Trading futures and Forex or any other financial instruments for a living should be boring. It is a matter of doing the same thing over and over as long as it keeps on working. Without deviating. Without looking for something new. Without getting antsy about “missing out” some great opportunity somewhere else. It is about “being in the flow” with what works, doing what works, and not about the MONEY. That’s right. Trading for a living for me is not about money, the thrill of being able to pick a perfect top or a perfect bottom reversal. It is not about setting financial goals as to daily desired income or monthly desired income. It is about deriving satisfaction from doing what works, from being an effective unbiased observer of what is actually going on, and the money….it is a side effect of the experience. When I follow my plan and trade my own trades over and over and over, using stops, picking the trades I can afford to be in, picking the instruments where the volatility matches my maximum predefined risk tolerance….I make money consistently. It just comes. It is a matter of some very simple math.
When I get sidetracked and decide to try to pick tops or bottoms, when I stop using hard stops and start to rely on “soft stops”or “mental stops” …I usually make way more money then I normally do. For a while. For a little while. And then the game changes. Always. It becomes about making the money and being right and knowing what the market is going to do next or should do next. And when the “should” differs from the actual pattern, I stay with “should”. Because it is all about the Ego at this point, about being right, about making the perfect massive trade when the market finally turns and I am right there, at the moment of the turn. And THAT IS THE LOSERS GAME. And losers lose money. Because to a loser it becomes more important to feed the ego and the adrenals then to be consistently profitable. Because to be consistently profitable one has to do the same thing over and over and over, and that is boring. Being a professional trader for me, requires me to be a quiet observer of what is, to be in complete harmony with the idea that I do not know what will happen next,
to simply be aware of “me” (being my thoughts, my emotions, my feelings), the actual price movement in this moment, the behavior of whatever technicals one uses in the process of evaluating the behavior of the market( be that volume or some derivative op price and time).
And doing the same thing over and over as long as it is a proven method, a simple enough method, and is sufficient enough method to consistently generate positive returns every month. Sounds boring. It is not about being right or making money. Trading for me is about practicing a state of “presence” as an observer. And the side effect of such
When I get sidetracked and decide to try to pick tops or bottoms, when I stop using hard stops and start to rely on “soft stops”or “mental stops” …I usually make way more money then I normally do. For a while. For a little while. And then the game changes. Always. It becomes about making the money and being right and knowing what the market is going to do next or should do next. And when the “should” differs from the actual pattern, I stay with “should”. Because it is all about the Ego at this point, about being right, about making the perfect massive trade when the market finally turns and I am right there, at the moment of the turn. And THAT IS THE LOSERS GAME. And losers lose money. Because to a loser it becomes more important to feed the ego and the adrenals then to be consistently profitable. Because to be consistently profitable one has to do the same thing over and over and over, and that is boring. Being a professional trader for me, requires me to be a quiet observer of what is, to be in complete harmony with the idea that I do not know what will happen next,
to simply be aware of “me” (being my thoughts, my emotions, my feelings), the actual price movement in this moment, the behavior of whatever technicals one uses in the process of evaluating the behavior of the market( be that volume or some derivative op price and time).
And doing the same thing over and over as long as it is a proven method, a simple enough method, and is sufficient enough method to consistently generate positive returns every month. Sounds boring. It is not about being right or making money. Trading for me is about practicing a state of “presence” as an observer. And the side effect of such
behavior is consistent profitability. Boring. Nice. Now can I build a custom algo to do all the work for me?