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karoshiman

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Everything posted by karoshiman

  1. Isn't that dependent on what each individual trader has on its screen and is used to look at for 10,000 hours? Otherwise you could not have developed such intuition in the first place. Or are you referring with the "how" in your question to the environment other than your trading screen (e.g. whether you listen to stimulating music while watching the screen or whether you work out before your trading session or whatever helps to free up your mind in order to be alert and able to absorb the maximum amount of information)?
  2. +1 I would not do that either although I trust my intuition a lot. I would just get flat, that's it.
  3. I like that one... I guess, it's only quantifiable in hindsight. One way could be to keep a journal for such situations of conflict between conscious and unconscious competence taking a note on the specific situation and the outcome. By doing that one could determine a "win rate" or even an average profit/loss for the unconscious competence (if it also provides for stops and exits). It would be like an additional profit center in your trading arsenal. You could "paper trade" it for a while, i.e. not taking the trades your unconscious competence wants you to take (but sticking to your conscious comp.) and just taking the notes. That way you could build more confidence in it, after you see the results of a certain amount of trades. Might take a while if it happens not too often... I can not imagine another way to work with it other than the aforementioned journal and to listen to it when it "pops up". Another thing that comes to my mind is that I was thinking about which information exactly is the unconscious competence processing that it is coming up with an opinion on price action. I mean, it has to be something that is on my screen, right? lol I think I know what my brain is processing here but in my case it is difficult to build further rules out of it in order to incorporate it into my trading plan systematically.
  4. Hi Tom, We wrote our last posts (again ) at the same time. I did not see your post #16 (the long one) before I've entered my last one. Relating to the trading example you describe I would not take a trade, if I get a signal based on my methods but my inner voice says it's going the other way. What is the worst that can happen? You miss a profitable trade or you get in maybe a little late (which might still be okay depending on your style). So what? You did not risk anything either. But I trust my intuition very much. I think trust is important. k
  5. Hi Tom, Just saw your last post in the Day Trading the E-mini Futures thread. I don't know what "twinky" means, but I understood that you think others might not have the same issue that you have described relating to your intuition (or whatever one might call it... I stick with "intuition"). I think everybody with a certain amount of experience has this intuition and the more experience you have the stronger the intuition is. But in order to make use of it you have to embrace it. I've learned to trust my intuition in all areas of life and I've made very good experience with it. It might seem illogical why one should listen to his gut feeling, but I've explained this gut feeling to myself as a knowledge base which we have gathered consciously but also unconsciously over many years and which is not available to our conscious mind as it is just too much of information. I've experienced also that our subconscious can combine all this information much quicker than we can do this consciously. I am a semi-discretionary trader, i.e. I have some mechanical rules for my trades, in particular for my entries, but when it comes to my position size, profit targets and stops I use some discretion (although I have rules here too). I experience my intuition in several ways in my trading. One is, I get a strong opinion on a sudden price move out of nowhere which is not based on any of my regular methods. I take this as a scalping play at least. Sometimes I even see then that AFTER I've got this strong opinion I get a signal based on my regular methods, which makes me even more confident and leads me to keep my position longer of course. Other situations are that I get so sure about some of my trades that I increase my position size strongly. However, my intuition kicks in most frequently when it comes to my exits. I often get out of a winning trade prematurely just to see price reverse and move against my original position. But I have to optimize this one, as it was several times only a stronger retracement and price moved later to my original target. But still I could profit from that as I could re-entry later at a more favorable price. I find this subject fascinating and found also some books about it. However, I did not yet have the time to read such books, but plan to do so. Another thing, that comes to my mind on this subject is that - and this is not relating to your personal situation, Tom, as I do not know you, but a more general comment - if the struggle between the conscious and subconscious happens too often or too strong (e.g. your method gives a buy signal, but your inner voice screams "SELL!") one should maybe review their trading style in general. Maybe it is not (anymore?) the right style for a trader or maybe a piece of the puzzle is missing. k
  6. Hi MM, 100% agreed! But now I really understand where my misunderstanding of this thread was... I thought Tom speaks about intuition in contrast to rational reasoning. Whereas your points and those of SIUYA relate to emotions in trading, which is again something different (in this regard my post #12 is misleading as I use the words "feel" or "feeling" as a synonym to "intuition"... will edit it). I have the same view as you and Siuya on the topic of emotions. In fact, I've made a similar comment in another thread on that subject. Relating to the above, I define "intuition" as getting an opinion (better than "feeling" I guess) on something without having a rational explanation for it (commonly known as "gut feeling"... sorry, again the word "feel"...). Whereas emotions comprise "real" feelings like greed, fear, anger, etc. k EDIT: I could not edit my post #12 as there is no "EDIT" button... ??
