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Gaby

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Posts posted by Gaby

  1. Thanks for all contributions on that topic. I am also not reading any magazine right now and spending all my evening time in updating my analysis and price patterns (I am a part-time trader).  But I wanted to check with other fellow traders if this is also what they do.  The only magazine I really liked is the IBD - but it does not fit with my trading style (I am a scalper, therefore short terms price action is really everything for me....).

    Regards,

    Gaby

     

    • Like 1
  2. Hi there.

    In my first year I lost money; a genuine massacre. But I did not give-up, as I am quite resilient and kept going in trading and losing money again and again in the second and the third year. Until the forth year, where I reached the break-even. Now I am constantly and largely profitable, quarter after quarter, since last 4 years.

    I learnt how to trade the hard way. It is quite a common path, I discovered later reading the Market Wizards - a book I suggest you read - a collection of interviews done by Jack Schwager to a group of worldwide top traders. So funny to discover I was not alone having burnt my account at the beginning of my trading experience.

    The game is complex and lots of things influence your performance, including your emotions when you see the P&L in deep red. For that, it was very helpful to me to discover my limits: how much money I can afford to lose without losing my emotional control, sleeping hours or my temper - I also had moment where I was unpleasant with my family. But this is not acceptable, as you wrote. How much money can I lose without caring? 50 pounds? 500 pounds? 5000 pounds? 50000? It is all personal and you need to ask yourself what is your limit, as this should size your trade. 

    At the end It is a game of probabilities and the more you trade the more you have opportunities to finalize your trading strategy/strategies, selecting only the ones with high probability of success. But nobody is right 100% and some of then will go wrong. Also for the suggestions given by Trade of the weeks: no discounts for anybody. But listen: the market is not fake and nobody is conspiring against you or anybody. Don't take this perspective to quit. There are retail traders (like me) that are constantly making profit.

    The break-even is an outstanding results, as you are - at this point - on the top quartile.  Learning when not to trade  also improved my performance a lot - as you cannot lose when all your positions are closed. As we speak, I am out of all markets and this is average 70% of the time. I take a trade only when all the homework is signalling high probability of success and from the past I scaled down from 20 trades a week to approx 2 or 3. Or sometimes zero.

    For every single trade I also write a lot, in my trading journal. Not just the pre-analysis, why I have selected the trade, the overall risk assessment and the related stop, the target price, all the multi-frame chart analysis . But also I record what happens during the trade: I write how the market is moving, the intensity of waves. And I also record my level of emotional reaction during the trade: from 1 to 10 I want to know if the trade was completely emotional agnostic or if I lost my sleeping. At the end, you need to be a Marine soldier studying every centimeter of the the battle field, to survive. Including you.

    Keep going with just 1 pip per trade - small money, but real trades. Don't give up. Improve your strategy, record your performance and try to understand when and why you have been successful or not.

    One day you will reach the profitability. Good luck.

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