MadMarketScientist

We'd like to welcome aboard our two brand new Community Managers/Moderators who will help us manage Traders Laboratory as the growth continues for this community of active traders. We want to make sure we're continually providing you with a great place to call "virtual home" when it comes to your trading. Hanging out here should be educational and hey, maybe even sometimes fun. You'll start to see them both hanging around the forums, making posts, doing some moderating to keep the messages here to the standard and coming up with new ideas, features and innovations to make your experience even better. TL Handle: Mysticforex Chris is a long-time forex trader who has seen it all in the forex markets. He has a lot to share when it comes to daytrading forex and technical analysis in any market. TL Handle: TheNegotiator James who is based in the U.K. has experience in the futures markets and active trading. He's going to bring some fresh new ideas to the TL website. We welcome them both onboard! MMS

Thanks for the input Tim. I think it's interesting, over the years as much as I've tried to "test" my way to proving different timeframes are better -- I always come back to the same set of hours no matter how much I try to prove differently. MMS

I'm with you on that. I think people get afraid to maybe put themselves out there but really, nobody is judging you -- we all know it's an educated guess. So put in your best educated guess and let it ride. Nobody will think any differently of you in the morning

Thanks - appreciate the kind words. Always a work in progress but going the right direction. MMS

We talked it through and we're going to ask the developer to try and move the "Mark as Read" that is at the bottom of each page to the top/top right so it's more convenient. The "Unread Posts" that is an option off the homepage we're going to try and see if they can at least put it in the main forums page so it would be more readily accessible there. Request is in so hopefully won't take too long. Thanks. MMS

You guys give me way too much credit for my master plan with this Trust me, there is none - I only wish I was that smart. Will talk to the site developer and see what can be done. Thanks for the feedback. MMS

If I remember correct on Ninja they lease for about $50 a month and lifetime was right about a grand. You will need data provided either by Kinetick or you can get the data from a broker compatible with Ninja. Probably best for most to try the free download first and/or the monthly lease then move to the lifetime when you decide to commit to it long-term. MMS

I'm going to toss a couple of other thoughts as I continue to read this great thread on "breakthroughs" and one for me is simply TIME. New traders do not realize the time it takes to become a successful trader. They put themselves on a super short leash and expect to be pulling down the profits in a few short days or weeks. I can tell you it just might take years to really get it down. Certainly there are those who do it in a compressed time -- but I'd have to say the minimum is "months" in almost all cases. Realize that going in. Build your account and trade plan around that learning curve. Or you'll give up way too soon and never give yourself a shot. The other is to trade in the beginning until you are consistently profitable with fixed targets. Trailing is very subjective, and can really mess with your psyche. Fixed targets in the beginning -- add subjectivity later. MMS

I personally think IB does a great job with speed but would agree, a better front end which you can get from Ninja Trader that then connects to your Interactive Brokers is ideal. You can build in some easy trade management as well such as setting instant targets, stops, raising stops when it reaches xx level, scaling out, etc....

We'll definitely take a look at it and see what we can do. Thanks for the input! MMS

Crazy, lends new meaning to the words "Drive Thru....."

That was always kinda my point - if you play up auto trading in your advertising so much then you should have the tools/connections/back-up to handle it. Even if the hiccup is on my end the platform should be perfectly capable of reconnecting itself - it's not - I had a 3rd party small app that tests the connection every few seconds and if not connected logs me back in. Seems crazy I had to have that done. But, it works. MMS

Today my short was set at 1.3248 - never triggered -- unfortunately I didn't get anything back on the buy side though I did have a short on USDCHF which worked instead at 0.9628 though in general I find the EURUSD trades smoother and more predictably for me. MMS

Nice job on the short -- I had one at 1.3308 to 1.3257. Counter trend so I had my doubts. Then again have another short setting up for tonight so we'll see....