  7. Hi Siuya, Thank you. I understand the point and agree to that. But I do know now where my "confusion" comes from. I have a different understanding of the subconscious. I've quoted the parts of your post to which I relate here. "Taking yourself out of the equation" is a good thing, but it is a willful act. Hence, it is based on the conscious mind. It has nothing to do with your subconscious. Or, you can not KNOW what the subconscious is focused on (the market or how you feel or whatever), otherwise it would be no subconscious. In the next sentences you speak about "thinking", and that to me is also the conscious mind and not the subconscious. The subconscious to me, is what I FEEL at the moment and what I can not explain on a rational level (maybe I can explain it later after thorough analysis). It's gut feeling, not brain thinking... I agree 100% to your last sentence and your analogy with bike riding. I sometimes do have a "feel" about things and these feelings are very accurate, although I can not explain these rationally. However, I've learned to trust my feel/intuition, whether it is in trading (e.g. getting out of a trade prematurely and suddenly markets go against my original position) or other areas of my life. I think that intuition is in today's world a very much overlooked power... having said this... may the force... er... feel be with you!
  8. How about this one: YOU SHOULD TRADE ONLY WITH MONEY THAT YOU CAN AFFORD TO LOSE I hate this one in particular! This is so stupid. This implies, that such amount of money is not REALLY important to you. What happens, if you trade with money that is not really important to you, is that you will very probably lose it. If you trade with such mindset it becomes almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. At least I was there. I've started to trade with money that I can "afford to lose" and I've lost it all. Okay, it doesn't have to happen to everyone, but the likelihood of failure increases from my point of view. I became profitable in my trading when I could NOT afford to lose my money anymore because I have to earn my living expenses. There might be a coincidence, of course, but I think it is more a matter of motivation.
  9. Hi MM, I am not sure whether I understand your points correctly... Anyone who has a decent amount of success in this business can assert that it is important to find a trading style that fits your personality. But how do you want to do this without knowing yourself? Okay, maybe there are some beginning traders out there who already know themselves so well that it is easy for them to find the right trading style for them. But I would bet that the majority of beginning traders are not in that position. My experience is that trading brings the worst sides of you to the surface and confronts you in a brutal way with your shortcomings. Especially, as trading requires a skill set that is in certain ways very much different than the skill set you need to succeed, for instance, in the corporate world (the only same "skill" required in both that comes to my mind right now is hard work). That's what I've learned about myself. Only after accepting my shortcomings I was able to work on finding a trading style that works best for me. So, for me, trading is indeed like a journey to myself. And I would even say that trading made me a more humble person in general. But the individual experiences might differ here, of course. But "looking for something that just is not there" is YOUR mistake. You should not hate trading for that. You can hate trading if you stick to your rules (if you have precise rules, of course) and still make too many losses in a row. That's two different things for me. But anyway, I might misunderstand your point here and you seem to be successful with your mental approach to your trading. And that's the only thing that counts! I've just wanted to share what came to my mind when I've read your comments. k
  10. Such person might have no trading buddies to talk about their profession. I mean, it's different if you talk to your girlfriend/wife/friends of you who are not involved in trading albeit they might be interested to listen to you about your trading compared to people who are going through the same problems or experience the same success as you experience(d), even if they are not as experienced as you are. In addition, it's cool if you can lend a helping hand. Just two reasons that came to my mind... PS: By the way, I enjoy your posts very much, Steve, also some of your older posts which I have read, although I'm on this forum for a short time yet.
