The Show Must Go On

Ok, I feel better now. Took a nice long and refreshing walk yesterday, haven't done that in a while. Started noticing all the little things, like what the cold air smelled like, what stores were actually near where I live, how much traffic there is during rush hour, how fast time can fly by when you're walking just to enjoy the view as opposed to walking to get somewhere.
So while I was walking, I started thinking about what I want to do, and what were my options. My assessment of the situation was that, as much as I enjoy trading, I just wasn't ready yet to make the transition (on my own terms) towards trading for a living. In a weird way, starting this trading journal helped to convince myself that I'm not at that stage yet. In looking back at this journal, I find that I'm still making enough mistakes that were I to do this full time, I would not be setting myself up for success. The key to trading success boils down to two (seemingly) simple principles: risk management and self discipline. For me, I feel that I have been making progress on the risk management aspect (keeping losses small, taking smaller position sizes for wider stops, honouring my stop losses). However, in all honesty, I have not been making enough progress in the self-discipline area. The biggest obstacle blocking my path to trading success is that I still lack the patience to wait for the well-behaved, good quality, high probability, low risk setups to come to me, and instead am prone to chasing still. I also experience these bouts of overtrading every so often, and they have hindered more than helped my progress. It really is that important to wait for the chart to tell you what it IS doing. Tyro trader and TraderZBS kind of said a similar thing, albeit from a different point of view. Successful trading, at least in my case, is really an exercise in self-discipline. The lack of patience in my situation is serious enough to prevent me from making consistent profits from trading. And without consistency, it becomes that much harder to succeed !

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm going to stick with looking for a dayjob (if you know of any job leads in Vancouver, please contact me for my resume - check my Blogger profile for my email). My criteria for making the transition to trading for a living will be when I can demonstrate to myself that I can consistently trade with a minimum of mistakes. My trading performance will be the bottom line judge of my consistency.

It's back to status quo for this trading journal. I don't think I have any drastic changes to make. Keep posting up charts of my trades so that I can learn what I did right AND wrong. Keep posting my thoughts on strategies, and approaches to improve my trading. And of course, continue to post the trading performance so that I can observe my own progress towards consistency. Which reminds me, I really need to give props to those full-time traders who are able to do this with a greater degree of success than myself. The ones that I read (albeit some more than others) - Brian, Richard, JC, TraderX, TraderMike, Russ, Tyro, and ugly, these guys have my admiration and respect for making something so hard (at least to me) look so easy, and I aspire to join their ranks in the future.