribers all becoming millionaires within a few months? Because they should if this is true. But what I can say is that certainly this web site is legitimate, legal, nothing to do with the forexpeacearmy.com that I spent hours researching yesterday. This site I certainly won't have to spend hours to find out if it's a scam or not.

Next task: research about zulutrades.com, owners, comments on ET about it, and then repeat research for LowestDD.
 
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Checkout LowestDD's open positions - losing over 7,000 pips :eek:

It's not hard to get a high win rate if you just take small wins and never close any losers! Nice what you can get away with when the money isn't real... If/when the LowestDD account explodes then oh well, just switch all the marketing effort to another imaginary account that's having a good run.

So I wouldn't worry about "only" winning 60% of the time, it's plenty :)
 
Thanks: you clarified everything to me. And congratulations on your skills that allowed you to find what was wrong so quickly. It would have taken me ten more posts and hours of research to reach this conclusion on my own.

Now I still have to look for comments on this, because there's gotta be people talking about these ridiculous systems. I will write a bit less and only do it once I've done research because writing so much has slowed down my thinking too much.

Now reading this:
Zulutrade

Wow, the guy who started the thread is a "researcher" like me (who also tells about his findings):
Very first impressions:
- looks very cool - great website
- the autotrading platform is also web-based, and integrated in the website.
- very new service (I have accountnr 373), with only a handful of profitable signals (6 out of a total of 23)
- they live from the brokers' rebate and split that with the signal providers, so no extra pip spread (like fx-auto) or monthly fees (like C2)
- their forum (http://198.107.177.215/) was created last week - they now have 339 registered users (who signed mostly for a demo account I guess).
- Zulutrade was founded in 2006 by Leon Yohai and Kostas Eleftheriou, 2 greek entrepreneurs living now in the US.
- 3 supported brokers : FXCM (http://www.fxcm.com) , Man Financial (http://www.manfinancial.com) & CMS Forex (http://www.cmsfx.com)
Click to expand...

END OF ALL RESEARCH ON OTHER PEOPLE'S SYSTEMS
You know what? After a few days spent reading about other people's systems, robots, web sites collecting systems and robots, I have come to the conclusion that I can't follow all this stuff. Whether profitable or not, it's just too much work for me to look at every system and so on. On top of it: I don't need to do it because I have my own systems. So I will stop researching.

JOB INTERVIEW TOMORROW
However. This research was good, because it told me what I can do with my systems. Do I want to sell them? No, not convenient for me. Do I want to sell my signals on Zulutrade.com? I don't think so, too much work and too little revenue.

I am going to go to this job interview tomorrow (it was postponed) or rather job offer or rather business partnership offer, and tell them: look, what do you want from me? You want to set up a site that sells just my signals? Sounds good, but then why did you call me in here with my friend? He won't be happy that I practically tell them they shouldn't be hiring him but me alone.

And if that's not the case, what do you want? You can't hire us both because he does fundamental analysis that has nothing to do with what I do. We have nothing in common, except that we could both sell signals.

But then, then if you put together a web site like this, that sells signals from a bunch of people, then that web site already exists and it's called zulutrade.com, and all the other web sites like it. Do you want to embark on something this big and not likely to be profitable because you're totally new to this business and because you're not in the States and the web site will be in Italian?

But most of all, if you're going to start a replica of zulutrade then why would I want to join it, when I don't even think it's convenient to join zulutrade? You see the whole interview is pointless for me unless it's just me and them, and that would mean they kick my friend out, which is ridiculous since he's the one who brought me there. So I might tell my friend that I am not interested and not even go.
 
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SENTIMENTAL TIME
Now a little break for poetry and feelings.

How's trader travis doing and how is he feeling? Yes, because his feelings are what affect his trading, so they are important. Let's be sentimental because when his feelings are not ok, he blows out his account.

HOW IS TRAVIS FEELING?
So travis how are you feeling today?

AVOIDED RUIN
All right, thanks for asking. So... I am feeling ok. I've managed to avoid totally wiping out my account despite the premises all being there (opened all GBP contracts I had margin for). I am feeling ok about that. I am still at about 10k, and from there I could go to 1 million in no time... in the sense of "never". But that's ok. Better than being wiped out.

