To Trade or Not to Trade. That is the Question!

Paraphrasing Shakespeare may be trite but it's a very important part of my trading plan.

There are different types of day-traders. Some who only trade very selective setups, and others who trade all day and grind it out, adapting themselves to the volatility and trend of the market throughout their session.

This is a problem if you don't know which one you are.

Defining your business is a critical part of your trading plan as so many things flow from that. Part of the decision making process I go though as I evolve - and I am still evolving - is to look at myself and what I am good at and what I am not.

The first step is to decide your own business hours. This choice may make a lot of the decisions for you. Part of the process is to recognise the different phases the market goes through during the trading day, looking at your performance, likes and dislikes, stress level and so on.

I have had to change my trading plan as I started preparing for the training I am giving in July as well as preparing for the post training support I have undertaken to provide. The consequence of all of this is that I cannot trade the hours I was doing and something had to change.

The change I settled on was to mainly trade the opening of Eurex and then the opening of RTH of the ES. I looked at my highest win rate trades and increased my size so my earnings for the 3 or 4 hours of work would be as much as a previous normal 10 hour day.

Strange thing is that I really like it and will probably continue with these hours after the training and support period is over.