Get started

Trading Plan

In depth look at continuation bull/bear flag structures/patterns Hello everyone: Welcome back to another quick educational video on price action structures/patterns. Today let's go deeper into the continuation correctional structure. Specifically, the continuation bull/bear flag structure. First it's important to understand that a bullish/bearish flag is a continuation correction. They are representing a correctional phrase of the price action, before resuming the previous impulse phrase. As price action traders, we must be able to identify what correction we are seeing. This will allow you to get ahead and make your forecasting so you are prepare to any potential entries Second, bullish/bearish flag correction will appear in any time frames, any markets, and in different sizes. Typically a flag correction will have at least 2 swing highs and 2 swing lows and relatively even and proportion in angle or length. They can be slightly slanted or very parallel to each other. Remember the market is not perfect, it wont always present us picture perfect, textbook structures. Thirds, So its important to understand multi-time frame analysis, top down approach. A LTF bullish/bearish flag may or may not have the potential to start taking off massively due to the higher time frame showing us a conflicting bias. So its important to add as much confluence to your trade as possible. As always, any questions, feedback or comments please let me know :) See you all in my next weekly outlook stream. Thank you
BINANCE:XLMUSDEducation
by jojofang0901
18
How To Become a Consistently Profitable Trader?For those who are relatively new to trading, have you ever thought of giving up? Have you ever felt like trading is so tough or mentally exhausting? Do not give up just yet, believe me that every consistently profitable trader have been through phases where nothing seemed to work. Frustration, depression, sadness, those are merely part of the process, stop being too harsh on yourself. If it was easy everyone would do it, if it was impossible no one would do it. Below are some of the highlights that i have learnt it the hard way throughout my trading journey. 1. Stop complicating things - If you're struggling to find consistency in your performance, its time to filter those indicators on your chart, truly understand the market behaviour and reasonings behind them. Always simplify the process, how could you even make precise decisions if your charts are filled with 'drawings'? Reduce distractions and find out which suits you the most, more isn't necessarily better. 2. Understand yourself - Successful traders know themselves extremely well. List down a set of rules to prevent yourself from self-sabotaging when things aren't going right. Eg. If you are aggressive, you must avoid overtrading and FOMO. If you are overly conservative, you need to simplify your checklists and be confident in your setups. Its all about finding the right balance. 3. Confidence - Self-doubt is dangerous to your consistency. Confidence comes from experience, discipline and backtesting process. Constantly improve yourself through practicing. 4. Consistency - If you think trading is a way to 'get-rich-quick', its just the matter of time where reality hits you. You can't expect to spend only 3 hours a day and becoming profitable in your early stage of trading, you MUST develop a consistent action plan and set up goals that wake you out of the bed early, grinding everyday. If you're willing to put in the work, someday you'll be a great trader. Everyone is unique in their own way, stay positive! Trade safe. Do follow my profile for daily fx forecast & educational content.
KRAKEN:BTCUSDEducation
by TraderNeoh
Pro Candlestick Analysis Method! MUST KNOW FOR SUCCESS!!!Pro Backtest Method: STUDY CANDLESTICK BEHAVIOUR - You should know what type of candle your ideal entries are taken based on momentum/rejection. - To help with in the moment decision making before entry and avoiding impulse entries try this; 1. Open Chart During your preferred session and timeframe. Look to see if market conditions are similar to your strategies ideal conditions e.g. Creating a LH and rejecting the level. 2. Watch how those Candles unfold and record their behaviour and how they are shaped at specific times through out. e.g. 30m candle, record its shape at 10min, 20min, 25min and the final 5mins 3. When Candle closes, record the outcome and take a note as to whether this candle is the sort of candle you would enter based upon. Repeat this everyday or whenever the conditions are right. 4. You will soon start to see patterns which lead to specific candlestick close outcomes, then you can confidently determine this in real time and avoid entering on an impulse.
