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Showing results for tags 'screen time'.
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Lots of people talk about "screen time" and its importance in the success of a trader. In essence, it's experience. Number if trades and number of hours. Although I would point out as I always do, that not all trades and not all hours in front of a screen are equal and in fact in many cases can act in quite the opposite way to what was desired. Yesterday was one of those days where experience might just have helped a trader out. The ES had been in a very balanced range for the prior 7 days and even with a bit of an extension upwards on Tuesday, there was a reasonable amount of information to suggest that it was still balanced. So suggesting that a short somewhere at the top of the range was a bad idea surely made no sense right? No. Because there are times when the ES just plods on in one direction only. It "one-timeframes". The experienced trader will fairly quickly spot that given the context of the auction, location and feeling for the way the market is trading, that the conditions are right for such a move and the chances of the market doing it are pretty high. Indeed, after the 1401.75 low was put in just after 10am, the largest rotation down was 1.75pts in a move of 13.75pts up and after the high of 1415.50 was put in, it still only managed to move 3.50pts lower to 12.00. It's worth noting that purely because the ES broke out of the range, it doesn't mean it would automatically grind in one direction without any reasonable pullbacks. Clearly it's potentially of great benefit to identify this particular type of market action early on. The rewards were pretty high and it could prevent you from fading the market thinking that you're getting a great price to sell at. What do you do to gain experience then? You must first have some sort of structure for framing the market and its behaviour. Understanding market movements relative to this structure will help you see things more clearly and develop experience at a greater rate. You must also document not only how you trade according to your plan, but what you see in the market's behaviour. Then if you can devise ways to clearly monitor and test these observations, you are well on your way to gaining experience (in terms of market awareness). Here is the chart from yesterday:-
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This is a question to which the answer is variable. It is however, an important question for anyone who hasn't 'made it' already(and to some who haven't really made it but think they have ). I think that many have the idea that if they trade for several years, they will become 'experienced'. Some have done this and may actually believe they are 'experience'. But what the bottom line reads is the important qualifying factor here. The proportion of this time which is truly dedicated to understanding the market process and your strategy imho is a far better yard stick of experience. I challenge any trader to sit back and make an honest assessment of the effort they put into their practise of the trading discipline(live or sim). Let me attempt to illustrate my point in another way. You are about to take a flight and you are allowed to choose your pilot. Pilot A has flying in his blood. He has never actually flown a plane before, but he has for the past 10 years sat next to his Father in the cockpit on every flight which is every day. Pilot B has never actually flown either. He has accrued over 1000 hours in a state of the art simulator, 500 hours of which were under expert instruction. Well you HAVE to take the flight. Lol. I think the choice is clear. So when if you haven't got a high degree of real experience, what can you do? There's only one session you can realistically trade per day right? Well, you concentrate for a start. You can prepare for what you think you may see and watch for what you do see. You can try to understand the way the market is functioning at the moment and how your trading strategy or style fits in with that. You can replay the market either by reviewing your chart or with many platforms you can now do a market replay at whatever speed you wish to. You can analyse your performance using all sorts of useful metrics. Profitability comes from understanding comes from experience comes from dedication. Not necessarily from screen time.