STILL IN MY SINGLE
I am ok at work. Always in my single. No one bothering me. No arguments today. No one stared at me, I didn't challenge anyone to a staring contest.

SLEPT WELL
I slept well, which is always a good thing.

WORRIED ABOUT MY FRIEND'S JOB INTERVIEW (WHICH I HAVE TO GO TO AS WELL)
I am a little worried about this job interview or rather job offer or whatever. I would like to call them and call it off. Why did my friend have to be sick today and cancel it? I can't take the pressure...

STILL MAJOR PROBLEM WITH LAPTOP: NO SHIPPING CODE SENT
...but here's a major problem to worry about: that sick mother ****er who sold me my laptop on ebay still hasn't sent a confirmation with the shipping code. And yesterday he said he'd do it today, in the morning. What am I to do about this guy? Horse's head? If I do get ripped off, it's the last time I buy something worth more than 25 dollars on ebay.
 
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Yeah, you don't look so good either. You've been staring at your monitor for too long. I've been slouching at the movie theater for a few weeks now, and my back hurts.

Well, anyway: when the hell is this guy going to send me my shipping code? I am starting to get really impatient. I'll wait till tomorrow night and then I'll call him for the third time, because by then he will be breaching the contract, where he said "within 48 hours" from the payment, and he said he got it yesterday.
 
MY ANXIETY IS BOTH GOOD AND BAD
Pessimism leads to anxiety, anxiety leads to hard work to avoid possible negative outcomes. But anxiety also leads to self-destruction to a degree. To the degree that you hurt the outcome by turning a potential negative out come into a certainly negative outcome, simply by acting upon your expectations.

In this case, I am obsessing, as always, about the guy who's supposed to send me my ebay item. He's not even late, and I am upset because he still hasn't sent me the email with the shipping code.

It happened with the previous guy as well: I harassed him for two weeks because he was indeed late, but those two weeks were hell for me as well.

I do just the same with trading. I harass my trades.

Today I was worrying all day long about the job opportunity that might not be good enough so that I wanted to turn it down even before meeting the guy.

As soon as I see something not working out with a girlfriend, I start harassing them with questions about the health of our relationship. So they get annoyed or tired, I get more worried, and eventually we break up.

Anxiety is good to the extent that it keeps you alert and preventing problems. It's not good when it keeps you so alert that you are causing the problems, by not being patient. These people could get annoyed and send the package late because I make them feel rushed. The employer will not hire you if they see you nervous, and if you don't show up they won't show you what they have to offer you. Your trading will definitely go bad if you are anxious about it.

Whenever objects are involved anxiety tends to be good, because it enables you to control what surrounds you better. Whenever you're interacting with other people, your anxiety may be good as well, but it may also do, in some situations (relationships, ebay orders) even more damage than good.

Trading is an exception, because you are not interacting with people, but only with price, and yet you're hurting your trading by being anxious. My trading goes well when I trade and forget about it, or when the system takes care of everything. If I have the ability to interact, then I'm screwed. But then let's not forget that I built such good systems only because of I am anxious, perfectionist, and basically not serene and easygoing. Being easygoing is the opposite of being anxious: it can be good but it can also be bad. You're not going to build a good automated system if you're easygoing. You won't even get down to doing it. To do that, you need to be obsessive, anxious, and so on, and then you will incur the opposite problem, because when you could use some relax, you can't because you still keep at it, even when it just ruins everything.

Also. If I could treat ebay like trading, it would be better. Yes, I spent hundreds of dollars on this computer. What if I don't receive it? So what. Bad trade: just a loss, an ebay trade. But I shouldn't let myself turn it into a loss by harassing the guy I am trading with. Let him send the package whenever he wants, and start harassing him only if you can see that he's decided not to send it.

Once again, this ebay purchase is just a trade. I have to let it evolve. If at the end it didn't turn out profitable, I could even lose 700 dollars, like I do with my discretionary trading. It was worth trying. It was just a trade. No point in harassing this guy because I am feeling anxious about my trade with him. He might even decide not to send the package because I make him hate me.

