My evolution as a trader is for everyone to scrutinize on this very diary. From the depths of despair to absolute hopelessness by using a completely shaky trading system that followed no set rules, that followed no defined instruments to trade, entering and exiting trades just because I was on a whim and hoped and expected price to crash or to go up because of some arbitrary reason that only existed in my mind, I committed all sorts of amateur mistakes. Over time I have matured and stopped committing those mistakes.
I am also not here for the business of teaching a method. It is something I have arrived at after nearly 5 years of blood letting and losing a lot of my hard earned money to the markets just because I did not have a direction. I was a mess until that point in time for following unsteady and shaky ground methods that followed no defined rules for entries and exits.
I now have a money making coca cola formula that gives me a superb strike rate and minimises my perceived set of risks. I arrived at it after a lot of pain. I am surely not expected to hand it out on a platter to someone. You cannot simply walk into Elon Musk's office and ask him the design patents to the Space X reusable Space Dragon rocket. This is the same. The allegory fits perfectly fine because it is as much disruptive. It is not my problem that this viewpoint does not agree with yours and causes mental and emotional distress.
If someone wants to peruse this diary, let it be from a trading psych point of view. One of our esteemed and highly distinguished members - madankumar has said that "
psychology is like a finger print and is unique". I cannot agree with that viewpoint more. One can have a great method but with the absence of proper discipline and erratic behavior it is bound to collapse like a house of cards. I might post one odd chart from time to time on this diary but even that is besides the point. The main focus is on the trading psych side of things and having an internal locus of control.
So the following is my approach and I repeat this is my approach to trading: (I am adapting this from a previous post of mine -
https://www.traderji.com/community/threads/afins-trading-diary.108034/page-11#post-1383481)
1. Have 1 to 2 scrips for tracking and execute trades only based on those two.
2. Stick to your defined method and do not multi task and most importantly wait for entries to happen.
3. Follow a mechanical system and then scale it up exponentially- one will be surprised at the quantum leaps made. Scale can and will only be achieved by means of having a mechanical system.
Finally a quote to sign this off:
“At any rate, concerning our question about discretionary versus quantitative traders: Between 1996 and 2001, the average annual return on the systematic (or quantitative) group was 7.12 percent, versus only 0.58 percent for the discretionary group. What’s more, the systematic index outperformed the discretionary index in five out of six years in the test period. These statistics suggest that we may want to focus our trading on the systematic side.”
Lars Kestner, in
Quantitative Trading Strategies.