Monday, September 22, 2008

Monday Notes - Stepping Up the Focus

4:00pm Simple and short post tonight. I think I've put my finger on why I've been in a two-day funk (modest draw today ... not overly significant, but definitely a nuisance), and that's lack of focus given the increased volatility. It finally dawned on me when I (a) left my station and (b) was reading a magazine exactly when the two high-probability trade setups occurred. The same thing occured on Friday which I had forgotten. And for the first time in a looooong time, I felt like throwing a chair through the window Bobby Knight style. Of course, the rest of today was a low-liquidity chopfest.

So I have one simple goal this week ... to step up the focus and get the find my inner rhythm once again. In doing so, I'm also going to do what I've sometimes done in the past when I wanted to take any perceived daily pressure off (maybe Rex is right), and that's to look at this entire week a single trading sequence and book the P&L on Friday. One year, I remember actually closing my internal books and starting a new year in mid-August to clear the head! I'm also subconsciously too much aware of where I stand for the year, and need to shake that and get back to the cornerstone chart. Now is certainly no time to put a ceiling in place ... that's still 3+ months away Donald!!

So, forget the long- and short-term P&L ... focus and execution is all I want this week ... and I'll accept a small draw at the end of the week from transaction costs and feeler bets if it means I get it back to start Q4. We'll look at the score on Friday and see if the change in mindset helped.

Hopefully, tomorrow will be provide for some natural morning-after-trend oscillations to help restore both the market and my natural rhythms.

At least that's my song request for the band director.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Don:

Thanks for sharing. I too will share today. I chopped myself back and forth in the afternoon session until finally the market sold off (I'm talking ES) and I missed it because I got frustrated with the choppiness. I know after 3 losers in a row, I decrease size. For some reason the frustration level was very high today (m,y feedback with myself..) Tommorrow I will come in with a clean slate and patiently wait for the right starting cards.



RONIN

Anonymous said...

Don,

I came to this blog just today and was impressed to see a similar pattern to my blog. i am just a beginner though. Hope will try to post as much blogs as I could with some relevant info as possible.


-ST