Bad Assed Trader: I've decided to come clean today. Part of the process of rehabilitation is acknowledging that one has a problem and I have, for the past couple of months, been coming to terms with my problem. When I first started trading I was trying all sorts of strategies and all sorts of currency pairs. Things were a bit haphazard to say the least.
In January, though, I started to take stock and realised that I wasn't really improving. I had learnt how to place and manage trades - but not in a way that was making me money...
At this point my coach, Emmanuel, stepped in with the wise strategy of getting me to just do the sniper trade following a strict strategy with clear criteria the same way until I'd managed to do it 30 times perfectly. I thought that it might take me a couple of attempts to do this and am now on my 17th go. I am on the Q run as I make my way through the alphabet. And I thought I was a disciplined sort of person. Hm.
The beauty of Emmanuel's plan is that it has forced me to see what I'm doing wrong and you can really only see that clearly when you know exactly how it should look for a comparison. And although I have made some errors repeatedly (hence making my way to Q) each time I see the error I'm becoming more averse to it until eventually, so my theory goes, I will be repelled by it.
For anyone who knows Pavlov's dog - how the dog got trained to salivate at a particular sign after repeatedly being show that sign and then being given food - I am that dog right now. I am using the same technique on my own dog like brain to force it into proper trading mentality and behaviour.
So what is the result of this repetitive training? Is it generating results?
I hate to say it's too early to tell, because here I am telling you all about it. But strictly speaking it is. However. I do monitor my progress and chart it so I get visual feed back (I'm a visual learner after all) of how I am doing.
Now to be painfully honest, the chart does not yet show an upward trend in any normal sense of the word. But I am an optimist. I have also played about with Excel and managed to find a curve to apply to my results which actually shows I have turned a corner on my performance. Here it is:
The trend line I found which produced this optimistic result (ie the right answer - as far as I'm concerned) is called a polynomial curve. If anyone out there knows what that is then do please let me know. I've wiki-ed it and don't understand a word of the mathematical concepts explained therein.
All the straight trend lines I put in were depressingly downward pointing but this lovely little jobby hints at an upward look from now on. All I have to do now is place the trades that make it a true prediction.
And now it's all out in the open, the pressure is on. In a months' time I will put the chart back up and let's see how it looks.
I'm about to get incredibly fussy about the trades I place to try to make sure that curve carries on in a heavenly direction. I'm done with tarting around with all the strategies in the book and currency pairs under the sun. Now it's just me and that curve.
In January, though, I started to take stock and realised that I wasn't really improving. I had learnt how to place and manage trades - but not in a way that was making me money...
At this point my coach, Emmanuel, stepped in with the wise strategy of getting me to just do the sniper trade following a strict strategy with clear criteria the same way until I'd managed to do it 30 times perfectly. I thought that it might take me a couple of attempts to do this and am now on my 17th go. I am on the Q run as I make my way through the alphabet. And I thought I was a disciplined sort of person. Hm.
The beauty of Emmanuel's plan is that it has forced me to see what I'm doing wrong and you can really only see that clearly when you know exactly how it should look for a comparison. And although I have made some errors repeatedly (hence making my way to Q) each time I see the error I'm becoming more averse to it until eventually, so my theory goes, I will be repelled by it.
For anyone who knows Pavlov's dog - how the dog got trained to salivate at a particular sign after repeatedly being show that sign and then being given food - I am that dog right now. I am using the same technique on my own dog like brain to force it into proper trading mentality and behaviour.
So what is the result of this repetitive training? Is it generating results?
I hate to say it's too early to tell, because here I am telling you all about it. But strictly speaking it is. However. I do monitor my progress and chart it so I get visual feed back (I'm a visual learner after all) of how I am doing.
Now to be painfully honest, the chart does not yet show an upward trend in any normal sense of the word. But I am an optimist. I have also played about with Excel and managed to find a curve to apply to my results which actually shows I have turned a corner on my performance. Here it is:
The trend line I found which produced this optimistic result (ie the right answer - as far as I'm concerned) is called a polynomial curve. If anyone out there knows what that is then do please let me know. I've wiki-ed it and don't understand a word of the mathematical concepts explained therein.
All the straight trend lines I put in were depressingly downward pointing but this lovely little jobby hints at an upward look from now on. All I have to do now is place the trades that make it a true prediction.
And now it's all out in the open, the pressure is on. In a months' time I will put the chart back up and let's see how it looks.
I'm about to get incredibly fussy about the trades I place to try to make sure that curve carries on in a heavenly direction. I'm done with tarting around with all the strategies in the book and currency pairs under the sun. Now it's just me and that curve.
If you're ever confused by what's being written on Wikipedia, check out: http://simple.wikipedia.org
ReplyDeleteWhy thank you Nelly, I've made use of the simpler version to see if it illuminates. It's true, the words are easier to understand. The concept and how it may help me understand my performance curve is still rather beyond this simple B.A.T but in a way that doesn't matter as, after all, we are taught to "trade what we see, not what we think" and if I apply that principle to that curve my performance has just turned a corner!
ReplyDelete