59th Street Bridge

If you read this blog you know EL loves his 60's music. This week it's been Simon and Garfunkel on the sound system.. The 59th Street Bridge song came on and led us to talking about trying to move too fast when you're trying to learn to trade.

I would get so frustrated when EL told me I had to keep doing Sim on the same trades and same markets longer that I wanted to.  I thought I was ready and knew all I needed to know. But every time I went faster than I should, I was slapped by the market.  This slap was not just the slap of losing money, it was the losing confidence slap and I would then become fearful and found myself making silly mistakes that I would never have made otherwise.  So I would have to go back to the previous simpler trading plan and work myself back up again.  I have to also admit this happened more than once.

When I went live, it was the same thing. EL said again and again, don't move too fast, keep doing the trades you know well until you can do them in your sleep. I found out the hard way that the same problems happened live as in Sim if I didn't move slowly.  It's hard to stick to your plan when you see winning trades you must not take (because they are not in your trading plan).  Especially when you think, I know how to do that harder trade and if I had taken that trade I would have made X amount of money.

My trading plan is still evolving. I still really want to run before I walk. I now know if I practice the walking, the running will be faster than ever.  I will get there faster by going slower, who would have ever thought that was the way it worked.

Just an update on Flo. Still working out the kinks. Flo has the high win rate percentage but not the profitability. It's really, really, really frustrating, but I have to remember Flo is just a robot.

The chart below is for light crude.  A couple of guys were asking if the EL method worked for oil, so dad traded it today. This is his chart.