Followers

Thursday, December 11, 2008

THANK YOU ALL from the bottom of my HEART!!!

I want to thank everybody for the votes and those that took the time to write in and gimme their words and feedback. It's ALL helpful. I was gonna reply to each one personally but i figured this would be a good Post discussion.

So, where should i start:

first of all, my partner would be ok with the idea as long as i am trading the account and making money but the whole reason why i have been contemplating this idea is b/c i have altered my trading to where i am most active in the first 30 min and final hour of the day. So the rest of the day i am just scanning, blogging, sleeping, chatting on wallstreak or watching TV.
this is time that can be used to do something i truly enjoy and it's teaching people who WANT TO LEARN to trade. I hate trying to teach someone who is not willing to learn or wants an easy way out.

Since i started trading i have ALWAYS been a part of a trading service and i see a lot of value in some of them, most of them are a waste of money and time. i have literally tried a good dozen different services, from zanger's chartpattern, to straight breakout trading letters to elliott wave trading letters and dozens of others. The combination of all these definitely helps but i found some to be more valuable than others.

Replying to the anonymous reader who said that trading is ALL "bunch of bullshit", i used to say the same words when i first started trading. Trading is THE MOST frustrating way to make money. It is inconsistent and unpredictable. The only thing you can predict is how YOU will react to given market. for example: I am a momo trader so when i see lots of big movement and strong directional one sided movement, i get VERY AGGRESSIVE and PILE on big trades and ride out bigger profits and that's how i made most of money this year, just by having 4-5 really strong months. My best month this year I booked about 80K. My worst month i think i was down 25K. I had a couple of disastrous months and i blogged about it a while back.
The learning part of trading is "bullshit" i agree with you but please also remember and this is something you RARELY ever hear people talk about, is that NOT EVRYBODY IS MADE TO TRADE!! When was the last time you heard someone tell you that??!! Trading is NOT for everyone! Can i be a lawyer? NO WAY! I do not have the patience nor the book smarts to sit down and study for hours on end and take the time to understand legal terms and confront someone in court etc etc. Some find this fit to their personality. Trading is made for the MOST DISCIPLINED, those that follow a plan that was put in place and thought out well, knowing where the entries are, the exits and ability to understand oneself to understand how much size position you can put on without pressing the panic button on every wiggle, the ability to COMPLETELY go against what you imagined to be rational, ability to put on a trade and quickly realize you made a mistake and switch to the other side seamlessly, the ability to admit that YOU HAVE BEEN DEFEATED and it's not your day to make money, take your loss with your head high while it's still a small loss and WALK away because for god's sakes tmrw is a NEW day and the market will give you anotehr shot. nobody makes money every day, the ability to quickly realize when you are dealing with a losing scenario is KEY to long term successful trading.

I am one of those traders who tracks his progress very closely, i do thru my blog and i do thru an excel spreadsheet. This excel sheet as OPENED my eyes and allowed me a window into my trading. I will discuss this spreadsheet at a later time but monitoring your progress is VITAL!!!! how on earth are you gonna be any good if you are not aware where you are making your mistakes???!!!! who is gonna tell you?? me? NO! your dad? NO! your wife? NO! Only by you taking the steps to watch yourself and monitor what you are doing will you start to notice the 'holes' in your trading. Once you start to 'plug' those holes, you can start thinking about building your account and enjoying the profits from trading.


Thank you for reading and PLEASE continue to give me your feedback!!!!! Vote on that poll or even better write to me and tell what's on your mind.


Trade em smart!!

8 comments:

Sia said...

I am very curious to see your excel sheet, I use one myself to keep track of daily info.

My columns are:
Day P/L Commission Fees Total Profit

Mostly to determine my profit after all the fees and keep a track of commission costs. One thing I notice is that a lot of my good days are on low commission days. Once I start losing money it causes me to trade MORE, which I is a natural and BAD BAD reaction. One thing I have learned is that if I limit my losses and do not let them control me, I trade better and with less fear. I just have to ingrain this in my mind and my daily trading.

Stewie said...

SIA" what you just said is GOLD!!!! I will send you a copy of my spreadsheet soon. I have four columns: 1.The Pnl, 2.the disciplined sell, 3. ONH column, and 4. self anaylsis and market commentary column.

column 1 is obvious, column 2 is what happens when i trade what i 'had' to trade and move to cash and call it quits with gains or losses. But that's what when i STOP and walk away, the disciplined sell. Many times, i will break this rule and come back and keep trading, which leads me to over trading more likely than not, it'll eat my gains from the disciplined sell. third column tracks my Pnl from Overnite Holds. Fourth coulmn, i talk about the market and the market conditions and the number of shares i traded etc etc. my body language and my confidence level.

