It's a very good post - for once I don't get criticized. It's also always a pleasure to find out someone's been reading my journal and enjoying it.
I read your previous 3 posts and saw that you took my same route (at least back in 2004): trading systems. I don't know if you took it one step further, into fully automated trading. I did, and I am satisfied about that part. Except I'd need much more capital to make it work properly. That's all figured out, though. The automated trading part. It was lacking good money management, but that's taken care of, too. The automated trading part can make money and can make money consistently: I am confident about that. But in the initial stage, unless I want to make my money management too risky, capital will be increased very slowly - especially with a small capital.
Now, the discretionary part. Why do I have to do it? Two reasons or three.
1) Personal challenge: I don't like to give up on discretionary trading, as if I were so bad that I can't learn it like other people did.
2) Need to increase my account. As I said, my capital is too small for good automated trading (at least with the crappy systems I have created).
3) Usefulness of keeping in touch with the markets. As I keep on looking at the markets from time to time, via discretionary trading, I may get new ideas for systems, which is how i developed my 42 systems to begin with. Many of them by observing the markets and implementing my ideas, others by backtesting my hypotheses, seeing I was wrong, and modifying them.
Now, your suggestions.
1) I know what you say: stop the hotkeys or you'll make it too easy for you to gamble. But that's not how I want to stop gambling, by tying my hands, by blocking my actions... I want to solve the problem at the root. The addiction should not be there. I can only stop gambling by removing the addiction, but all these methods to slow myself down, to tie my hands, have not worked so far. Also, someone else said "get a life". That's also no good, because then if one day, that person who keeps you company disappears, you might relapse. You've got to learn to be in control even when you're depressed, bored, frustrated... you must simply look elsewhere for fun, excitement, action... you must remove trading as a source of fun. Look: I have fire in my house. When I was a child I used to play with fire. Now, regardless of how frustrated I am, I don't set things on fire, do I? The same has to be for trading. You don't remove knives from your house because you might get depressed and kill yourself or someone else. I must see trading like stuff that can do damage, like fire and knives. I don't go into the kitchen and juggle knives just because I am bored or frustrated. So I should not go to gamble with my money for the same reasons. Maybe a part of the problem is that to me until now money was monopoly money, because I hadn't really made a plan to ever quit my job, despite saying it. Now maybe the fact that I started this journal means that unconsciously I was looking for a way to get more serious about my plan/dream. So, summary: let's try to remove the problem at the root.
2) The 20 ticks have been backtested: they're not chosen randomly or by rule of thumb estimates. Those are the moves that are caught more easily by my system. Longer timeframes need larger stoplosses in my opinion. That system you saw is the best I could create, and I am positive that, if followed, it is profitable. Positive. But that presumes I follow it and don't do other things because one trade and 3 trades per week do not entertain me enough. Since trading was my only pastime and source of distraction, entertainment, satisfaction... it's been hard to do so. When I'll be bored, I'll have to learn to look in other directions. The first step was realizing what my problem was: 3 months ago I had no idea. The second step was realizing what the solution might be. The third step will be having the will to implement that solution.
3) The good is the automated part. The systems do not have any addiction to trading (feel no impatience, no boredom), so they make money. I think I have what it takes to also make money with discretionary trading, as long as I limit my trades to about one trade per day, on average. I think the objective of the journal, despite not being fully aware of it when I started it, might have been to stop my trading addiction, and only trade to make money, which should mean making money with trading, a new experience to me. 12 years of looking at the markets is enough to develop an edge. I am positive I have an edge. I definitely did not have a good method to benefit from that edge, from that understanding of the markets. I didn't have a good money management. If you expect to make 10 trades per day, your or at least my edge will not be enough. Also, if you expect to never be wrong, then you're going to be in trouble.
I don't know how to describe precisely and thoroughly all the issues at stake, but what I said should convey a pretty clear picture of my ideas and on the situation as far as your points.
Thanks, all the best to you as well.
