Freedomland

Tagline: The Truth Is Hiding Where No One Dares To Look.

I saw the tagline for this movie and it immediately made me think of something that I used to suffer from in trading. Once I was in a trade I was only looking for reasons for the trade to succeed and I "didn't dare to look for the truth".

What this means is that if I'm short I'm looking for market action to support a drop in the market. I would tend to gloss over or look away from signs that the market is going to go up and search out and find the "signs of weakness" in the market.

The Plot
When her son disappears and is believed to be dead, a single mother blames an African-American man from the projects for the kidnapping, creating a racial controversy. An African-American detective (Jackson) and a white newspaper reporter team up to investigate the case, which they discover may be more complicated than they expected.

Main Cast:
Samuel L. Jackson .... Lorenzo Council
Julianne Moore .... Brenda Martin
Edie Falco .... Karen Collucci
Ron Eldard .... Danny Martin
William Forsythe
Aunjanue Ellis
Anthony Mackie

Our trading actions usually reflects what we most strongly believe is true at that moment in time.

Yes but what we believe before executing a trade is more balanced than what we believe while we are in a trade. I think that we could vastly improve our profitability if we could be more objective once in the trade. (Married to the position is what it is called I believe.)

As hard as it seems: plan the trade and trade the plan...

rverheyen: How good are you at following your plan? 100% 80% 60% ?

I have set a basic set of rules. These have to comply else I don't take a position. I follow these rules 100%.

These rules are not strict and still a great deal of analysis is needed before each trade.

Goal is to stricten the basic rules until no further analysis is needed.

Rules include money management, trend and indicators.

Okay, but have a look back at the trades that you've taken in the past. (This is not a criticism but just a retrospective observation.)

Can you say that you followed all of your trading rules (not just the entry rules but also the money management, time management, target etc. rules)? Or are there times when you deviated a little bit? For example, have you ever taken a trade off the table before the full target was hit?

Yes, a lot, and I do it over and over.

I still papertrade more then real trades. The hardest part is not finding a system but sticking to it.

quote:

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Originally posted by rverheyen

Yes, a lot, and I do it over and over.

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Follow your rules or take profits early?

You can (IMO) use more than 1 system and trade them side by side. Especially if they don't signal at the same time.

Take profits to early I mean. Once when the be is on, all rules seems to fade and all that matters is that next uptick or downtick. If the price retracts just even a bit you are tempted to take the profit you have. Even when it is very small.

I do that a lot, with the result that my losing trades are bigger than my winning trades. Hence: an overall loss.

But I'm improving, trading less and wait longer when in or out the market. When I have to think where the price is going I stay out. The next move should be dead obvious or else I don't take the bait.

Still not getting money out of the market yet, but I will sometime, I know ;)

quote:

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Originally posted by rverheyen

But I'm improving, trading less and wait longer when in or out the market...

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So what have you done to improve how long you wait and to be more patient with your set-ups? Have you been doing any mental exercises or anything different?

quote:

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Originally posted by rverheyen

How would you know what type of day it's going to be?

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You never do. You can only work with probabilities and find the probability of a day type being what it might be. You can normally also not "guess" the day type until part of the way into it. Some day types are easier to predict but again these are only probabilities and the day type doesn't have to follow the norm.

Mornings on FOMC anouncements are usually tight Z type trading days through to 14:15 EST.
Days before holidays or between holidays are often Z days - e.g. the day between Thanksgiving and the weekend or before any holiday weekend like yesterday (Friday before Memorial Holiday weekend).
Days following strong trend days are "said" to be high probability Z days. I put "said" in quotes because I have often seen back to back trend days and don't know if this is true because I haven't tested it.

From what I've seen (again this is untested so far), days with large opening gaps are often Z days. This is a useful measure of day type because you can guess the day type before the market opens in this case.

Hope this helps.