Cory2679's Log

[Cory2679 11]

Just took ANOTHER hit...I am really off to a rough start this week...

 

Still, just one winning trade could make up for all this, but it's hard not to get a little frustrated at this point...

 

 

Pulled it for -15.4...

[brownsfan019 17]

Cory - what you are seeing is the problem IMO of anticipating breakouts. There will be plenty of fakeouts b/c there's guys like me that are buying down there assuming the level will hold.

 

This is purely an observation. If you find over time that the breakouts will work and as you said 1 winner will put this back in gear, then you are fine.

 

You just have to understand the fundamental design of the system and playing breakouts and what to expect. You must expect that selling into support will cause losers b/c that support will in fact hold many times. You are selling saying I want this level to break, meanwhile reversal guys like myself are buying saying this level should hold. Someone will win.

 

My

[thalestrader 14]

Cory - what you are seeing is the problem IMO of anticipating breakouts.

 

I think he is seeing the problem of playing the current game with last week's playbook. I see higher highs and higher lows all over the place, and yet Cory has yet to take a long trade. Fighting the trend is a tough way to make a living, but an easy way to go broke trying.

 

He is certainly overtrading - if you have two or three consecutive losses in the same direction in markets that are often (though not always) highly correleated, it is time to take some time off.

 

Best Wishes,

 

Thales

[Cory2679 11]

He is certainly overtrading...

 

That's for sure...I was planning on making a post about that later.

 

This is how I began my week last week...I began by trading like this, taking a hit, and then finally stepping back, learning some patience, and taking only what I saw as "obvious" and did a lot better.

[Cory2679 11]

FWIW, I'm currently long the GBP/USD.

[Cory2679 11]

Update:

 

I took this loss on the EUR/USD (pulled it for -18.7 ticks)...

 

(This trade was before the last several posts about my overtrading, against the trend, etc.)

 

 

Then, I got long on the GBP/USD...I realize that price was still in a chop zone, but I thought the price action looked compelling...I watched it closely around the high of the chop zone, but after hovering for a little bit, it broke it pretty solidly, so I felt good about it...

 

 

But then, price came up on potential major resistance...

 

 

So, I had the idea to try for a short...

 

 

But, after reading this...

 

...this PA following the high seems to have the character of a pause more than a reversal.

 

...I decided I must be wrong and immediately reversed back long...

 

I have now pulled out of that long...

 

...and it may still very well be a pause and not a reversal...I just managed everything really bad.

 

 

Here's how the short would look as of now...

 

 

This will be it for me this afternoon...it's getting late, anyway. I need to step back, calm down, and take a big deep breath. I know I can do a lot better than this...I'm pretty embarrassed and disappointed with myself.

 

I'm currently down 3.37R for the week. This is the worst I've done in a long time...

 

...knowing me, now that my trading is "public" and I'm beginning my new plan and everything, I'll end up psyching myself out and losing big money my first week!

[thalestrader 14]

But, after reading this...

 

...I decided I must be wrong and immediately reversed back long...

 

Well, first of all, had I known you were looking at a short, I'd have kept my mouth shut. I try never to post opinions about a market if I know someone in the thread is already in a trade. I refrain from commenting on open positions, or even resting entry order, for precisely the reason for which you just gave a brilliant example. I do not want my opinon to influence anyone else's. That is rule #41:

 

41. Never volunteer advice and never brag of your winnings.

 

Secondly, I am trading for a different size swing than you are. I still may be wrong, and my trade, which is fading fast, may have to be cut loose. But the point is that you could have been short, and I could have been long, and we could both possibly be right based upon the swings degree and corresponding stops/targets.

 

Thirdly, you violated rule #38:

 

38. You must believe in yourself and your judgment if you expect to make a living at this game.

 

Best Wishes,

 

Thales

[Cory2679 11]

...I am trading for a different size swing than you are. I still may be wrong, and my trade, which is fading fast, may have to be cut loose. But the point is that you could have been short, and I could have been long, and we could both possibly be right based upon the swings degree and corresponding stops/targets.

 

Thanks. Yeah, I understand that. Anyone who's been paying attention to your thread should understand that. I've just been a mess this week thus far. :o

 

Well, the week's far from over...I plan to come back for Tokyo this evening a new man!