  11. Hi Tom, did not see your reply yet. Some repetition here by me... have to write faster or stop writing novels... k
  12. Hi Obsidian, This depends on your style. I am a semi-discretionary intraday trader and not a news trader (some are) and I generally try not to take on positions 30 minutes before news events (i.e. scheduled economic indicators to be released). However, there are some exceptions, in particular, if I get very strong signals so that I get the "feeling" that the market has already made up its mind and the release is only relevant if major surprises occur. But in these situations I check the release for any such surprise against the trend and I might exit immediately after such negative surprise to protect myself until the dust settles. But this "feeling" is based on experience. For a beginning trader I would suggest to stick to the 30 min. rule and watch how markets react, until you get a good feel as well. Then there are events I personally call "big news events", such as interest rate decisions, FOMC statements, non-farm payrolls, or the greek parliament thing you mentioned. The scheduled ones are of course easier to prepare for. And for such special events like with greece you have to follow the news and get a feel about what the markets are looking or waiting for. I try not to take positions on the whole day of such big news event, maybe only very short-term scalping positions which take a few minutes at maximum. But basically I wait until the event is over and then I usually wait at least 30 or 45 minutes until the markets have made up their mind. I would suggest a beginner does the same as markets can get pretty wild after such events. Some of these events (like with greece) can sometimes be so dominant that I might not trade 2-3 days before that, if I think the markets are waiting badly for this decision to be made. It's kind of the "theme of the week" and it's better to stay on the sidelines and do nothing until things get clearer again. This approach might sound extreme to some traders, but it helped my bottom line tremendously as it keeps me out of trouble. I find it more important to know WHEN NOT TO TRADE instead of when to trade. So, all in all I do not care much about the content of the news in terms of 'I have to interpret it in order to base my decision on it' but more on timing and the market reaction to it. But still you have to follow the news to understand what the themes are the markets are looking at. Just my Cheers, k
  13. I forgot one other aspect. Emotions play also a role if your position size is too big, making you feel uncomfortable with every tick that goes against you. This hinders reasoning. So, actually your emotions can even help you in your trading as your subconscious is telling you something: "Buddy, your money management is way too aggressive!".
  14. You cannot control your emotions. We are emotional beings, they are part of us. The experience I've made led me to the conclusion that emotions play only a major role in your trading (i.e. leading to revenge trading or whatever problem), if you do not really understand the rules of the game. If you do not deeply understand the rules, you cannot have confidence in what you are doing. And if you do not have the confidence, you are prone to trading based on your emotions. For instance, if you trade a system or method which you did purchase without backtesting it yourself sufficiently and knowing what to expect from this system long-term (e.g. win rate, max. consecutive losing trades, max. drawdown, etc.) it is only human to get mad after a string of losses. But if you understand the performance metrics of the system or method you are trading, it is very unlikely that your emotions will affect your trading, because you KNOW what to expect from the system/method. Don't get me wrong, you will still get mad about the losses (I do! ). But it will much less likely lead to any negative behaviour in your trading. That's what I've experienced at least in my trading. The other thing is that the system or method used must fit to your personality. If it does, it is also much less likely that you do "stupid" things.
