Random is a belief held by those who still do not understand.
Would you like to read more?
In a mathematically defined universe nothing can be random, only our perception can be limited. Evolution is by definition the progression of awareness.
After reflecting on the two months, try answering these questions:
1) What are the flaws in your trading? - the flaw is me. The risk that I may have an error of judgement/start overleveraging or tilt trade and lose 50% of an account within the space of a week or so (I have done this before and never really recovered.)
2) What are you going to do to help improve upon these? - Be more aware of why I am trading, not place excessive pressure on myself to feel that I have to trade every single day and keeping my leverage low so I don't end up losing sums which aren't easy to recover in the short term. Take losses before they become account crippling (but i'm not talking about taking a loss just because i'm down 30pts)
3) How do you intend to monitor your progress? - I have my trading statements and I know generally how my account is doing on a daily/weekly basis. I noticed yesterday that Oanda now has account statements that let you see your average profitable trade and average losing trades, what % of your trades are successful, how many of your trades are long/short etc. it was quite interesting. I guess I could do a blog/trading journal on here but then I think i'd feel like I was under more pressure and i'd probably start arguing with the trading disbelievers that inhabit this site yet strangely spend their time telling people that they can't trade.
So you seemed to have become more disciplined in your trading in the last couple of months, however the style of trading appears to be the same. You are trading for a high daily win rate, but could still give back a good chunk of your profits with a big losing day. You were lucky to miss two such days where you account was down 10% only to turn around allowing you to get out for a much smaller loss. I would guess you are also still trying to pick turning points in the market and averaging into positions as they go against you.
That is a very hard way to build a trading career. You might be able to make a living this way but it is going to be highly stressful.
A better way of trading might be to trade with the trend, add to winning positions, have many small to medium sized losing days, an equal number of small to medium sized winning days, and a small number of out lier winning days where you score big home runs. i.e have those 10% days working in your favor.
It seems to be much easier to build a long term trading career based on this approach.
I should take a break from the day trading and go do as my other peers have done for years before the boat well and truly sails off.
I did become more disciplined and for some reason didn't feel the trading boredom I have done of the past. There were times in the past when I just dreaded to sit in front of a computer and look at a trading screen. I played all the internet games, did the forums, chat, MSN to try alleviate the monotony but I still felt bored out of my brain and unstimulated. As I mentioned the two 10% trades do concern me. One thing about the market is it's usually very forgiving but worryingly I only need to **** it up once.
My trading style isn't to pick highs/lows, ideally i'd be trading in the direction of a trend but as I mentioned I only trade eur/usd and as you know it has been anything but trending lately which is why trading has been very challenging for me. Back in the day when euro was just going up every day it was easy money and I could buy every dip and make. Those were the days :innocent:
There have been stressful times I admit. I still struggle to keep regular hours and not have an eye on where price is. Even at times when I have no intention of trading I still want to know what's up. It has bothered me when I check the price at 2am even though i'm close to going to sleep and think about trading - then see the price go the way I thought. I don't know if you can ever really just shut off, do you or anyone else feel a desire to know the price even if you have no intention of trading?
I'd love to be able to just trend trade and buy dips/sell rallies. But as you know, the market's not like that any more lately. So my options are to go away and wait for some long term trend to form, try find something else to trade with a good trend eg. Gold or to adapt to the market i'm trading. I'm really not fond of adding to winning trades. I know it makes sense to max out your edge when the odds are in your favour but raising an average price is something i'm not that comfortable with.
I think these 2 sections of your last post say it all. It is VERY hard to trade in a choppy market and make money. It is much easier to trade in line with the trend,....as you know. So WHY are you limiting your trading to ONLY EUR/USD? Find something that is trending,...like the stock market...trending DOWN but trending nevertheless, or Gold, Silver, Bonds, Swiss Franc. Go where the money goes. If your system has merit it will work on these trading vehicles as well.
Trading is alot like surfing,...you are always looking for that next wave as your current wave dies down. But if you have managed to surf your way to a lake or tributary that has calm or choppy waters are you going to get very far? Obviously not...you have to go to another beach where the waves are bigger.
Just my 2 cents.
Good Luck.
But then, alot of people say you should only trade one instrument. Get good at that instrument, learn how it behaves. Learn how is reacts to news and to other catalysts. Become a specialist in one particular instrument. etc etc
It seems there's conflicting views everywhere. Easy to get completely drowned in opposing information....
I think these 2 sections of your last post say it all. It is VERY hard to trade in a choppy market and make money. It is much easier to trade in line with the trend,....as you know. So WHY are you limiting your trading to ONLY EUR/USD? Find something that is trending,...like the stock market...trending DOWN but trending nevertheless, or Gold, Silver, Bonds, Swiss Franc. Go where the money goes. If your system has merit it will work on these trading vehicles as well.
Trading is alot like surfing,...you are always looking for that next wave as your current wave dies down. But if you have managed to surf your way to a lake or tributary that has calm or choppy waters are you going to get very far? Obviously not...you have to go to another beach where the waves are bigger.
Just my 2 cents.
Good Luck.
One reason I was limiting myself to FX was because I have my money on one site and they only offer FX & Gold/Silver (due to the margin changes I couldn't leverage before on metals but I can now.)
Why do I only trade eur/usd? There's a few reasons, one of them being the spread's lowest. Another being that I try to avoid adding lots of complexity into my trading and i'll start comparing pairs with each other and trying to think about their relationships, if one pair's going to move how it's going to affect the other and then even start anticipating moves. I've tried other pairs and my experience hasn't been great.
More importantly, most of the moves of the market are reflected in eur/usd, so I may as well trade the source and eur/usd and cable are the pairs where it's easiest to have the most information on - which is an advantage for me as i'm not a pure TA person.
Maybe I should be moving between what looks to be easiest to trade, but I just don't want to risk having too many fingers in the pie.