[MidKnight 12]

Hi Cory,

 

Just a thought man, but if you are feeling that you are overtrading, drop some of those currencies and only trade 1 or 2. Currencies are quite incestuous IMHO. Since my initial exploration in this thread back in NOV, I have taken to only trading a single currency and it has been for the best, I feel. If you will recall, this was a hot topic of discussion on the RT thread. Even though it can be a bit boring at times. Despite that though, I get a better feel when just focusing on a single market. I know Brownie would disagree, but he has a lot more experience than I do, so it would take me some time to get to his abilities... :2cents: :bag of salt:

 

With kind regards,

MK

[thalestrader 14]

I have taken to only trading a single currency and it has been for the best...Even though it can be a bit boring at times... I get a better feel when just focusing on a single market.

 

I agree, and I MidK's suggestion should be given serious consideration. When I was really started to make good progress, it occurred when I was trading the ER2 only. It is much easier to learn the craft if you are concentrating your efforts on one market. Even my daughter came to focus almost entirely on the EURJPY. She moved in that direction on her own.

 

Best Wishes,

 

Thales

[Dinerotrader 10]

...I'm pretty embarrassed and disappointed with myself.

 

I'm currently down 3.37R for the week. This is the worst I've done in a long time...

 

Remember that most of us reading your thread a pulling for you to do well. We've all made mistakes, had losses, entered bad trades, been embarrased at our losses, etc.....

 

Keep working.

[thalestrader 14]

... I know I can do a lot better than this...I'm pretty embarrassed and disappointed with myself.

 

I'm currently down 3.37R for the week. This is the worst I've done in a long time...

 

You're down 3.37R, which at 2%/trade means you are down 6.75%. So what? At least you aren't trading 5% R-units which would have you down 16.85%.

 

looking back over the month, I see that at one point last week I had a draw down of -3.87 R, which is nearly the equivalent of four consecutive full-on stops. It happens. You just keep taking your swings...

 

I trade 2%/trade. So I was down 7.74% from my (prior) equity peak for the month. Don't sweat the money. And for crying out loud, don't be embarrassed and don't be disappointed. Instead, get on with figuring out if you are down because your trading plan is flawed, your method is flawed, or your emotions and mind are causing error.

 

You had better get used to draw down. Even if you manage to achieve a 60% win rate over the course of, say, every 100 trades, and even though the chance of 4 consecutive losses with a 60% win rate is only about 2.5%, it is going to happen over the course of 100 trades. Trust me. If you cannot trade through such occasions, you will have a rough time.

 

And for now, starting out, do you expect to win 60% of your trades? Probably not. At best, you are a 50/50 player at this point. So out of 10 trades, you'll likely lose 5. Funny thing though: a 50/50 player only wins exactly 50% of his trades about 23% of the time. In reality, you will be will win 4-6 out of every ten trades about 65% of the time. If you are trading at a level where you may only win 4/10 trades during any sequence of trades, then what is there to prevent you from losing 6 trades in a row? Nothing. And, you will. Trust me.

 

What you have going for you is this: It does not matter! Any given trade is a 2% bet. So stop caring if this particular trade is a winner or not. Stop caring if the last two were losses. Focus on learning your craft, and applying it with sound money management. Believe me, most of the folks who frequent trading forums, including this one, have not done 5% of the work and preparation that you have. You have nothing to be embarrassed about. And you've only been doing this for a few months. So pull yourself together and get back at it.

 

Best Wishes,

 

Thales

[Cory2679 11]

I thought I'd make a post so you guys don't think I've abandoned my log...

 

...if you are feeling that you are overtrading, drop some of those currencies and only trade 1 or 2.

 

I agree, and I MidK's suggestion should be given serious consideration.

 

I definitely understand what you guys are saying, and it is something I did do a while back. Now I'm trading four.

 

The only "argument" I have against going back to one is that I was truly doing well trading all four! Now I know anyone who has been following along with this log is probably thinking "yeah, right!" and that's ok...I would be, too. Also, since the currencies are so correlated, I don't really feel like I'm trading 4 totally different markets, anyway...

 

I truly believe my problem this week is that I did indeed psych myself out with my new "plan." I'm apparently pretty emotional when it comes to trading, and things like that mess me up! But, I've done progressively better over the week...huge loss the first day, medium loss the second day, good profit the third day, and today I'm down so far, but not too bad...

 

...and I should have done better yesterday...Tuesday night I had a winning trade on, it had hit PT1 and was working on PT2...however, I wanted to go to bed, hated to see it travel back to PT1, so I pulled it right about in the middle...had I left it, it would have hit PT2.

 

Then yesterday morning, I had an issue with my alarm and didn't start trading until after 10am!...and I saw that I had missed a pretty blatant short opportunity.