Education
by adamhylandnew1
5
HOW-TO If you get two MTP Setups on the same BarIn this help Tutorial, I would like to cover what to do if you get two different MTPredictor Trade Setups on the same Bar. As explained in the video, this can arise sometime because we have two Scripts, one containing our Standard MTP Trade setups, the other containing our Advanced MTP Trade Setups. We have had to code two Scripts to overcome Pine Coding limits. In the video, I cover 3 possible trade management strategies, based on how experienced or aggressive a Trader you are. Every Trader is different, and will have a different Trading Plan that is individual to them. The first strategy is for the more conservative, or risk adverse, Trader who may look to consider the neatest Profit Target to look to come out of the market earlier. The second, more aggressive, Trader may wish to look to use a further out Target of the Wave 3 swing as calculated in the MTP Advanced Trade setup Script. The last option is to use the Higher Time Frame Chart, which in this case would be the Daily DP support zone. As you can see, there is no "one size fits all" in Trading, we are all different and have different levels of experience as well as different risk profiles. As such, it is important that we develop our own, and unique, Trading Plan that fits us, only then can we apply it time and time again in the markets. I hope this video has helped and given some guidance as to how to handle the situation if you get two different MTPredictor Trade Setups on the same Bar. Please note: this is not a trade recommendation, you should all perform your own Analysis. Losses can and will unfold when Trading, please always uses Stops and keep your losses small.
Education
by MTPredictor
What role does strategy play in trading?Sunzi begins by establishing the importance of strategy. Although the word bing has been translated as "war" in most works in the west, once you approach the original Chinese manuscripts and the sense of Sunzi's work, you immediately come to understand that he was not talking about warefare, instead, Sunzi wants us to appreciate how important it is to develop strategic skills to avoid our own destruction when competing. Of course trading is man-made, but competition is a natural process. We are all the products of evolutionary competition, however, the true skill in competition—that is, an understanding of strategy—is not inborn. For most of us, competition creates problems, but only in the sense that if we don’t understand strategy, life is unnecessarily difficult. We earn our livelihood, love, and everything else through strategy. When we say that skill in strategy is important in our lives, we are saying specifically that strategy is a skill. It isn’t inborn any more than the knowledge of mathematics is inborn. We must learn strategic skills. We develop these skills by working at them. Some people are more comfortable competing than others are, but to become successful at any level of competition we all have to work. Competition in trading brings out the best in us. It enriches the world in which we live. It replaces less effective methods with more effective methods. The trading world competes for every single dollar. In doing so, traders constantly improve their operational choices and decrease the costs of their operation. Competition eliminates poorly developed traders and and leaves only the best in each category. So, do you really have what this vast compettition arena requires?
CME_MINI:ESH2021Education
by SunziTrader
1
Bitcoin - DCA - The best strategy for most In this publication, I want to make a case for Dollar Cost Averaging (DCA) and explain why for most traders, it is by far the most profitable strategy. Rather than buying and selling BTC whenever you see a potential top or bottom, or trade with leverage. Let's travel back in time to the end of 2017, everybody is talking about bitcoin and this is how you heard about it. You get very excited about it, but you don't want to analyse markets, you want to invest in this coin because you believe it has a promising future. So you decide that you will put 100$ in it every month on the first day of the month and not look back, starting on Jan 1st 2018, pretty much at the top of BTC price. Bitcoin starts its decline, hovering some time around 6000 USD/BTC, but you keep investing, because you are smart and understand that you will get even more sats (1/100.000.000 BTC) for your dollar. More bang for the buck as it were. You just stick to your 100S/month investment plan, even through the dip to the 3500$/BTC lows in Jan/Feb 2019. So how much BTC would you have by now, how much would you have invested and how much would it be worth after (almost) 3 years ... In other words, what is your ROI ? Total investment : 3600 USD Total BTC accumulated : 0.48910342 Current Value : 13450 (BTC price of 27500 USD/BTC) ROI : 274% So, even though you started buying BTC, pretty much at the previous top, you still managed to get a return of 274% over a 3 year period. Now, tell me how many actively trading people will have made that return, even with leverage ? Q : Is it too late starting to invest 100$/month in BTC now that we have reached current prices ? A : Keeping in mind the current demand for BTC, mainly from institutional investors, the future for BTC is looking bright, and chances are that we'll even exceed those 274% in 3 years. The S2F and S2Fx models from PlanB predict a bitcoin price of somewhere between 100.000 and 288.000 USD/BTC by the end of 2024. Worth investing 100$/month ? Please note that this is not financial advice, do your own research and only invest money that you can afford to lose. Keep in mind that past performance is no guarantee for the future. Thanks for sharing your thoughts in the comments below, and if you found this useful, give it a like. Hope to see you back soon. Happy New Year and all the best wishes for 2021 and beyond!
