Wednesday 26 January 2011

I'm sitting here, shouldn't I be doing something?

We sit in front of our workstations way too long. The result is often a loss of discipline with impulse trades, going off piste, fudging our trading plans, and trading when we shouldn't be because the odds are not in our favour.

I've made trades where IMMEDIATELY after I click my mouse I think to myself, What in the world did you do that for?

In testing, one of the things that can be tested for is "time of day". When do your setups work best? I've said that I knew lots of locals who only worked the opens and the closes and, in London, the opening of the U.S. markets.

One clearing firm I used had a room that became the poker room where we could try and pick each others pockets off the floor. It was a way of staying away from markets we didn't want to be tempted to trade.

Most markets have definite sweet periods and confining trading to these times makes more money. I make money when a market is out of balance and is trying to find new balance - balance between buyers and sellers.

Another way to limit myself is by taking my Market Profiles and marking out the areas where I want to do biz.

Today's vid shows an attempt at the Gap trade in the ES and then a change of mind and why.

4 comments:

  1. EL - I was thinking about the Cloud computer setup and wondered HOW you can avoid the latency between when you click your mouse in France and the Virtual Server receiving the click in the NY data center. Sure - the latency between the Data Center and the Exchange may be small.. but don't you still have the internet to deal with between you and your server?

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  2. bakrob99, the saving is not just in the sending of the order, it starts with the data getting into the chart. Also, so much of my trading is becoming Hybrid Trading with the computer putting the trades on and me only managing them, I am really getting an advantage. Most of the activity takes place on the VPS without any timely intervention required by me. When I make adjustments, its usually ahead of time based on context.

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  3. EL, thanks for this post. Timely for me given this is my major problem at the moment, trying to force biz when there isnt any to be done! What areas on MP are you looking for VAH/VAL are obvious ones, what else? POC's? Area of low or high volume?

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  4. SpyBok, Tails, zipper, extremes, POCs, singles, VAL, VAH, DVAL, DVAH, HiVol, LoVol, in fact anything that looks like it could stop price.

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