1/30/2012

Zen and the Art of Trading

I am a trader.

I have a plan.

I follow it.

Trading is boring.

Perhaps Zen is boring.

Perhaps boring is good.

MUTs are exciting.

Perhaps exciting is bad.

Yes.

Let me first state that anything I say has worked, or not worked, for my trading, and my trading only.

It may have absolutely nothing to do with your trading and any implementation of my thoughts toward your trading may make it worse.

I have learned that I will not get all the moves in the market place. I have always theoretically known this but have not been able to implement it. In other words I kept chasing the "missed" trades.

Curve fitting a system to take yesterdays missed trades is idiotic.

Have I mentioned humans are stupid?

Dr. Brett Steenbarger states one of the keys to trading success is recognizing when market conditions change and then adapting your trading technique to the new conditions.

I disagree.

I can't do that, I wind up chasing last weeks market conditions in this weeks market.

What I have to do is use a plan that has minimum and maximum conditions in it. Before my plan always had minimum conditions to be met in order to trigger trades, it now (last 5 months or so) has maximum conditions as well. I could call my system the Goldilocks trade. I only want the porridge luke warm.

So there are more days now when I just sit here.


I sit here and do nothing.

The results have been nice, higher win rate, higher RR, less trades, less comm, and a sense that I have a niche in the market, a niche that works, I just have to sit here and wait for it.

“I've wondered why it took us so long to catch on. We saw it, and yet we didn't see it. Or rather we were trained not to see it. Conned perhaps into thinking that the real action was metropolitan and all this was just boring hinterland. It was a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away. I'm looking for the truth." And so it goes away. Puzzling.”

Robert M. Pirsig

Remember this the next time you are thinking about taking a MUT.

I'M WATCHING YOU. (go full screen)

9 comments:

Liam said...

Interesting post.

I spend a lot of time sitting and waiting for what I like in a set up, as a result I don't take a great deal of trades.

It has been on my mind lately that I should be taking more trades.

This post has given me the slap i need to realise that I don't need to be taking a large amount of trades a day.

Many thanks.

Solfest said...

YW

It's been pretty quiet lately.

As they say, flat is a position.

As I say, zero is better than a loss.

Anonymous said...

No, you don't get to complain today...I sat for 5.5hours watching the euro drop 150ticks without it letting me get into any sort of position.

I am tired, I will now go drink some expensive scotch and come back to complain another day.

Solfest said...

Oh we all get to complain. It's in the Charter I'm sure.

Complain, drink, whatever it takes.

But no muts.

Anonymous said...

One of the few pleasures I have in life is taking the **** out of your posts and you are determined to take even this away from me by posting sensible advice like this.

Moo, moo and thrice moo

L&W&stillAnon

Solfest said...

You need more pleasures in life.

Solfest said...

Oh and don't worry I'm stacking up the global warming hoax videos for you.
You will get plenty of "pleasure" there.

Anonymous said...

Did you dye your hair?

Solfest said...

You noticed!!

With streaks!!