WILL TRADER TRAVIS EVER SOLVE ENOUGH OF HIS PROBLEMS TO BE PROFITABLE?
 
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travis, you have it completely wrong about anxiety mate.

anxiety does not keep you 'alert', a little fear can have this effect (as long as its not debilitating due to an excess of adrenaline in the system)...anxiety has no beneficial effects.

constant anxiety is a product of emotional or behavioural issues that can usually be addressed well with temporary medication and therapy (usually CBT). no big deal really.

i hope you don't take offence to my post and the fact that i've written on your thread as opposed to PMing you. you are very open in your journal, so i didn't think a post like this would be out of place.

this is only meant in the most sincere way...and i am speaking from experience regarding this subject.
 
Yeah, I know: you don't look so good yourself, at least at the time your picture was taken. You see, my anxiety is indeed too much, but I don't like the idea of taking medications. I don't like the idea of taking something if i don't know what it is.


Watch "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"
 
yeah, i understand what you're saying, but your response to medication in itself could be anxiety motivated!

you see, just reading your journal, it doesn't seem like you have too bad a life, you're working, you have family...you just seem troubled with anxiety problems.

why spend time trying to figure out how to trade when you're constantly going to be tripped up due to a potential anxiety issue? there's just no logic there.

deal with the anxiety first...then get back into trading.

give it a pop for 6 months, see what happens?

anyway, i don't feel comfortable typing this sort of stuff, feel like i've over-stepped some kind of mark...this is a trading forum after all! hope you're not offended. just don't like thinking of people having a difficult time of it.
 
Don't worry. You're not disrespecting me. I am not offended. I'd be offended if you wrote something like "ur gay" or "you're weird". That's something that really really bothers me. All reasoning is welcome.

Regarding my anxiety, tell me some quick solutions. Let's not talk in general. If you have some quick advice go ahead and shoot. Don't tell me about taking pills.


Watch "Taxi Driver"
 
there are no quick solutions, unfortunately medication is a part of it, but its not essential.

if you really wanted to get rid of a problem, you'd do whatever it took to do it, surely? this is a question you need to think about.

if you want to deal with it properly, cognitive behavioural therapy probably is the best thing. medication such as citalopram (an anti-anxiety med) is helpful whilst your having the therapy, but you don't need to take meds to do CBT.

there are, however, some quick aids in dealing with the onset of heightened anxiety (or even panic attacks)...the most simple and effective is a breathing exercise.

people who are more anxious tend to breath via their diaphragm, not their stomach...firstly, you need to make sure you're breathing correctly, via your stomach.

to do this place 1 hand on your chest and 1 on you stomach and breath...if your chest (diaphragm) moves and your stomach doesn't, you're not breathing correctly. breath so your stomach moves, but you diaphragm stays still.

this is important.

when we become anxious, or afraid, physiological changes occur in our bodies to prepare us for a dangerous scenario (real or perceived). blood is pumped to areas that the body knows will be needed in a fight/flight situation.

one particular change is we start using the tops of our lungs (and thus the diaphragm)...so in one sense, people who breath this way are keeping their body in at least on mode related to fear/anxiety.

so, once you start breathing correctly, there is an exercise you can do.

its part relaxation, part meditative and part physiologically therapeutic.

you don't have to close your eyes, but if you're in a situation where this is possible, then it's better to do so.

sit upright, arms relaxed.

breath in through your nose for 4 seconds.

hold the breath for 2 seconds.

allow the breath to slowly fall from your mouth for 6 seconds.

repeat for 5/10 mins.

even just running through this a couple of times,at any time you need to, through the day can help a little...you don't have to be sat down, eyes closed etc.

there are also muscle relaxing exercises, but they are a bit long winded.

but, no quick fix.
 
anxiety can be present for many reasons, this why you first need to speak to a GP...they will refer you to someone who can help asses what form of anxiety you're suffering from.

generalised anxiety. social anxiety. phobias...there are more but i can't remember. it's late and i'm tired.

CBT will help you, in a sense, 'reprogram' the unhelpful thought processes that help create anxiety.

everyone has something called their 'core beliefs'...if some of these are very negative, they need to be searched out, located and 'reprogrammed'...this can be a long and difficult process, but i think it is effective.
 
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