Editors' picks
BNC:BLXEducation
by Nico.Muselle
82
Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas!The holidays are here and we want to send our biggest thank you to everyone. The daily support, feedback, and outreach is invaluable. Thank you! 🙏 During this time, we're reminded of how important it is to be thankful. 2020 has been a challenging year, but together, we can make 2021 much better. Our goal is to continue building a platform that gives anyone, no matter your location, instant access to the highest performing tools, data, and charts. As a way to continue spreading the love, write what you're thankful for in the comments below. It could be something new you learned, a great trade you made or even someone you follow for unique ideas and insight. That's right, go ahead and make someone's day by tagging their username in the comments. P.S. Open the TradingView mobile app and shake it. Then watch what happens. 😁❄️
Editors' picks
NASDAQ:TSLAEducation
by TradingView
70
In depth look into double tops/bottoms price action structures Merry Christmas everyone: Hope everyone is well and healthy, and enjoy the holiday season as much as we can :) Back here with another quick educational video on price action structures/patterns. I am going to go into detail on double tops/bottoms type of price action. Many of you have asked me to elaborate more on what double tops/bottoms truly mean, and they sometimes get confused with a support/resistance. I will go into more detail on this topic to clarify the differences. In addition, I will bring out some different examples in the market, and demonstrate how I see double tops/bottoms the way that works for my trading and its analysis. How I confirmed what a true double tops/bottoms is, and how to look for potential entries once you see them form. Understanding that multiple time frame analysis, nature of the market plays a big role to determine if the double tops/bottoms are “valid” and to give us more confidence to enter a position. The higher the time frame, the more significant it is to that double tops/bottoms and the potential reversal move from it. As always, any questions or feedback please let me know. Merry Christmas and happy new year everyone :) Thank you Jojo
OANDA:US30USDEducation
by jojofang0901
12
We've added 100+ years of price history for gold and silverThe team at TradingView is committed to building a platform that gives you the best charts, data, and visualizations for better decision making. Today, we're happy to show you two new data feeds that we've expanded for those who want to see the history of gold and silver. You can now chart over 100 years of price history for gold and silver. As two of the oldest precious metals and essential to the evolution of currencies and trade, we believe these additional years will be invaluable for long-term precious metal traders and enthusiasts. See gold or silver in short-term time frames or long-term time frames going back as far as 1915. To get started, type GOLD or SILVER into your search box. You can also use the two links we've included below for quick viewing: • See a live gold chart • See a live silver chart We hope you enjoy these expanded datasets and if you want us to add even more data for a specific ticker, please write it in the comments. Our team will do their best to add it for you. Thanks for reading!
