Wow

Bad Assed Trader: There’s no other word for this phenomenon but Wow.

I’ve just reviewed my last 3 weeks’ trading.  I chose 3 weeks as in that time I have been attempting to stick to my sniper rules – the previous week I had been at a boot camp and trying other strategies.

My review has hit home the lessons I’ve been struggling to come to terms with the last few weeks in a really resounding fashion.  Seeing the evidence there can be no doubt about the importance of sticking, with cast iron discipline to my rules.

My last blog showed my optimistic opinion that I am finally turning the corner on my performance and my review showed evidence that this is correct.  But it showed that I would have come sweeping out of that corner at much greater speed if I had shown the discipline of a professional trader – my aspiration.

My review showed the following results.

Between February 21 and March 10 I took 20 trades.

Losers: 11 trades amounting to -212 pips

Winners: 9 trades amounting to +258 pips

Net gain: +36 pips (nearly 2%)

Verdict: Getting better but not good enough.

When I looked with all honesty at which losers were my fault for not following my rules (including trading around expected news on one of the currency pairs I was trading) and took out those trades the result would have been as follows:

Losers: 4 trades amounting to -80 pips

Winners: 8 trades amounting to +193 pips (yes I admit I got lucky with the news on one trade)

Net gain would have been: +113 pips (nearly 6%)

Verdict:  This is what I would have achieved if I’d not been such a weak willed sloppy trader.

Better to have placed just 12 trades in those 15 working days and won 8/12 than placed 20 trades and won 9/20.  Those 7 losses which were completely my own fault made a huge difference to my outcome (ie cut the profit by nearly two thirds).

And those messages that the professional traders keep giving me such as:

“The key to success is to know when to stay out of a trade”

“Less is more with trading”

“It’s all about discipline and consistency”

“Just follow your rules”

“It’s a fine line between making a profit and making a loss”

“Trading is 90% psychology and the rest is in your head”

Suddenly those messages mean something to me in a very real and very concrete way.  I’ve been hearing them for months but not really appreciated the true meaning.  I thought I was disciplined, I thought I was following the rules, but this is a different order of discipline and rule following to what I had thought and expected.  We are talking perfectionism here and cast iron will.

The challenge now is can I, with my long history of faceless bureaucracy and the wheeling and dealing, ducking and diving I’ve deployed to survive as a Faceless Bureaucrat now transform my mind set into that of such discipline and consistency that I can know when to stay out as well as when to go in?

What a challenge.  Wow…