Leoheart wrote:Mira wrote:LeMercenaire wrote:The problem with automatic logs, is that all they show is in, out, result. A true trading journal (for me) needs notes logging your thought process at the time you made the trade and re the result.
Thanks LeM!
Thus it’s better to make a screenshot and write down the details of that trade.. but how do you keep track of your trades? Do you use a spreadsheet?
An idea:Lets concentrate on winning and not losing here. Take screenshots of 10 winning trades at entry point. Make absolutely no notes. Comeback to the pictures one week or a couple of weeks from now. If you can Visually remember how you traded the setups and how the trades took you into profit, then you a solid plan of attack. What made you successful? A restaurant does not chance its menu every single week or month or perhaps even in years.
Point of doing this? Focus. Knowledge we all have, and undoubtedly will accumulate/distribute vast amounts - but focus is the hidden & only real edge.
A successful restaurant will not make changes to its menu very often you are correct. But a failing, unprofitable one will not only change its menu, but its whole identity and style.
The human mind is wired to remember the good and not bad. its why humans are able to overcome such horrific events. Why does a addict relapse if he knows all the bad that will happen. Because his mind remembers all the good times and minimizes the bad. Why do dieters fail at their diets. Because they remember that they ate 3 healthy meals throughout the day, but ignore the couple slices of bacon they stole from someone. the handful of candy they had at work and the ranch on their salad, because hey it was a salad.
Why do losing traders continue to lose. Because they focus on the 1 trade they called at the top and exited at the bottom. But then they had a bunch of losers and those were big losses and not small ones. You see it in the journals all the time. Member so and so have 40 wins in a row, but then takes a few losses, so then he widens his stops and takes even bigger losses and then even puts on trades that aren't even apart of his trade plan (assuming he even has one) and then he has lost all of his profits and then some.
I'm all for studying winning trades, but if traders spent the same amount of time studying losses and seeing 1) if they could have done something different, 2) making sure that the loss was an acceptable loss (meaning it was part of a trading plan). Then there would be a lot more profitable traders I believe.
I'm curious. All the unprofitable traders that are reading this, do you have a written out trading plan?
IS A LIE__________