Editors' picks
TVC:GOLDEducation
by TradingView
51
Trader Profile - Asking Yourself The Right Questions1. YOUR TRADER PROFILE The first thing most traders will have to do is build a portfolio, this process is more complex than just choosing what assets to trade, and in order to build a good portfolio you will need to find your trader profile, which can be determined by asking yourself the following questions: What is your initial capital? What is your targeted return rate? What is your risk aversion? What is the investment horizon? What is your availability? All these questions are related to each other, and as such, it can be difficult to find non-conflictive answers to them. The following sections give information about the theme of each question so that you may more easily identify your trader profile. 1.1 Initial Capital The initial capital you are willing to invest is an important matter, again we could ask ourselves various questions to determine it, but let's go with a simpler approach. A low capital can have a wide variety of effects. Capital is directly related to buying power, and a low buying power will result in the trader being unable to trade certain assets, but more importantly, it comes with a reduced ability to diversify a portfolio, and as a result, makes traders unable to lower their risk level. Leverage can increase buying power without having to have higher capital but it involves significantly increased risk. Having a low capital also means potentially reducing the lifetime of your portfolio since you won't be able to tank more losses, thus conflicting with your investment horizon target. Certain markets are more accessible than others for traders with low capital, this is the case of the forex and cryptocurrency markets that offer high leverages compared to the stock markets. 1.2 Risk/Returns Risk/returns are two correlated concepts, the more returns you expect from an investment, the more risk you are taking, an investment with large potential profits and low risk does not exist. Knowing your risk aversion is crucial if you want to build a good portfolio, and you will need to choose this level in coherence with the other aspects of your trader profile. Financial instruments all have a different risk/return ratio, and it is important to choose them wisely based on your profile. It is also possible to mix various financial instruments in your portfolio, this is a good way to reduce risk, as such you can have a portfolio consisting of 60% derivatives (futures, options...) and 40% bonds. 1.3 Investment Horizon Your investment horizon will be a huge factor of your success in trading, certain traders focus on long term trading, holding positions for years, and will use the buy and hold strategy. Others might hold a position from several days to several months, they are often defined as "swing-traders". Finally, some traders might open and close positions within one trading day, and as such are named "day-traders", a particularly well-known type of day-traders are scalpers, who usually hold positions for only several minutes. Most beginners in trading will start day-trading, and a lot will try scalping, however, it must be noted that the shorter your investment horizon is, the more difficult it will be to be consistently profitable. This has various reasons, one of them is that shorter-term investments require more precise timing, also you are expecting smaller profits than ones you would get using longer-term investments, thus encouraging a trader to use higher leverage, thus maximizing risk, also opening a high number of positions will mean you will lose more from frictional costs (commission, spread...), and since your profits will mostly be smaller, frictional costs will have a higher impact on your profit margin. We strongly advise beginners to stay away from scalping. 1.4 Availability Trading requires time and effort, and it is impossible not to be involved with your positions (even when everything is automated). However, some users will still have more time than others. Traders will have to do certain tasks: Monitor existing positions Execute orders Research for information Users who can allocate a majority of their time to trading will be able to build & update more advanced portfolios and do shorter-term trades, however, traders with less time will often have to seek longer-term trading styles such as swing trading. Conclusion Trader profiles will vary across every trader and understanding the importance of asking yourself the right questions to identify your own trader profile will likely help you overall increase your chances of success in trading. Thank you for reading!
BNC:BLXEducation
by LuxAlgo
7
#1 Trading Psychology : Accept Losses Its Part of the Process.I'm sure many of you have experienced this before. Me included. The market moves against you, so you extend your stop loss. The market moves against you again, so you extend your stop loss again, thinking that the market will reverse in your favor. We all know what happened next. The market never reversed and you lost a huge chunk of your capital. It is very important to respect your stop losses and let the market take you out so that you will not have to take the mother of all losses.
