svb70

Great stuff! Nice technical post explaining correlation. I recently blogged about correlation and I think it may compliment your post. forex - an interesting look at correlation - barrett's notes

Dude, stopping journal or stopping trading? Every trading error you have logged is exactly what every other trader goes through. You have invested a lot of time into learning to trade and maybe are at the hurdle we all have to face (usually repeatedly). its frustrating because we know what we need to do, but find it difficult to implement in real time. Its always easy in hindsight. From what you have written, here are some objective observations. 1. Learn to control emotions. Try and do this by really accepting your risk. If you put on a trade and then nervously wait to see if it wins that is gambling. If you truly accept that every trade can lose and trade according to a backtested strategy with acceptable risk then all individual trades are insignificant. Its what happens in the long term that matters. You "simply" ensure that your wins are bigger than your losers. 2. Confidence. Are you really confident with your trade plan? do you know how your strategy performs when backtested against years worth of data? 3. Patience. You want to win and you want to win now. Don't we all, but we learn to take what the market gives us. You have a trade strategy. Your trade strategy defines your set-ups. You only trade when the set-ups show themselves.Correct me if I'm wrong, but you trade short term so set yourself realistic daily targets. Say 1% to start. So on a 2k account thats 20 a day. If you are going for 30% profit a day, its achievable, but not sustainable. To achieve big profit you usually open yourself up to big drawdown at some point and thats what canes you. Set yourself a hard limit on each trade to manage your risk. If your account attains your designated maximum drawdown, exit the trade. Irrespective of whether you think it will turn around. Those are the account killers that we need to avoid. 20 a day is 100 a week; 10% of 2000. Dop some sums to see how that compounds. Slow and steady sounds dull, but actually is a lot more stress free and a lot more maneagable. Where else can you invest 2k to receive that level of return. You could probably even go for 0.5% / day. Once you achieve your target walk away. Not necessarily closing your trade, but maybe you are lucky enough to have moved your stop loss to break even or better your original take profit price and then let the trade ride with a trailing stop. 4. Focus. If you are trading for a short time period per day ensure that you are absolutely focussed and do not have any distractions. Don't give up man. Just work hard to find out what's letting you down and do something about it. If you find you don't enjoy trading and its not for you then fair enough...

Hi, Your strategy is fairly mechanical and so should be able to be applied to all markets. Have you looked into forex? I only trade forex. Also I can tell you that, in my opinion, your trade plan should be scalable thereby working with a small account and a larger account. In my opinion it is very possible to trade a small account. Trading a small account requires you to be realistic and not try to make big wins. Risk management is crucial. Why is it that people think that they will suddenly turn into successful traders just because they have a larger account? It implies that they don't need to be as risk averse or disciplined. Newbies can gain much experience trading a small account, but not before seriously trading a practice account with your realistic start balance and trippling or quadrupling your account balance. Happy trading shawn ps. I recently created a £2000 account and traded it, whilst blogging my progress. barrett's notes - my forex stuff and other titbits