scg84

This is one of the best threads I've read. Not enough emphasis has been placed on the pyschology of trading. It makes me interested to study it further. Myself - overcoming the delusional behaviour. Maybe I should ramp up the anit psychotics! I'm scared to resign to the fact that I wont suceed hugely and that I cant do it in 6 months... but I'm not the sort of person to quit after 6 months anyway. Regardless, I think that just stems from the natural instinct to suceed and could also be viewed as a positive in some cases. As long as we try and try again, and improve and learn about ourselves, success is probable. After I had a big loss, I went back to the drawing board and decided to learn as much as I could and apply it. This week I was trading my over complicated system with not much luck. The entry/exit signals all conflicted, I was convinced that in a trade any resistance to a profit would result in a loss and it turned out quite bad. Talking with a few quys while doing this (traders with years experience) made me think - I'm making this way harder than it is. So back to the drawing board, this time with a plan that is clear, unambiguous. But most importantly, I realise the importance to follow your plan and trust that its either right or wrong. The only way to know is to trade it with discipline. When I get something that works, I will know. This thread should be posted in the beginners forum. Its much better than everyone saying - You will loose for years before you make money, with no explanation. Thanks again for posting this.

Looking at my original post, it seems like I was over thinking everything. I spent a couple of days on Ant88's traders broadcast ( and what I found is that its not how much you know, its how well you implement your trading plan. I love the way that someone put it in another TL thread - bad use of a bad plan will fail, good use of a bad plan will fail, bad use of a good plan will fail, but good use of a good plan will succeed. (Not exactly quoting that to the word, but you get the picture). So the most important thing to have is discipline to follow a trading plan. The only way to know if it is good system is if we try the follow the bad ones properly and improve it or scrap it and start again. Seems so simple, but I imagine that is what people (speaking from experience) have a problem doing. So I've written up a plan formally - not like the quick one in my journal and now i'm following it to the letter. If it fails, it needs refinement or I need to work on another system. The only thing I want is to follow my plan. If it looses money, so be it. I will have learnt the discipline, and when I do work out a system that does work (which may take years), it will be well worth it. If anyone is interested in the result, I don't mind sharing in posts to follow.

Ants88, I'm really keen to have a listen to some squawk, but I cant seem to load the WMP from the link provided. Any ideas?

Thanks for all the great advice. I had read a lot of stuff while I was trading on a demo and coming up with new strategies, but you can never really understand what people are talking about until its your money you trade with. Now its making more sense. I wrote out a trading plan regarding how I would trade, a lot of which seems to be up to my discretion. And thats the way I believe it should be. Some things are set in stone, like picking high probability trades that let you place small stops etc. But all in all, the most helpful thing I have done is keep a trading journal. Its not the fact that you can review your trading and make judgements on it (because realistically you cant recall exactly what was going through your mind on every trade and why you took it), but it makes you take good trades, because its recorded and you must justify each trade you take and be able to explain why it is a good trade. So far in the last two weeks (since using a journal and a trading plan) I have had 1 break even day, and the rest profitable. Not hugely profitable, but consistancy is the key. Not big wins and losses. Today I wont be trading; I found out today that if you have an open position at the end of the day, it means that you use a bigger margin and you have to wait to the end of the day to reset that back to the day trading margin! haha. Oh well, it is a learning process, but it was scarey when I looked at my account to see a 'dr' next to my account balance. I even checked the exchange rate in a panic! Now I feel a bit stupid! haha.... atleast that trade at the end of the day was worth a couple of points! Thanks again for all the great advice. It is invaluable learning things from others. So many things can be learnt the easy way!

Hi, I have a few questions that would be great to get some input on. I'm not sure if they are more suited for the beginners forum, but it would be great if the answers are oriented more towards emini futues. I appologise if this is the wrong area for posting this. Anyways, on to the questions! The way I see trading is that you need to have a good system that works out when the market conditions are in your favour. I dont think many would disagree, although the coin toss method has been proven to work, providing that you have a solid exit strategy. Onto that later... Firstly, what raw data is available to the individual futures trader that provides you with the edge that you use for trading? I imagine that volume, DOM, Time/Sales data make up most of the info that people use, but it would be really interesting to see understand how people combine this data to come to a trading decision. If you use resistance/support levels, what do you think makes up that resistance/support. Basic trends are used by a lot of people. can this be quantified into resistance over time for use in an algo to help work out bias? Obviously a basic trend line will tell us this visually. If we ranked this, could we work out when it was enough of a market bias given other market conditions were acceptable for entry and exit? When we trade, discretion must play a part at the time we make the decision to pull the trigger, unless using a fully automated system. Do you experience confidence when entering a trade? Can we measure this to see whether or not this is our brains way of measuring bias in a trade? If we can, should position sizing be adjusted accordingly. How can we distinguish between confidence and hopefullness? It may sound like a silly thing to say, but personally I when trading a live, I find this difficult. When paper trading, it feels obvious. Is this just my greed taking over? (probably, I think!) Should stops also be adjusted depending on confidence in a trend? I'm sure the more weathered traders would do this automatically, But it would be nice to know whether a fixed stop strategy is actually better, or if you should use discretion alteast when entering. From what I have read, once in a trade it is difficult to use good judgement place stops because of the nature of taking a profit! (a nice way of calling us traders greedy! I appologise to those with good judgement.) How do market orders contribute to bias, and is the squawk effective at measuring this to add to market bias? Last of all, and I do appologise for the length of this post - If it is statistically improbable to make money trading in the long term, what sample size of trades would give a good idea of whether or not one would be likely to be successful at trading? Thank you for reading my scribbles. I'm not so good at posting on forums. I would appreciate any answers, whether opinion or fact. And I do appologise if I bored you senseless. I would also like to thank you all for your contributions on this forum, it has been riviting reading. Cheers, Steve

After opening up a live account I found the limitations of the demo account. I wasnt able to get my orders filled as easily. Still I did find the demo account helpful in learning how the market acts and how to use the platform itself. As for the live trading, it went quite well. Cheers.

Are the results of trading with a demo account in any way indicative of the result of trading on the real market? This question is particularly directed at the OpenECry Futures demo platform. But all I am curious about the other demos for other markets also. Cheers.