First, I thought the Jets won as a result of my dance after that first touchdown. Second, as I thought about this I have many times thought I had "bad luck" on certain trades/losses so I guess it's only fair to accept/admit there is some luck involved as well on the winners. I think this would be on a trade by trade basis. However, if I look at a large set of trades, 100+ lets say - then I think it's more about probability and odds in my favor/against me. So on a macro level I feel it's probabilities -- each individual trade, sure a mix of luck, skill and even randomness (do I get executed at a limit order or does someone else) MMS

MightyMouse Those are good points but I think it's why the advice is to put the odds in your favor as much as possible. However, that means you are accepting a certain percentage of the time that hot girl you mention will interfere with the best laid plans. So to speak. I think about cheering for sports. If you're live at the event you might be able to have a slight amount of influence through your support or cheering. If you're at home yelling at the television, you can jump up and down all you want, scream and swear and you have literally 0% influence on the outcome. To me, that's trading - we have absolutely no influence on what ends up happening. We're just followers subject to all the random and planned events that take place after hitting buy or sell. MMS

That is truly staggering.

Fantastic and detailed post. You layout quite a few important concepts that many struggling traders should embrace. Given at any one time I'm quite confident 90% are struggling it's important to try and short cut this journey to profitability as much as possible since most people cannot withstand multiple wipeouts. Major breakthroughs for me? 1. Realizing that optimization is bad in most situations. I tended to trust over-optimized systems thinking that past would replicate in the future. it didn't. 2. Switching to using variable targets and stops - that adjust based on market condition. I spent a long time trying to force a market to go "4 points" or whatever and instead now trade very much in tune with what's happening that day. 3. Understanding drawdown happens and isn't reason for panic but realizing for me my circuit breaker of tolerance is in the 15% - 20% range absolute max and adjusting my position sizing and markets as a result. 4. Understanding that revenge trading loses lots of money - getting those emotions under control. 5. Realizing there are some markets that really fit my personality and some that don't - - and stop forcing the ones that don't to work for me. 6. Using different timeframes than the old standbys. When I daytrade I NEVER use time intervals. I only use tick, range or renko. If I swing trade, I ONLY use time interval. 7. Not daytrading forex -- only swing trading forex. Daytrading markets that have reliable, centralized, regulated trading -- that's not fx intraday. Well, I could go on since it's been many years and many breakthroughs, probably breaking a few things along the way MMS

Great thread all the way around. I found myself nodding my head in agreement - a lot of experienced wisdom shared here. I don't know if trading is gambling -- like many mentioned it can be, and it cannot be depending upon your approach. I know back in my former life I loved to gamble. Once I got involved in trading actively I lost all desire to gamble. So either it replaced that vice to gamble directly, or the sensation is so similar..... For me the difference is when I would gamble in a casino I really knew I'd never go above 50% odds in my favor since I'm not smart enough to count cards. I thought in sports betting I could go above 50% since there is some skill. In trading I'm 100% positive that I can be well north of 50% win ratio and therein tells me it's not a straight gamble. MMS

Crazy -- worse than I realized.

We're getting there I'm willing to extend the deadline another day or two and see if we can get the number -- slowly but surely we might be. Get your forum friends in here -- how hard is it to predict a few numbers right I'd be in there if I could qualify! MMS

To my winners, do me a favor and private message me with the email address you'd like me to use to send the Amazon $. I can use what you have on file in your profile but just in case there's a different/preferred just let me know. I'll process these later today. Thanks. MMS

Deadline is fast approaching on the new costest -- get your entries in: http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/f2/round-two-predict-market-close-contest-9050.html And remind your other TL buddies to do the same so we can meet the entry minimum....up to $1,000 prize on the line! MMS

We've got a long way to go! Remind people in other threads to get their predictions in -- it's about the best odds around to win something! MMS

I was proactive in my trading today -- for example in Crude I usually target about 0.25 for target and I took 0.15 instead, same on Natural Gas trading. That was how I approached it -- didn't avoid it - just reigned in expectations to try and get some quicker hits. As it turned out it traded fairly normally but hey, better to have a plan then lament being stupid later MMS