Learning to trust!

My summary for this week is… it’s time to step things up!

This week has been my most profitable week so far, with profits of $109.  Taking the account total to

$889.  Remember I started trading with a $500 account on the 8th August so I am two months in and have a 78% return on investment.

The main reason I believe that is behind the increase in profits is putting more trust in the Inteligex signals and holding the majority of my trades to the interim crib (the crib shows you where the market is trying to get to).  Previously when a trade I have entered has been a little choppy and has flicked between profit and loss I have been too quick to move my stop up to break even.  If I am being blunt the reason for this is predominantly to just end some of the discomfort of being in a trade.  But unfortunately that is part of the life of trading and dealing with discomfort is part of the job.  Ultimately in most cases all that happens is that the trades goes on to eventually hit my original target and I just end up with a different discomfort of knowing that I missed out on further profits!

So whilst it has not been easy holding on to more of my trades it does appear to be paying off and something I will do more in my trading to maintain my success.  Now that my account is almost double the original size, its feel like a good time to take a little more calculated risk and try and take some of the lower risks trades with more contracts.  Strong risk management is still the key though as a few big losing trades on multiple contracts and I could easily end up back to where I started. 

Now handling losses has always been one of my weakest area’s and losing trades have previously triggered bad habits that have ended up with me having even more losing trades.  So I know I will have to be extra careful how I handle my losses on bigger contract sizes.  To counter this I now try to look at my Profit and Loss less and also think of my trades in points rather than dollars.  For some reason psychologically seeing an MES losing trade as being -5 pts rather than -$25 dollars is a lot easier for me to accept.  So even if I take a -5 pts loss on 2 or even 3 contracts I will still see this as just a 5pt loss as opposed to a $50 or $75 dollar loss.  Especially as I know that 5pts (and more) can easily be made back up in a good trade or 2.  That’s how good the Inteligex signals are, I'm more profitable and feeling much more comfortable in my trading.

Anyway that’s enough from me for another week. Until next time….