  15. That's right. I think indicators are used as a sales pitch to newbies as they look sophisticated and almost scientific. Once, I fell for them too... but I had my "divorce" a while back. I'm over with them... and I live a happy trader's life since then
  16. Me too... LOL :haha: Exactly! That's the point. It is not about who is right about a method. I would like to add also the following. If you have found something that works, apply it and try to become the best you can be with it. I think we have also sometimes the tendency to look at what others are doing as their system could be better than ours (... the grass is greener...). I mean it is good to try to improve and learn new things but at some point you have to stick with something and try to perfect it (if it works, of course). For example, some of you guys use Market Profile. I've read only very little about it and have only rudimentary knowledge about its application. But it's different to what I do and what works for me. Also, I've read today on this forum about the Taylor Trading Technique (TTT), which I've never heard about before. I might read a little bit more about it to understand a bit more and see, if it FITS INTO MY TRADING STYLE. However, this is still very superficial research. Only if I think that it could benefit my already existing trading style and make it better, I will start some serious research on it. I have the feeling that if I would start now to try to understand Market Profile or TTT (or any other method) in detail this would be counterproductive for my trading as I could not focus on my current trading style 100%. What I've learned from my past careers is that focus is an essential element in success. You cannot be an expert in everything... (or if you try to be, you have to stop trading and earn your money as an "expert" )
  17. Is this supposed to be a follower seeing the next hot trading system out there?
  18. There was not much info included, except for a further method one could elaborate further for themselves, if you have no other system yet or are just curious enough and have the time to find out more about it. What I did not like about it though, was, that he did not explain what the Ichimoku cloud exactly is and how it is calculated. It just looks fancy on the charts (hence, it must work, right? ). But again, one could research it, if curious enough... However, from a presentation standpoint I did not like it... but I do not know whether there was a presentation before that about it. I had the impression, there wasn't...
  19. Mee too... I assume, rforexdad is RB himself! By continuously repeating that 'RB is a scam!' he pulled us to his website 'TFL...' ... what a brilliant marketer (... and scammer, of course)! LOL
  20. I guess it can have different reasons, which are not only psychological. Non-psychological probably: Too much information about trading making it difficult for the newbie to distinguish good from bad. The problem is, that the ones who figure it out don't share the information in detail but apply it for themselves (which is perfectly fine as it was hard enough for them to gain this knowledge). Psychological: - Lack of motivation, or if someone moves from one system or education provider to another one in an endless cycle - Being a follower, not taking full responsibility for one's actions/one's life
  21. This is an excellent thread subject, TheNegotiator, and it's worthy of being read by every newbie (I am not one anymore, by the way)! The posts by roztom are in particular valuable! I am Trading full-time for a year now but did a lot of swing trading before since the mid nineties. I've lost a lot of money until I became profitable, read many books, did a lot of research, spent endless hours in front of the screen and even tried once a somewhat well-known educational service with focus on forex trading, which I stopped after only 3 months after I realized that these guys do not have much of a clue themselves. Anyway, I think even such experiences with educational services are part of learning the game. I am sure I did learn "something" from them (and in fact, as I realized later on, I incorporated one aspect of their teachings in my trading but mixed it with something I've read somewhere else... however, this happened almost unconsciously). But all in all, I was critical about what they taught and after asking some specific questions at different learning sessions, I figured out that the overall information about the system that they taught did not add up. It just did not make any sense. That was the point when I stopped attending these classes. I would not call it a "scam", but what I call such service is anyway not relevant for my success as a trader. You've got to move on, if you want to get better at this. Even if you come to the conclusion that their way of trading is not the way to go, you've learned something (i.e. how NOT to do it). I think Trading is more than anything else a Do-It-Yourself-Profession. You can not learn it from someone else, whether that individual or firm is successful at trading or not. roztom gave a good example with his friend. The reason for this is that one's own psychology plays a too important role in this. I've had a successful corporate career before doing this and was also somewhat successful as a competitive athlete on a national level in my country before that. However, Trading is the most difficult thing I've encountered so far and I think it is one of the most difficult endeavors one can pursue. And you cannot compare it to going to school or university, like