 

This morning I've had a loss and a BE...both of which were due to 'picking the wrong market' (ie GBP/USD vs EUR/USD)....I would have locked in profit on BOTH had I picked the right market.

 

I had come up with a general rule for that...because I didn't trust my judgement...I'll put orders in for both and whichever one triggers first I go with and cancel the other order...it had been serving me well...but this morning, I didn't do that and paid the price (I decided for other reasons which market I'd trade).

 

Lessons learned...for now...I'm sure I'll have to relearn them down the line.

 

...get on with figuring out if you are down because your trading plan is flawed, your method is flawed, or your emotions and mind are causing error.

 

I feel fairly certain that the majority of the reason why I'm down is because of my emotions and mind causing error...I was doing things that go against my general trading plan/method...

 

If you cannot trade through such occasions, you will have a rough time.

...So pull yourself together and get back at it.

 

I never stopped trading...I just quit posting every trade on here.

 

Since I was making a lot of trades that go against my general trading plan/method, I figured what's the point?

 

Also, I think it hurts me a little as far as my mind/emotions to be posting every trade...

 

A while back I would have friends and family asking me every day, and sometimes several times a day, how I was doing with my trading...I found this harmful to my state of mind...because moment by moment, trade by trade, isn't that relevant and it hurts me to focus on it.

 

SO, I'm not going to be posting all of my trades on this log...not for right now, anyway.

 

I'll post my P/L...well, L...for the week tomorrow.

 

It will probably end up a losing week, and that's fine...I don't have to 'start over' anything, or quit, or any of that...I just keep moving forward...

 

Since I feel like my mind/emotions are mostly what was getting in my way...and that it's getting better each day...I feel like the best thing I can do right now is just keep trading, every day...practice makes perfect...

[thalestrader 14]

...I never stopped trading...I just quit posting every trade on here.

 

Since I was making a lot of trades that go against my general trading plan/method, I figured what's the point?

 

Also, I think it hurts me a little as far as my mind/emotions to be posting every trade...

 

My post had nothing to do with the frequency or lack thereof of your posts. I was responding only to your post that you were feeling disappointed and embarrassed. You have nothing to prove to anyone but yourself. You can post every trade, a weekly update, or log out and never return to TL or any forum. You do not need a forum to trade. My best progress was during an 18 month period where I didn't once visit any internet trading forum. If TL is a distraction, cut it down to the point where it is again a benefit and not a harm to your trading. I think enough folks here at TL have taken an interest in you that if your posts dropped to an end of day or even end of week summary, you'd still receive comments when appropriate.

 

Best Wishes,

 

Thales

[Cory2679 11]

My post had nothing to do with the frequency or lack thereof of your posts.

 

Yeah, I know...I just thought, based on what you'd said, that you might have thought I had quit out of discouragement, etc. since I hadn't made any posts recently...I just wanted to make clear that even though I wasn't posting, I was still trading and hadn't stopped.

[MidKnight 12]

Hi Cory,

 

I hear ya on many fronts, but take comfort in knowing that virtually every aspiring retail trader goes through all these things. You are not alone or unique in this regard. Keep working on your craft daily. I try my best not to focus on daily results but instead prefer monthly with the frequency that I am doing (weekly when I was scalping), but there are things that I ask myself at the end of each trading day. I like to type them out, there is something about the written word that helps cement ones thinking into action. I'll post them here as maybe you or someone else finds this useful.

 

Due to my trade frequency, I have a weekly process oriented goal. This goal is typed out each day. After the day is over, I grade how well I accomplished this goal. Once the goal receives a high enough grade, then I consider it accomplished and move onto a new goal. I never remove a goal in less than a week though. I also only focus on one goal at a time, I'm a man.....what can I say You can have several if you choose, but for me one at a time is enough and keeps me focused improving one thing at a time.

 

Then I move onto the general what happened today stuff. What was the unwanted action? What did the unwanted action teach me? What is the solution? How will this improve my trading? This series of Q&A each day over the course of the week help seek future goals.

 

Finally I grade the entire day and tag it with the grade number. At a later date I can search the entries by grade number. I find this useful for spotting recurring problems and even just to look back and see how my trading has changed/improved. I do all this on a private blog. Oh, and I also use a free, opensource program called 'audacity' for voice recording during the day. I do this because I want to preserve the emotion in my voice and my real-time thoughts. Granted, since moving to a lower frequency type of trading this part of my daily review is becoming less used, but I do still use it.