Education
by mbn_global
6
How to scale into the impulsive phrase of the market condition? Hello everyone: I want to go over an important topic of scaling into the market. This is something more advanced in my opinion, and should be used cautiously when applicable. First you will need to understand that it's important to fully accept the risk when you try to scale in a trade. Essentially you are doubling down on a trade when you do so. What is your risk management when it comes to scaling in ? Second thing to watch out for is managing your first initial position. I would generally move my SL to at least BE or in 1:1 profit. This way even if the second trade that I scale in end up to be a lost, I am BE overall on the two trades. Third point to remember is before you scale in the trade, is there enough R:R to justify it? No random entries just because there is a continuation correction on the 5 min chart as an example. Some price action must be present and give you enough confidence that the price is likely to continue from a structure, and then look to scale in the trade. Any questions or comments please let me know :) Thank you
Education
by jojofang0901
12
Be smart. Be an OTP.I do not know anyone in any field that is successful by doing everything. The average hedge fund is diversified, sure, but first of all they start in 1 area then diversify by learning more and hiring people, and second they underperform, they diversify to reassure investors but this is bad. You'll sometimes see them on tv acting knowledgeable. They are not high performance athletes they are investment merchants that make money from fees their clients pay them. The best all go to private mgmt, they manage their own money, and/or the money of a couple of high net worth individuals, sometimes of a single ultra high net worth individual. Masters: Patient Noobs: Chase anything that moves, you don't make money if you're not in the market duh! It is so mind boggling to see these youtube day gamblers with their little screens with 20+ tickers on here, and switch from 1 to another. There is a simple strategy that can be applied to all stocks but pros don't know about it, and these guys sell it for a few hundred bucks, and why do they sell it? Well because it does not scale duh! Except it scales since they can trade all stocks with a simple rince & repeat strategy (if they can do 20 in a day it is simple), but they are too stupid to think of scripting it and scaling to hundreds of stocks, maybe someone should tell them. What will the next excuse be "Oh but it only works if the stock was in the news", ok then use a bot that reads the news "yes but...". Those Robinbros & TikTokers really crack me up. A lot joined in 2019-2020. They're just so bad. You hear daily the craziest nonsense. They just gamble on everything that moves. It's one big casino to them. In the masters there is 1 exception that is not really one: quants. They find several strategies and scale them to as many tickers as possible, as many asset classes as they can. But even then they are in a way OTPs. Let me explain: RenTec does incredible with the medallion fund. But their other funds are mediocre. Hey a professional basketball player got knocked out by a youtuber recently. He is a pro athlete and would destroy him at basketball, but he is not a boxer. Masters are specialists. Low tier novices are generalists. We need to be smarter than the rest, we need to play on home field, we need to analyse a whole lot of info, we need to accumulate much knowledge, we need to watch our trades very carefully, this is accomplished by being a specialist, not possible to outsmart millions of people and watch baskets of eggs carefully if there are 5 baskets of 10 eggs. Unless you cheat (insider info, front running,...) money is made by being smarter, better informed. A childish argument made by small minds trying to look smart (professors of economics...) is that "hey everyone has access to the same info so this is why I cannot make money". Everyone had access to the same info concerning Redemsivir. An expensive inefficient toxic garbage product. Yet many thought it would be "the cure". 2017-2019 the S&P 500 & DJIA kept going up and down "trade war hopes" and "oh no trade war escalation". And 2020 was "Covid will kill everyone and we have to shut down everything" crash followed by "cure hope" recovery. Small minds with pompous scholar titles have said the stock market was irrational, and they came up with an excuse "well softbank whale, no one could know this". Except we have known all along that endless hordes of individual investors were entering the market. The tik tok investor phenomenon skyrocketed. We know these investors are not very smart. And we know when this happens, prices go up. Even very bearish conditions will get crushed under the weight of the gigantic dumb money herd. We also knew the FED overheated the money printer. Somehow Nouriel the Nobel Prize at the bottom in March-April was still calling for zero haha what a guy, his specialty is posing as a scholarly authority figure, not making predictions and not making money. This guy is such a clown. Why is it the "serious people" are so often such clowns? In hindsight it is simple. But hey I waited for a pullback and when it happened in september I bought, not hindsight. I was not active with US indices in 2020 before that buy because it is not my specialty, just a bonus side thing. Now there is a risk, many novices joined, I do not know if the tik tok wave is over. US tensions are still here, now Antifa and Proud boys are regularly fighting, it's like 1931 Germany. So perhaps after the "trade deal" era and "covid hopes" era, the next era will be civil war fud. Yes sure right now it is taboo and "woooo the conspiracy theory" but just you wait, tomorrow it might be the new thing. An one trick pony