Blowing it open, to the negative side

I got a bit disillusioned, obviously, with the system I was using. I could tell that it was not anywhere near flexible enough to effectively trade a market. Now I've gone completely to the other side and started just looking at the situation with the chart, and doing an impromptu trade from what I think I see. The problem is, I quit observing what is actually going on in my head or the chart and just putting something on. Doesn't work too well. Today I put on about 7 trades, I think, and lost 4, and the other 3 were just small gains. I kept doing the same thing over and over again. Going against the trend in the market, which can be okay, but you need to REALLY look at what's going on. I kept putting on a trade, losing, and then doing the same thing again. I did that like 4 times in a row before finally saying to myself, "I think I better go write in the blog before I go through my entire account.

Now I know everyone says, "you need to establish rules in your trading and STICK TO THEM!" What I think has to happen first is you need to become a good observer, not only of the markets, but of yourself. Otherwise, you'll never realize you are breaking your rules. You just go about your business and start getting madder and madder and not understand why, and when that happens, you get even worse at what you are doing.

Today I was establishing rules in my mind as I was trading, and breaking them almost within the same minute. I have a few hard and fast rules that did definitely save me - one of which is my max stop loss amount. I know I can't change that, because it is tied to the amount in my account. It let me make quite a few mistakes, and still have a substantial amount left to make more mistakes another day (or not!) By the way, that's the only way you learn, you know. Of course, if you have too many lessons in one day, there's no way you're going to remember them all.

Back from our trip

We got back Sunday from driving to Pennsylvania. There wasn't really a funeral and all the details had been taken care of before hand, so there wasn't really a lot to actually do, as when Cathy's brother got burned last spring and we went to help him get better.

We stayed at Cathy's sister's house, which has no internet connection. They used to, but opted, for financial reasons, to keep cable and cancel internet. So, obviously, I couldn't trade during those two weeks, but after I got back I, as closely as I could, tracked what happened those days. Not much good. I've now had 9 losses without a win, and only four break-evens since the last winning trade. Last night I decided to change the system just a bit. I am changing the 1-pip cushion on each side to 7 on the short side and 9 on the long side. I had already added about 2 and a half points to the long side because of the spread, against the advice of the author of this trading plan. Last night's trade would have been a break-even either way. I just noticed that so many of the trades were going down (or up) and just barely grabbing the entry and reversing. I don't know if that is because of a lot of people trading this method or if the author is just full of bullshit about the claim that this method works. It's all I've got right now, though. I'll practice trading this way for a month or so and see if it works. I'm obviously quite a ways off from being able to trade live. That's okay. It will be a couple months at least before I can add to my account. That trip set us back more that $500 at least. I'm not sure we'll be able to pay our mortgage on either property this month. We might take the money and file bankruptcy.