A blog about learning new things and improving life
It’s been a little quiet trading this week. Took 1 positive pip this week and stayed out of the market. No trading today, sometimes you can’t spend all day looking and the markets and just need to live!
Have a fair bit of work to do so will check in soon.
Managed to get myself ready for the day, keeping one eye on the market (how sad) and watching for some action around 5320, where it’s been stalling around for a while now. Turn my back for two secs to get some food and it’s shot straight through. Patience is a virtue. Shame I have to hop on the tube for a meeting.
Looks like the market is running out of steam on the way up to 5320, hopefully it’ll wait (I wish) till I’ve had a chance to get ready for the day before making a move haha!
2.20pm
I was thinking about writing again that today was another uneventful day in the markets. Or if not that, at least a difficult one. But it wasn’t. The market is doing it’s thing, moving up and down, since the open. That’s all it ever promised to do I guess. So what’s my issue? I’m sitting here waiting for the “perfect conditions” – yes I know there’s no such thing. Okay, so I’m looking for a clear signal to enter the market and, like yesterday, I haven’t traded yet.
That little voice in my head is saying “It’s okay, you’re learning, watching the market, when you make a move it’ll be right”. Fair enough, I may be learning by watching the market, but I’m getting a bit concerned about my lack of trigger pulling. Now, I know jumping into the market at random is gambling and a surefire way to lose, but I’m at the point now, where I see my signals (albeit not perfect), and still can’t muster up the courage to put in a trade.
Why?
I think I have a bruised ego – seriously, hear me out. I started thumbing through Zen in the Markets – Confessions of a Samurai Trader this morning. The book starts of talking about how there’s no place for your ego in trading and it’s your ego that’s responsible for you taking profits too early, and letting losses run (which is the opposite of what you want to do). It’s also responsible for feeling the pain from your losses and pleasure from wins. From what I’ve understood the aim is to detach yourself from the past activity of the market, see what it is telling you and follow it’s signals, all the while, remaining detached from the outcome (profits/losses). Makes sense, right?
The aim for today is to get over fear of losing, spot the entry signals and make a calculated entry based on risk/reward. Now that I’m accountable, I’ll update this entry with results.
4pm (ish)
So, I bit the bullet. Made a loss. Totally rushed into the market (since I said I would trade and have to be somewhere in the next 20 mins). Lesson learnt: don’t trade because you want to, or because you’re in a hurry. Only when the market signals you to, and you have no control over the market, so if it’s not showing you what you want to see, walk away and come back later. And I’m going to do just that.
Till tomorrow!
12pm– I’m sitting here, watching the market (FTSE 100, today) and missed two great opportunities to trade early in the day. Since then, the market has pretty much stalled out and nothing there are no clear entry indicators, based on the rules I’m following.
I’m really appreciating the amount the patience required to develop my spread betting abilities and the amount of discipline I’m exercising to stop myself jumping in the market because I’m getting bored.
Hopefully the market will pick up when the US opens around 2pm.
2.30pm
Had a quick check in on the FTSE and was looking to place a sell order (short) at 5300 but as soon as the US market opened, the price shot straight through 5300 and ended up at the 5320 mark. I had to step away for an hour, and didn’t miss much action.
4pm
I returned to find the market heading back down to the 5300 mark for the second time and was very tempted to go long (buy order). At the time I thought it was a gut feeling, but in hindsight it did match one of my trading strategies. I could have taken a pretty clean 10 pips and been done for the day.
Lessons for the day
1. Patience is clearly a virtue, even though it may be very tempting to get into the market, you have to be careful and make sure you’re not making up reasons to get in the market.
2.The early bird catches the worm. I missed two good setups in the morning, and had I not arranged to have furniture delivered first thing I may have got in on the action today.
On the plus side, I’ve spent the day (on and off) watching the market, learning how it moves and identifying clear entry indicators, without losing any money!
Hopefully tomorrow will be a different story.