yes, but one tricks can & should have a small side weapon For my part on average I have around: 80% of my activity in Major currencies (Including the Swedish Krona & Chinese Yuan - offshore Renminbi) 15% of my activity in CME commodities (Oil, Gold, Copper, Grains) 5% in other areas, it is really tiny (US & EU indices, Bitcoin) I am not ultra familiar with what I trade, it's not like a second nature, but I am familiar enough to be very comfortable and knowing most of the ins & outs, I do not have to ask myself all sorts of questions when I look at one of my charts. And of course, I don't trade them all at the same time. In October and November 1/3 of my trades concerned the AUD. 20% were NZD trades. And it's all the same 2 strategies over and over. If I could only trade Forex I would do great. The rest is extra. And if FX got banned (because so many retail investors lose, because of a new Bretton Woods), I could bounce back, I would not do great but I'd have something to play with, I would try to expand how many commodities I trade, but I would not start from zero, I would have to learn new futures (that I already know a bit about) while resting on a solid (not exceptional but solid) base made up of Gold Oil Copper, in an area I am moderately familiar with. My favorite thing is to be an OTP with 1 "champion" that you play over and over and over, but with a secondary champion that you are decent with. I repeat: Novices and eternal losers are jacks of all trades. Winners are one tricks. When we look at the 2 extremes of the investing world we see on one side the novice, the absolute noob, that is a jack of all trades master of none, they know nothing about trading (they think they do), they get bored quickly by 1 stock or crypto then jump to another, they keep jumping around, they trade so many different things, the worse (and funniest) extreme fail example is when they know NOTHING about futures and see $1 Oil then somehow their ego is so big they think there is an incredible opportunity but no one noticed it's just them, and so they buy, and then the price falls to -40 and they lose 5000% of their money; and on the other side you find experts that only trade 1 thing, some of those may be lucky (gold millionaires), but there is quite a trend with OTPs that get successful. The more you go towards novices the more you will see huge "diversification", the more you look at professionals the more narrow it gets, with billionaires (not just BRK) that are happy with 2-3 stocks. Honestly, how is it possible to be a crypto investor since 2015 and STILL BE BROKE! These clowns are bad and they have no clue what they are doing, AND they hop around different cryptos over and over. Which reminds me of something. Warren Buffett said "put all your eggs in the same basket and watch it closely", and don't touch it. Of course lazy get rich quick investors turned that into "buy and forget". Are any of those pilots? Imagine. Take off, then direct the plane towards the destination, then go play the PS5. "Ye just take off and forget". A pilot isn't changing direction all the time, but he is watching closely instruments, and correcting if need be. Bad investors either don't watch at all and then it is gambling and a terrible pilot, or they watch closely and change direction all the time and do freaking loopings and panic when the passengers knock at the door until they just jump with a parachute (or without sometimes "oh no my wife is going to kill me"). Successful people: - Are specialists - Learn everything there is to know about their specific subject and surrounding ones - Practice their subject over and over and over and over all week long for years. - Often have a secondary activity (5 to 25% of main) - Know everything about the 1 thing, but also know a little about everything (in the periphery) Armies have a selection process for basic soldiers. They have (had) to survive "shark" attacks and they must be smart enough and able to perform certain fitness tasks. Snipers are specialized expert riflemen of sufficient rank that have several qualities, go through rigorous training and pass excellence tests. According to figures released by the US Department of Defense, the average number of rounds expended in Vietnam to kill one enemy soldier with the average grunt M-16 was 50,000. The average number of rounds expended by U.S. military snipers to kill one enemy soldier was 1.3 rounds. That's a cost difference of $23,000 per kill for the average soldier, vs. $0.17 per kill for the military sniper. Yes the M-16 includes suppressive fire and everything but still. Snipers have 1 job. And that's all they do. You won't see them get to the location, and once here you won't see them you won't hear them you won't smell them. They'll prepare and they will wait for as long as it will take. But snipers learn and have skill about more than just 1 thing than just aiming and shooting, first of all they went through basic training duh, and they know a great deal about camouflage, about idk breathing, about weapons, about aiming, moving silently, exiting after taking the shot, and more (like FX traders kind of look at every other asset and not just central bank press releases and the 3 month chart but everything: other currency pair charts, various timeframes, the things everyone else looks at which is US elections and covid, other asset classes, and so on). The typical Tik Tok investor will tell you "this has nothing to do with...". Remember the scene in starship troopers? "Sir, I don't understand. What good's a knife in a nuke fight? All you have to do is press a button, sir.". "Put your hand on that wall, trooper.". He sure learned his lesson. Novice investors... Always trying to make it as easy as lazy as possible, and always chasing anything that moves. Those reasons are why you should be smart and be an OTP.