you did, SpearPointTrader. Or like learning Oracle, like rforexdad mentioned. The markets and you yourself are far too complex for this! However, I agree, that you should get every information possible to support your self-learning. But purchasing a black box system is definitely not the way to go. I've got the most helpful infos from reading tons of books. But also here I've realized that there is no one book out there which has all the infos you need to trade successfully. You have to read many of them and put the pieces of the puzzle together by yourself. The only way to learn it from someone else would be that this person takes the effort to point you in the right direction based on your individual psychology. This would be a very individual coaching or mentoring and surely difficult to find. But no matter what your information source on trading is, you have to - be critical about every piece of information you get, even if it is from a trustworthy source - think for yourself and apply common sense - develop your own approach to trading based on what fits best to your personality. I am sure that this is the only way one can become a successful trader. One more comment about forex, as the educational service I've attended was also very much focused on forex. The problem with forex is that it is marketed very aggressively to retail clients due to less regulation and attractive spreads for the brokers. However, this attracts also many people who try to take advantage from all the people who have no clue about trading and want to get started with forex as they saw this fancy ad somewhere. I would not call it a scam but these people see a business opportunity here and offer a service although they are not 100% suited to do so. Hence, I would be VERY skeptical about any educational service or system which relies almost exclusively on forex. Why would one do that other than for marketing reasons? Of course, this alone is no proof that the service provided is a scam or the people offering it have no clue. However, one should be very cautious.
  22. Didn't any of you become skeptical why he focused only on 2007? From the information that you provided here, it seems that the seminar was quite a while later than 2007...
  23. You traded a system which was backtested for only 7 months?!? Are you serious? I do not know this system, but heard elsewhere that RB trades short-term charts like 5- or 15-min. charts. Assuming a system based on such short-term time frames I would not care about a system if it is not backtested for at least 3 YEARS! For longer time frames even longer backtesting periods have to be applied to cover different market periods (e.g. daily time frame -> minimum of 10 years IMO). And even if a system is backtested for 10 or more years and worked in this period (including also forward testing), this is not a guarantee that it will perform exactly the same in the next year, next 2 years or next 10 years. It's just an indication. And sooner or later EVERY SYSTEM WILL STOP WORKING. It's YOUR JOB as a trader to CONSTANTLY RESEARCH AND ADAPT. If someone is not experienced they may not know this. However, if you do a little bit of your homework you will find that out pretty soon. When I started out I took part also in one of these educational services (I will not mention which one, but it was not RB). I've learned a few things, but stopped it after 3 months as I saw that these guys do not have a real clue themselves (only just a little bit). I have to admit, that I got angry about them too. Not because of the money I've spent but because they pretend to know a lot. Anyway, I got over it. There's no point in blaming them. They see a need for a service and offer it and others have this need and pay for it. It's the same in every industry. What such seminars can give to you at most is IDEAS for a system. You then have to go back to your office and backtest these by yourself. And very probably you have to adapt them. I became profitable myself only recently but went through a very painful and very costly year of full-time trading until then. I can tell you that there is no one book out there that teaches you trading (i.e. you read this one and everything is fine). There are thousands of books about trading. Most of them are useless and the better ones include only fractions of the truth about trading. Its YOUR JOB to put these pieces of the puzzle together. In some books, I find helpful advice but disagree with other advice in the same book. It's YOUR JOB to filter the gems from the crap. ... yes, it's a lot of work. Coming back to RB, I have not attended any of his webinars or whatever and do not know his systems. However, I started to listen to his podcast (which is for free, by the way) and I have to say that there is some good advice in there and they are entertaining too. The advice given is not new to me, as I have gathered this experience all by myself already. But still, it is good to listen to such stuff to ingrain certain principles more into your brain or to see, that other traders have or had similar problems before they became profitable. But from these conversations in the podcast - and based on my own learning curve - I can tell that these are no supertraders themselves. Based on my own experience I can imagine (sorry Josh, that I have no facts here ;-) ) that they have managed to be just profitable. But I have no facts about this, of course. There is no free lunch on Wall Street... IMO there is not even a cheap lunch on Wall Street... ;-)
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