 

You can find a lot of this sort of thing and suggestions on Brett Steenbarger's great traderfeed blog. My journal blog entry described above is a very slim version of some things Brett recommends.

 

Take care,

MK

[Cory2679 11]

I just got totally burned and I have to vent... :frustrated:

 

The EUR/USD came up on major resistance...at the time I was long, and ended up pulling out for a small loss...

 

BUT, I wanted to get short, missed the initial opportunity, but felt sure the EUR/USD was heading lower after that bounce off of resistance...so I went short with a market order (with an unfavorable entry point) with a profit target aimed for the low, and another profit target for 150 ticks (I was planning to trail my stops down to the 150 tick target)...

 

I got totally burned for a full 1R loss!

 

And to make it worse, I initially missed the long opportunity!! Luckily, I got in off a retrace and am now sitting long with my stop @ BE.

 

Thanks for listening! :o

[Cory2679 11]

This Week's P/L

 

Well, I had a rough week...and an especially rough start to the week...

 

I ended up down 3.11R.

 

Hopefully a lot of lessons learned this week...moving on to next week without skipping a beat!

 

NOTE: I should mention, for my trades, if I have multiple profit targets, that means multiple orders, so I didn't take as many trades as it looks like. Also, on Friday (today), I had one trade that took 4 orders (2 market orders that I scaled down because my initial positions were too big).

[MCM 10]

From your post:

 

"BUT, I wanted to get short, missed the initial opportunity, but felt sure the EUR/USD was heading lower after that bounce off of resistance...so I went short with a market order (with an unfavorable entry point) with a profit target aimed for the low, and another profit target for 150 ticks (I was planning to trail my stops down to the 150 tick target)..."

 

 

Hey Cory - been following with interest - since I too - launched my first ever formal trading plan this week with live trades. Missed easily 75% of the trades due to life/kids/etc. Took some good ones and followed the plans. Took a couple bad ones as well that I wasnt paying attention to the higher timeframe move. But - playing with live bullets is different from doing the retrospective review each night or sim trading during the day.

 

The quote above caught my eye. Always another train coming down the tracks. Dont try and jump on one that is leaving the station - might get hurt. Worse yet - it can cause you to miss the next high opportunity trade because your trying to get out of the one you just got tangled up in.

 

You have some guts and tenacity posting up like this for all to see. I continue to get some serious benefit from reading your posts along with the responses from the other traders. Thank you!

 

Next week start new - commit to doing one thing better than this week - and it will be a success.

 

Peace & Prosperity

 

P

[Cory2679 11]

Well, it's about quitting time (I try to stay on at least until 11pm EST), and I didn't have one trade tonight, and I'm soo happy!

 

I began tonight determined to do this right and not overtrade. I did have an order in at one point that didn't fill, but that's it! And now looking back with hindsight, I did exactly the right thing (for me).

 

(Last Sunday I took 3 trades, all losers!)

[Cory2679 11]

First trade of the week...

 

Took profit at PT1 on the first half, but broke even on the second half.

[Cory2679 11]

Unfortunately missed this...

 

No excuse, really.

 

Trying to be positive, I guess thalestrader's dad's favorite saying would apply here...

 

"I'd rather be out wishing I were in, than in wishing I were out."

Edited February 15, 2010 by Cory2679

[Cory2679 11]

Unfortunately took a hit, unnecessarily...

 

I think after I missed the opportunity I just posted above, I got into something of a revenge-trading mindset.

 

Up to this point, I had followed my game-plan for the week really well...not overtrading, taking only what I saw as obvious, high-probability trades, etc. This was an exception.

 

I pulled out for -0.71R.

 

I'm done trading for today (I'll be back this evening for Tokyo).

 

:crap:

[Cory2679 11]

Today's Trades

 

Here are my trades and P/L for the day.

 

I figured I would post my trades from the day at the end of each day, rather than posting all five days at the end of the week like I did here.

 

I should mention...a "day" for me goes from 5pm EST to 5pm EST. So, for example, "Day 1" of the trading week is from 5pm EST on Sunday to 5pm EST on Monday. That's how my broker records it, so that's how I do, too.

 

I'm not off to a great start, but it's certainly better than last week! At this time last week, I was down $337.11!

[daedalus 10]

Cory don't beat yourself up too much over today... i'm certainly not trading it.

 

Remember to put yourself in the best possible position to make money with the highest probability of something actually happening can take place... a national holiday that forces half the volatility of your market to disappear isn't one of those times.

 

Wouldn't today been much nicer to take the day off from charts?

 

Keep at it buddy!