Education
by MrRenev
2
Documenting Your Trades (For Fun and Profit)How do you document your trades? In a spreadsheet? In a trading journal? Directly on the chart? How much is too much? How little is not enough? I say you need to document enough to tell the story properly. Every trade tells a story. As with all good stories you have a protagonist and an antagonist. Good guys and bad guys. The hero and the villain. And then, there's the journey. In the markets you are the hero and the market is the villain. One way I make trading "fun" and what helps me "tell the story of the trade" is to "Trade Like a Pirate" and use the vocabulary of Jack Sparrow. I have already written on this topic when it comes to analyzing profit targets (seizing treasure and plunder) but let's look at how we learn what we did on a trade by trade basis. When you do an after-the-trade analysis (what I call a postmortem) you should be able to see what you did right, what you could have done better, but most importantly, what you may have done wrong; not to beat yourself up, but to make sure that you *never* make that mistake or repeat that behavior again. (Fool me once, shame on you... fool me twice, shame on me!) For instance, I once lost three trades in a row and asked "How the heck did that happen?" and later when I looked at the actual trade screenshots I realized that both my trading timeframe and trend timeframe was the same! Somehow instead of having my charts on the 60-15 minute charts they were *both* 15 and I realized if I had my chart timeframes right I would have never entered those particular trades, saving me from experiencing those losing positions. Thanks to those trades, though, and thanks to my post-mortem analysis, the first item on my "pre-flight checklist" is now "Verify Trade Timeframes." Thanks to journaling and the postmortem process I'm *never* going to make *that* mistake again. But what about the *psychology* of the trade? *Why* did you enter it, *what* were you thinking once you were in it, *why* did you adjust your stop, *why* did you choose your target, *what* might you have done out of fear that got you out of the trade early or prevented you from realizing as much profit as you could have? Journaling your trade, or documenting the trade *properly* will help you with that. In the example above you can see a recent trade that presented itself to me and my pirate "Crew" in the Gasoline Futures market. I talk about the "weather conditions" before getting into the trade (the wind and the tide), other environmental factors like the "shark feeding frenzy area" helping me decide where I will target my profit (there be treasure *here*), what was going on when the trade actually entered, and finally, managing the trade to my target. In addition, during the postmortem I found an opportunity where if I had used a trailing stop, I could have gotten an additional 42% profit, or 'treasure'. As I mentioned in my Backtesting series, one of the reasons you backtest is that through repetition, you can often find patterns in your system that will prompt you to tweak it to either *improve* results or *eliminate* inefficiencies. In this same manner, through repetition in documenting your trades you may very well find a pattern of behavior that is holding you back from your full potential. For example, In the trade above, after securing 3R, (the minimum I am willing to take in a trade), if I followed price using my trailing stop strategy instead of a target, I found that I could have made an additional 2-3R profit. What if after documenting 20, 30, 40+ trades I find a similar pattern, that I am often "leaving money on the table"? I can then test several exit strategies to see which ones would give me the biggest bang for my buck and increase my R per trade. The other big benefit of having your trade journal "tell a story" rather than "state facts" is you begin to *personify* the market and see it as someone who exhibits certain behavior patterns, and that is what the markets present to us every day: PATTERNS. And if you can determine someone's patterns, you can predict their behavior. If I know that whenever my wife is browsing through a jewelry catalog and consistently goes "ooh" or "aah" over earrings with blue stones in them, I can guess with a high degree of accuracy that if I buy her a set of sapphire earrings she (and consequently*I*) will be a happy person. Likewise, if I can predict with a high degree what "Mister Market" is going to do based on certain patterns, I can keep setting sail, with confidence, day after day and see gains in my trading account (which makes me, my crew, and most importantly the missus, HAPPY! (Because when momma's happy, everybody's happy!). Trade well! (And Journal Well!) PS: Let me know how your journaling journey goes in the comments! I'd love to know how it "upped your trading game!" You can only improve what you analyze! -Anthony
NYMEX:RBF2021Education
by ocaptain
8