Archive for September 26th, 2006

9-26-2006 Trading Results & Analysis


 
 
Not much better results to report today than yesterday unfortunately. While I didn’t have any -3 R-Unit trades, I did have enough full stops to negate the many solid trades I had. I’ve been tweaking my style a little bit today and trying something a little different and I found myself making the same kind of mistake over and over…almost always leading to a full stop. It revolved around taking CT trades back into the prevailing trendline instead of waiting for a trendline break. Thus I put too much emphasis on the TRIX reading and not enough on the rest of the signals.

It should be an easy problem to fix tomorrow now that I know its there. Below is just one of the several instances of similar mistakes that I made today.

Review of the Day

In this trade I actually had a lot of little stuff going my way. But the mistakes I did make ended up being very costly turning what could have been a solid profitable potential trade into a full stop.

The first big mistake I made was to ignore the significance of this powerful up-move. It all happened very quickly and there was a surge in the 5-minute volume. This should have been the red flag that warned me to slow down and curb my short-side expectations significantly unless I got a powerful signal to the contrary. So I went for too much, mistake # 1.

Mistake #2 though was the killer. The reversal point labeled as ‘A’ was way too powerful of a move to be ignored. But ignore it I did. Not only did I ignore it and stay in the trade. But I left my stop at 735.90, or 4 ticks above the high!!! This really is unforgivable and I don’t know why I failed to exit the trade:
A.) For a 2-tick profit
B .) At Break-Even when the reversal signal came or
C.) On a breakout to a new high (not 4 ticks above it!)

Just goes to show you how easily it is to slip into a state of mindlessness and give back all that you’ve worked so hard for if you’re not careful .
 
 

Fear, Hope, & Pride

I was going over the “My Errors” totals recorded in my ScalpRate Spreadsheet and I realized that I had left a VERY important calculation off.

Avg Daily PnL Per Error : (Calculated by multiplying for each error the Avg PnL total by the # Trades Avg total)

I looked specifically at the ‘Grand Total’ column and then converted this total to R-Units. Here are the highlights of what I discovered by doing this simple calculation:

Stay2Long: -.58 R-Unit/Day
Inadequate Breakout: -1.01 R-Unit/Day
Pre-Conceived Notion: -.67 R-Unit/Day

Those are the top 3 most costliest recurring errors in my trading right now and how much they cost me on an average day. While there is some overlap (as I might enter a trade because I have a PcN, and then subsequently compound errors by Staying2Long in hopes that I’ll be proven right), I’m giving up 1.00 R-Units/Day minimum to these 3 errors alone…What difference; especially when my Net Daily Goal is a profit of +1.1 R-Unit/day.

So I thought that it’d be interesting to do a quick analysis of these mistakes, what they mean, and what I can do to try and reign them in. Broadly speaking, each of these errors represent some of the 3 of the 6 biggest hindrances to all traders: Fear, Hope, & Pride (the other 3 are: Greed, Impulse Control, & Ignorance…With the opposite of ignorance, or Wisdom/Knowledge, being the master key to curing all 6). All are related and feed off of each other…but that’s a whole different post…

Staying Too Long : Represents Hope & Pride
Inadequate Breakout: Represents 2 things really: Fear of missing out, & Lack of proper Impulse Control
Pre-Conceived Notion: Represents Pride & Ignorance

As Dr. Phil loves to say: “You can’t change what you don’t acknowledge.” And it is up to each of us to figure out what our personal trading demons are and slay them. So objectively speaking, I have to admit that my biggest (and most costliest) demons are a fear of missing out which is compounded by lack of proper discipline to sit on my hands.

And if I have a Pre-Conceived Notion about which direction the markets should go (big difference here between “should” & “may”), then that only erodes my Impulse Control further and heighten’s my fear of missing out. Then when things turn against me, all these psychological investments that I have made in the trade damage my Pride and instead of taking the hit and regrouping, my ego responds with its last line of defense, Hope.

Thus you can see how all the major hindrances are linked and feed off one another. Inadequate breakout is the costliest error for me because of all the other mistakes that I make AFTER that one. We all make entry mistakes once in a while, but do we cut them off immediately or do we toss our hands up & wait and see how they’ll turn out only exiting after a certain pain threshhold is crossed?

I could go on forever on this subject of Error Recognition, Tracking, Analysis, & Correction as I truly believe that this process of self-discovery is THE single most important task all traders face, but if I make this post much longer, noone will read it :-) So I will end it here for now with a better understanding of myself (and those parts I’d probably rather not acknowledge but know that I must if I am to be able to continue and grow as a trader).

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