Here is the bottom line from this excel sheet: Over Trading is a NOT FOR ME! I always lose money once i hit the buy sell button too often. There will be days where i make lots of money trading and turning over lots of shares but in the long run, in trading LESS IS MORE!! This week as an example i followed my disciplined sell coulmn and didn't breach once and i managed to book 6k with less than 10 trades. LESS IS MORE. over trading will lead to emotional behavior and we ALL know what emotional behavior will do to your account.

Anonymous said...

Can I please get the spreadsheet as well?

I'm using one, too (doesn't everyone?), and haven't really compared mine to anyone else's. I can send you mine in exchange but doubt you'd learn much from it :)

You could also do a one-time trading review, look at people's trading and let them know what they do wrong. I could use that type of mentoring but don't want a complete course/classes.

Anonymous said...

Stewie, I enjoy your blog from time to time and wanted to thank you for your efforts!

Re trading journal: Comments on trades are very helpful and should be in any trading journal (why did I chose this setup / what did I see / why did it work / why not). Your columns 'disciplined sell' and 'market analysis' sound interesting and I'll have to think about that. Thank you for that thought. I also track risk and reward, e.g. how much capital did i risk for what target profit. But most helpful are really the comments and self observations.
I agree with you on trading services. I used a few and found them somewhat helpful, but it's always like they don't trade my style and I have a hard time to adapt to their style. Therefore I think the most important service would be one to find one's trading style together with the market movers, and let the traders trade their style / set ups.

Salsaman said...

I am so glad you are seriously consider it. I've been nearly everywhere all over the net and frankly; A: Don't trust most of them B: Don't think they have our interest at heart C: No proof any of them actually can trade or made any money. D: I can't think of anyone I would more enjoy paying than you!

Anonymous said...

Good post. I enjoy your blog and would consider a subscription.

Blue said...

I decided to say "Fuck the Daily Tally" and I'm going to be faithful to this for a while. I made over 1,000 trades in 10 months and it's been way too many trades for my personality. I know when I trade like shit and when I try too hard. Make a disciplined, decisive trade, based on the best set up you can find or don't trade. That's my mindset right now. I rather not trade when it's not right than sacrifice money feeling like I have to do something or feeling like I'll miss out on a good trade if I don't jump in. In this market, that feeling has been plain stupid. Actively observing the market is still doing something very meaningful if things don't feel right. It's saved me from making a lot of mistakes I would have otherwise made and I learned a lot from actively watching vs jumping in.

Keeping a tally and watching profit and loss and monitoring trades and watching trend, and looking for set ups, and watching what other people are doing, keeping an eye on the news, etc etc etc. Dude, it's sensory overload for most people let alone people new to trading.

Stewie just about everyone says, "DON'T TRADE THE FIRST 30 MINUTES!" If you have a consistent edge trading the first 30 I think you have a real niche and a sell-able product. Any coaching that is real time would be a niche. One thing FNG does extremely well is show his charts at the point in time he took the trade, then what transpired a few minutes later, and so on. How to spot trend, momentum change, anticipate and react based on a set up, see it unfolding, place the trade, what the exit strategy is, and how to manage the trade. It is a lot to put together when just about all of us have a ton of baggage to un-learn while doing it all. For me trading has been such a great insight into "self" vs learning about the market. It all comes down to YOU. It's one of the few professions where every aspect of the job rely's 100% on YOU. It's so cool in that regard.

The first thing that attracted me to your site was your discussion on the psychology of trading. I think it was a story on the stages of being a trader. The last being total emotional detachment.

You have a knack for simplifying and I think it attracts people to you. How can you produce more with less? Less stress, less noise, less indicators, less bullshit, less news, but not less effort.

I've been a full time trader for 6 months. This has been the most effort intensive and focused job I have ever had. Two years ago I spent 10 months training to be a solo beat police officer in the 11th largest US city. That was easier, much easier than trading full time. I'm up 21% on the year which still isn't enough to live on if I don't continue to improve. Stewie you have shown me the door and I thank you again.

Stewie said...

thanksguys! trust me, get a detailed spread sheet and track everything you have done and be as exact and precise as possible. and look back at that spread sheet while you are nice and chill over the weekend and go thru the scenarios and relive the experience and ask yourself: what did i do RIGHT? and what did i do wrong? when was the last you did that????? be honest.

Blog Archive