1st post

Hello everyone aka no one.

A trader can be thought of as a plant.

If the plant is a healthy, hardy specimen (a good trader) he will continue to bear fruits (make money) consistently in the long run, and will likely survive the winter (shitty trading conditions) and storms (trades that go terribly wrong due to lapses in judgment, extreme volatility, gaps, or system failure).

If the plant is weak, it is always in danger of dying in the next winter, or in the next storm. It may go long stretches without bearing fruits, and when it does the harvest is small. When the weak plant bears fruits, it is tempting to think, oh, the plant has turned the corner, it is now healthy. But as soon as conditions worsen, the lack of hardiness of the plant is once again revealed.

To extend the analogy, a healthy plant doesn't need much maintenance. It is growing stronger daily. Provided the next winter is not unusually long and cold, or the next storms not unusually severe, it will continue to live on and in fact, will usually grow (improve) on its own momentum.

On the other hand, the weak plant is like the global banking system at the end of 2008. It likely needs help if its going to survive. It needs to be pruned, watered, fertilized, etc. It needs to be protected from the cold of winter and propped up before the next storm. If this is done it has a shot at becoming a strong healthy plant. Of course, this could happen on its own with the right conditions, but those conditions are unlikely to occur. Therefore, assuming the goal is to go from a weak to a healthy plant, a "hands off" approach is not ideal.

Currently, I am that weak plant. For too long, I have tried to wait it out for conditions to improve and for my trading to become better on its own. There have also been some endeavors at intervention, but these attempts at improvement have been misguided, in that they always chased some kind of magical new market paradigm, or new indicator, or new market rather than focusing on a sustained routine of hard work like analyzing past trades, tightening up current trading rules, creating new ones, all the while putting in the requisite time after hours looking at charts. This is what a really good trader has assured me is the secret to his success. This is what got him to healthy plant status. Now, even if he were to rest on his laurels, hes not endangering his career by doing so. His trading success will likely grow on its own. This is also what i see as a recurrent theme within great traders' whom i want to emulate careers.

And this is what i resolve to do. This blog is just a small part of what i have to do, but i think its an important one. I may recognize that i made a mistake in my trading, but i tend to repeat it frequently. If I write it down it may hopefully stick in my mind more, and I can avoid it in the future.

Also, this blog can be a medium to develop trade ideas i may have. A lot of times the ideas i have are vague and floating around in the recesses of my mind. Then, in the heat of battle, I may remember one of them and attempt to put a trade based on that idea. Usually it ends badly because I have never fully defined the idea, and therefore the trade is half baked. Even if i have a stop loss and expected gain in mind (which i usually don't on these trades), I don't have a plan for all the likely outcomes. So then I end up having to think on the fly and that is where i am at my worst: things are going wrong and i have to make it up as I go along. At this point i am probably trading on my emotions, a bad idea for any trader. Anyway, if i have a place to put my ideas down, and flesh them out, it will lead to me having less half-baked ideas in my head, which might mean less mistakes during the trading day.

So this is the plan with this trading diary blog.

FML