Week 2


i've been in a BGP/MPLS/QoS training class all week, but i will post this weekend.

hope everyone had a great week - in front of and away from the screens.
i've read MoM and MiP before. After the CBOT manual, MoM is how i learned about Market Profile. But i think i have been going about it kind of backwards. I was trying to learn about setups and the Profile before i understood foundations.

Financial Markets
even if you never integrate MP into your trading, you owe it to yourself to deepen your understanding of how markets work. that's it. not how to trade them or which one to trade or what timeframe to trade or anything like that. just put in the time and effort to gain a very solid understanding of exactly what is going on in the markets. even if you never trade, an advanced market understanding will be useful in a variety of settings.

You
We all hear about how mental the trading game is. Every trader has heard or read that sentiment at least a dozen times. You read that it is 50% or 80% or 95% or 99% or 33% or some other percentage of trading. I don't think it is a quantifiable or measurable percentage, but I do know that for the discretionary trader it is huge. here's the deal ... if pros, real pros who do this day in and day out for their sole source of income, routinely chalk up their worst days to mental errors (i.e. they had a bad day, were sick, argued with their wife, and the like), what should that tell us? these guys KNOW how critical a self-understanding is every single day and when it slips from focus even they suffer the consequences. it tells me this is not an area i can skip or gloss over. get into metacognition - think about how you think. be a student of you.

Trading
working from inside the bark out to the forest, it took me a long time to realize that knowing a setup is not the same thing as understanding how to trade. to me, a discretionary trader, the two are seperate concepts. in my mind, it's like a quarterback who only learns passing routes. not only doesn't he understand the rest of his offense, he knows nothing about defenses, and that means he doesn't really understand football. how will this guy ever make it? if he doesn't learn the game, he won't make it. learn the game.

so it looks like this to me:

Self <-> Markets <-> Trading <----> Methodology

everything is clearly connected but still a unique and seperate pursuit. each compenent also feeds off of and develops from growth in another component. learning more about a strategy will promote more self-learning which deepens some aspect of market understanding and so on.

so what.

well, so far the CL/CES material really seems geared towards fostering this type of holistic approach. it pushes me to really have a thorough, unshakalbe understanding of myself, market fundamentals, and trading before i go off blindly throwing money at some setup or pattern. i think this approach is what really sets this material apart from other stuff i've seen or studied. The CL/CES really strives to help students develop a context for their chosen markets. and you can't really develop context without understanding the fumdamental structure in the first place. and that is exactly what i am looking for. i want to know why the hell i am doing something when the hell i'm doing it. i'm not content with 'see a squiggle cross a line so buy'. some folks are and that's great, truly it is. but i know that's not me. context has always been important to me and trading is no different in that regard.

i'll be out of town tomorrow, so this may be my only post this weekend.

i promised to keep useful links in my posts, but i keep forgetting to include one of the most important links: The Intro

Just a quick note today regarding a webinar/call DLC Profiles held yesterday (as part of the CL/CES). First it was very educational listening to Jim discuss several different markets and what their behaviors mean to him. second, i wonder if those guys ever actually get to finish in an hour; it's becoming routine for Jim to keep the call going for another 30min to field questions about markets, trading, profiles, and so on. i just really appreciate a trainer/instructor who is willing to put in some extra time to make sure folks get their answers. third, later in the evening, terry and i ended up talking for another hour about CL/CES material, my journal, the markets, trading, MP, and DLC.

these webinar/calls are already helping shape my learning process. a great thing about the calls is that Jim covers several markets, most of which i don't trade, so it gives traders a chance to look at the same behaviors in different settings. in other words, if i am looking a market that i am unfamiliar with, i will be less inclined to slip into 'setup' thinking and just focus on what is being presented. it gets down to identifying specific behavioral tendencies in a generalized environment.

alright, more work to do tonight ...