Here are some of the things I’ve been thinking about:
The two areas in trading that separate the men from the boys (so to speak) are:
1.) The ability to divide environmental perceptions in half and process them separately. First I ask myself what I am feeling and in doing so I acknowledge and honor the feelings so that they don’t cry out for expression on the chart. Then and only then I ask the market what it is telling me. (I used to combine these two observations; I used to subconsciously deny how I was feeling because I knew it was wrong to let my feelings dictate a trade and so the feelings were bleeding into my technical observations because I had not acknowledged them and honored them.)
2.) The ability to execute according to #1 as if I am even or in the black when I am in the red. If during my 90 minutes of trading (09:30 –
11:00), I’m in the red, usually the feeling is something like “I’m afraid! I want to be in the market! I want to be in a trade!”
re A.N.N.A.:
I realized it’s not enough to intellectually understand ANNA. I had to write my own version of the ANNA software for my own internal hardware. When I learned to ride a bike, even though I’d observed someone else doing it and they told me how, I still had to write the program in my own head about how to balance and pedal. It couldn’t be just an intellectual understanding.
re trading plan rules:
I think that if you need strict rules, you’re not ready to trade cash. Strict rules mean that you’re not in control of your emotional feedback
in a live market. I’m not tape reading and I have general ideas about where I get in a trade (ideally the pullback at the end of a trend) but
I don’t have strict rules because it seems trading is an art not a science.
-Trader Diagnosis