Planning: A Key to Successful Trading

You are suffering from too much analysis. You are looking at so many things, you no longer can see straight. If you keep on over-analyzing your trades, it may develop into a deep-seated psychological problem.

Carefully analyzing the possible consequences of your trading decisions is healthy, but it becomes unhealthy when it is overdone. When it comes to trading, it’s important to have a clearly defined trading plan. You want to be sure that any given trade is not going to wipe out your trading account. That is one of the reasons we want you to use a time stop in addition to a money stop. When you use both types of stops you are clearly defining the signs and signals that indicate your trading plan is not working, suggesting that you should close out the trade to protect your capital.

Trading, by its very nature, is uncertain. There is little that can be described as security for traders. Every trade is a new event, and every entry is an entirely new business. A trader does not have the luxury of living from his past accomplishments.
If you have an unquenchable thirst for certainty, then trading is not for you. Uncertainty in trading is co-equal with insecurity. If money represents security to you, you have a real problem as a trader. Losing money not only costs you your financial security, but also your emotional security.

At many of my seminars and private tutorings I tell people that I have completely divorced myself from the money involved in trading. I don’t even know until the end of the month whether I have won or lost. I trained myself to think of trading as an endeavor in which I strive to make points. Only later are those points translated to dollars. In that sense, for me trading is a game. But I never lose sight of the fact that trading is also a serious business.
Insecurity in traders who over-analyze manifests in searching for the holy grail of trading, desperately seeking the right indicator or the perfect trade setup. The problem you’re having is that even when you see something, you are not sure it is sufficiently perfect for you to act on. Why? Because you lack confidence in your ability to trade what you see. Because you lack confidence in yourself. And because you fear the pain of another loss.
Here’s how I was taught to do my analytical work.

First, I went through all my charts to get an overview of the markets. During that time, I looked for trending markets. Trend lines were placed on the charts as long as they had a 30° or greater angle. Until I became used to what that looked like, I used a protractor to determine the angle. This action got me used to identifying the trend. These days it is easily done with your software.
Next, I went through all my charts again looking for "against the grain" moves-the intermediate trend that went against the longer term trend. This alerted me to markets that might soon resume trending.

Then I went through all my charts looking for Ross hooks. I marked each hook with a bright red "h". Then, in light of the size of my margin account, I tried to select those markets that appeared to have the greatest potential, and I placed order entry stops just above or below the hooks. These were resting orders in the market. I tried to never miss a hook. I phoned my orders in daily.
How did I know which markets had the greatest potential? The answer is simple. I selected those markets that had the strongest trend lines.

Now there was a trick to this. I didn’t want too steep an angle, because in a rising market that often signals that the end of a move is near. Markets that break out too fast and go straight up rarely give an opportunity for entry before they start to chop around in congestion. Markets that have been going up at a steady angle, and suddenly that angle steepens-goes parabolic, are giving a warning that the move may soon be over.

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