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I'll be honest, for as much as I know and the length of time I've been trading, I am still very prone to mental mistakes.
John Carter said to me when I did the mentorship that my problem was coming up with a trading plan and I should be able to put in words and
A great example if a retracement of a move for a "conservative" entry for possible price continuation in that direct. . |
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wsam, I can relate to the difficulty you are having and the ambivalence you are feeling. I think what it boils down to is that at a very fundamental level you are really unsure whether the probabilities of your method are favorable. You sound a lot like me in many ways. I think the way to be successful as a trader is that you have to have a rock solid belief that you have an edge and the edge has to be quantifiable. You have to continue to study and refine (not curve fit) your method until you are sure the odds are favorable. But you also have to realize that there will still be times when the method will not work well. The trick is to know what is wrong--the method or the timing of using it.
I think the basic stuff is time tested and in our case it's just a matter of consistent execution. It's the Gann/Elliot/moon phase stuff that to me is way out in the weeds. Someone might find using that stuff "works," but I think that is more coincidence than correlation. It's all just some strange way of looking at price or people. Some traders do better when they look at price through three different fun house mirrors at once. If that works for them, more power to them, but to me it's like a baseball player who thinks wearing his high school socks helps his batting average.
There's nothing wrong with filtering your "afraid-they-aren't-better-than-50/50" setups if your filtering method is quantifiable and repeatable. For example, taking pullbacks only if they are up against a helpful support and resistance and so forth. The problem with filtering is that you can overdo it ("I've figured out how to eliminate risk! Don't take any trades!! The holy grail is mine!! Uh...wait a minute."