I went for a half hour run today with the dog and swam for half hour this evening. This weekend I’m running a fun run, I did a half dozen of them last year. I’m doing pretty good with my life balance goals I’m tracking on the right. The three year old kept me up all night so I drank a can of diet coke today so fell off the caffeine wagon. I truly believe doing these things will make me a better trader – not to mention my health.
I made a comment in the last post that I don’t know that my rules work since I don’t follow them. This is true to extent, but when I look at trades I make during the day in post-market hours review – if I had followed my guidelines, I would be doing way better, if not in the green.
My aims for Thursday:
1) Distractions – During the AM, I will turn off Twitter, the chat room, emails, blog reader, extra watch lists, and the TD Motion Detector.
2) Focus – During the AM, I will only monitor and trade the 5 stocks on my watch list and the 3 most promising pre market movers – giving me 8 charts to watch until noon.
3) Risk/Over Trading Control – I will wait ten minutes before entering a new position and will only enter another trade if the one I am in is currently on the winning side. I am using a egg timer for this!
4) Tracking – Complete the worksheet for every trade during the day.
5) Entries – Only get into a position that has a entry signal (listed on my worksheet), use limit orders and buy on a dip/short on a bounce.
6) Monitor -Enter and watch stocks on the 5-minute chart (not 1 minute) and make sure to look at longer time frames as well.
7) Exits – Immediately put in a stop order, do not move stop order, and stay in trade until stopped out or exit rules met – then close position immediately. Do not leave because of fear or boredom – or for a small profit scalp. Let your winners run.
8) Forget Profit and Loss – This is hard to do, but at least I can not look at the profit and loss tab or run a trade report during the day.
If I don’t follow my rules, I’m not going to make myself paper trade the next day or stop trading for the day; that was a little silly. The fact is if I don’t follow these rules – I will NOT make money and will eventually lose all my trading capital.
