Keep Calm and Don't Move Your Stops.....

A little risk management saves a lot of fan cleaning!

The Purpose of Life is Joy!!

Wednesday, April 11, 2018

Small Update

It's been a raucous couple of months. We moved, my mortgage business is getting steadily better and I started trading again about 2 months ago I think but from a different mindset.

I started this trading journey with the idea I would capture 4-8 ticks a day on the ES and had I stayed with the premise, I think my journey would have been much shorter. Instead, I got involved with Big Mikes forum somehow and ended up on a catastrophic journey to find the holy grail. Mind you I am not blaming Big Mike, just that I got sucked into the indicator/trading method hunt for trading methods that never lose and that was a suckers bet for sure!

I left BMT a couple of years ago and its taken all this time to get my mind right I think. During that time I have watched a trading friend just kill it in the markets using VP and price action and watching that has kept me hopeful I would find my muse just as he did. His approach has been to work very hard, find the inflection points and hold on for the bigger win and most of the time he is quite successful at that.

I gave that approach a trial as well and as it turns out, something I have known all along but refused to make peace with reared its ugly head again and again. I am too impatient for that style. Still, I was pretty jealous of his wins but eventually realized that what works for him might work for me IF I was wired the same as him.

So I finally made peace with who I am, my emotional hang ups and habits and accepted that I need to trade differently than he or any one else does. The end result is I am much happier. I am a short term trader and I feel very good about it. One thing that has happened is that as a result of my acceptance, my patience has gotten better about waiting for that moment when I feel I am most likely to get what I want out of the market and then being willing to wait for that to fulfill itself.

The end result is this, I have come full circle back to my roots except I won't be trading ES again. Instead, I am just scalping CL and so far so good. Using a short term chart, going with the momentum that currently exists and taking smaller bites. I have enough time in the mornings to get 2-3 shots at it and most days I only need 1 or 2 attempts to get my ticks and be done. With some size, I can turn the 8-10 ticks a day into a decent income or wealth accumulation tool.

In the meantime, I decided to stop worrying about most things platform related. I decided I didn't need the tools I used in Ninja even though some of them do make things easier for me. Instead, I decided to trial an online platform called Tradovate. I have to say, it feels nice. The DOM is fast, the tools are minimalist and it works across all operating systems including mobile.

I liked the trial enough that I decided to do a combine with it at TST to see how well I did with it under a little bit of pressure. I just started that a couple of days ago and I have to say, for a short term trader I think it's going to be my new platform for sure. Once the combine is over, I will be moving most of my money to Tradovate (not all as they are new and I don't want all of it at risk for right now) but enough to open the account and be able to trade 2-3 CL lots comfortably.

Over all, I'm quite pleased where I am on the journey.

A chart from Tradovate.