Mike,
I’ve been lately having a hard time executing my trades properly. I find the setups, my analysis is correct, yet myfingers don’t follow up with my brain!
I wrote a blog post about it, and reach out to you to tell me what you think could be done.
Hopefully you’ll have time to look at it and perhaps ask your crew to throw on eye on it as well.
Many regards,
Bella Responds
This is excellent work!
1) You are doing an all-star job of reviewing your work.
2) You found your weakness.
3) You are willing to work on your weakness.
4) You are searching for a solution-based plan to your weakness.
I almost do not want to write anymore. All of this above is the secret sauce to becoming a CPT (consistently profitable trader). It’s not some fancy new play, or some never-gonna-work For You new technique where a bunch of indicators cross. It’s the awesome mindset.
During our post-Open recap I challenged one of our new traders to have a better detailed plan for an Unusual Hold on the Offer trade. I do the same to you. Picture me staring your down, with a classroom of eyes affixed on you to explain your lack of detail 🙂 Ok so you found the FCX trade. You stated there was no reason to exit. What are the reasons for you to exit for that trade? This will help you not to exit the next time you are in a similar trade. Trying to figure this out all mid-trade is a lack of preparation and leads to decisions unbecoming of your ability.
So make that list. And keep working on your game. Great stuff! Love the blog.
Mike Bellafiore
Author, One Good Trade
2 Comments on “Traders Ask: Any Advice on these Trades?”
Also, on a purely psychological point-of-view, you should ask yourself what makes you get out of these trades too early. Often, it is the fear of losing or seeing the trade reversing against you that is causing this behaviour. The root cause might be a lack of confidence in a setup (= you need to test it more, in safer conditions like simulation or “harmless position size” e.g. 1 share), an oversized position (= reduce it “to the sleeping point” as Jesse Livermore would say 😉 ), a lack of stop, etc…
You might also want to try to detect your fear in real-time, during the trade. Because if you manage to do that, you will be able to ask yourself “hey, what am I afraid of ?” Sometimes fear is justified (the trade is not acting “as it should”, maybe something has changed, etc…) but sometimes it’s just the natural response of our brain or body to uncertainty and risk. In the latter case, an objective reassessment of the market conditions will help you determine if the trade is still valid.
Good luck with all this !
Excellent point, thank you.
Through all the fantastic feedback I have received, I am confident these issues will dissipate.
Detecting fear in real-time is the biggest point. Often, when we enter a fearful state, our ability to detect this fear vanishes, another form of tunnel vision. I have become aware of such states and have made it my top priority “fix”. Many thanks!