I'm starting to feel really comfortable with my trading lately. I'm sure tomorrow will bring the soul crush as sharing feelings of confidence in a blog whether it's poker, or trading, seems to have the same effect.

My short term goals has been to get above 1.0 for my trades in terms of win vs loss. There certainly are trading styles where you can win with less than a 1.0 ratio, but it doesn't bode well for me. I am awfully skiddish with my trades and will often take profits early when it doesn't really make sense. I'll see the smallest stall and freak out. Lately I've been relaxing a lot more and trusting my knowledge of the markets. This has enabled me to let price run a bit more than usual and I've held to my goal over the last 40 trades (again, still in sim). Overall my winrate is about 55%, which is nice, but needs significant improvement before moving to real money trades as commissions would wipe out about half my profits.

I'm still making mistakes, which is a good thing. When you don't see areas of improvement and you aren't getting reasonable results, that's when you should worry.

A word of caution for those who are also skiddish while trading. The more skiddish you are, the harder it is to see if your trading plan/ideas about the market, are correct. A friend of mine pointed this out to me the other day. Like poker, trading requires confidence in yourself and your ideas about the game. I don't have a clever poker analogy, but if you are not letting the majority of trades run their natural course (realizing profits or hitting your stop) then you aren't actually trading your "system". I use "system" in quotes because I don't ever want to suggest that what I'm doing is systematic or mechanical. There certainly exist profitable trading systems that are mechanical, it's just way out of my realm to even be able to comment. But to the point, successful TA trading requires you to have "correct" ideas about the market. By correct, I simply mean ideas that yield an edge. A simple example, when price is in an uptrend and pulls back to higher timeframe support, it should hold. That is a very simple idea, but if you have confidence in this idea, you can profit. Does every higher timeframe support hold when price pulls back in an uptrend? Absolutely not. Just like your AA doesn't hold every time you get it in all-in preflop. Don't let a few bad experiences shake your confidence in bigger picture ideas... Know Your Edge! If you trade your idea about the market over a very significant sample, and it fails to yield profits, then you can question your edge... but there's only one way to find out, to do work!

I'm almost to the point of comfort where I will start sharing daily results and trades. I think I will have the confidence necessary in a few weeks, and I'll start posting charts regularly. There are a few blogs out there of TA traders that do post a ton of trading days:

http://forexbird.blogspot.com/
http://protradered.blogspot.com/
http://www.yourtradingcoach.blogspot.com/

The last one is obviously Lance Begg's from www.yourtradingcoach.com. If you are interested in purchasing his ebook please use this link. If not, there are a ton of free articles there to browse, in conjunction with his blog, it's a LOT of information. However, if you plan to do some serious study and sim trading, it would absolutely serve you well to get the two ebooks so you can know exactly what he's trying to accomplish.

As a related example, taking trading tips from other people is generally a bad idea. You need to have the understanding yourself or else it simply won't work. Even if Warren Buffet whispered in your ear every day, which stocks to pick and at what price... you'd be lost. What's Warren's exit plan if price turns against his position? What is his profit target? How does he manage his trades? So that said, the ebooks give you all of that information so you can simply see a real system in real time. I can't tell you how valuable that is. Whether you buy the ebook or not, it's really something you should seek out if you're a novice trading who wants to make the transition to intermediate+... find a trader willing to share a working, profitable system with you, and watch them trade it live.

Fishing has been good. I absolutely love having a weekend. With poker, I was absolutely terrible about giving myself time off. If I wasn't playing, I was browsing 2+2. If I wasn't playing or browsing 2+2, I was coaching. If I wasn't coaching, I was talking about poker.

I went fishing with two friends of mine, we landed 4 fish. One tiny striper, one tiny catfish, one large striper, one medium catfish. We get the larger cat and striper. Despite appearences, mine that I posted in my blog last week, was longer and heavier. I have to admit though, this one was fatter and just a better fish:




My buddy didn't want to keep it, so I took it. I cooked it up on Sunday evening using this recipe. It was delicious, although I doubled the portion of shrimp and didn't use mussels since the store I went to didn't have any.

It's hard to believe we are bringing a new life into this world in less than 3 weeks. I feel like we have so much to do and so little time to do it. The baby shower is this weekend and I've been helping to get everything prepared. It's already been amazingly overwhelming how much support people have shown, as we have boxes and boxes of things already, and I'm sure we will get the lion's share this weekend. I'm incredibly thankful, as I'm not sure where my next paycheck is coming from, although I have stored a bunch a way... it's what we will most likely be living off of for the foreseeable future.

As for my new video series, I guess it will debut next week.

Best of luck at the tables, on the water, or on the charts!