How I'm feeling

I think we all fall into the groove of fooling ourselves that we aren't what we really are at times. Perhaps the majority of the time.

My life has been about looking as directly at what I really am as much as I can, and even then as years have passed I find myself realizing how poor of a job I've done in spite of so much effort. Sure, I feel like I know myself way better than most people do, but on second thought I feel I can only qualify that in a very limited area.

I am not as honest with myself or with others as I initially was when I was younger. Time has piled on actions and results that I would love to remove and forget, but such an introspective one as myself doesn't accomplish that so easily. I've expended a lot of energy in the last years and more in the past 6 months than I think I have consciously in my life. I've long said that "Distraction is the only cure for awareness", and I've been engaging in a cycle of deep distraction followed by acute awareness lately. It hurts, and it's difficult to deal with.

I find lately, noticing immediate judgment in my own internal thoughts, which usually causes me to rephrase my self dialogue because I am that stupid about it. I notice a lot of external judging and immediately call myself out on my own bullshit. And since we live an an entirely relative realm of existence and perception, it's all bullshit in the end. But that doesn't stop it from having such an impact when it's believed and held in value.

I've already lost the initial reason I came to write any of this in the first place. The honest moment has me wanting to punch through the cab of my truck and turn off the reefer trailer that is running right now to power my truck... it's so odd, because it is running all night while I play games and surf the net (code for porn) and I almost exclusively get aggravated when it fails to shut off after I try to go to sleep. But for some reason, it is currently beating in my brain as if it's all I can focus on and I hate it.

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I am a person who cycles greatly, of great extremes, and that is the core reason that sparked me coming here. I was browsing the new porn galleries on a forum I regularly look at and it just finally came to a head in my consciousness that I am totally tired of looking. Tired of seeing. Firstly, tired of looking at shapes, textures and curves of women, but it evolved into quickly realizing that I am tired of being couped up in this truck, away from practically everything I call life. My bike, a stable home, people I care about, the weather...

hell, FAMILIARITY.

the thought came across my mind today as I was listening to the joe rogan podcast, that I was an example of something they were discussing. Joe or his guest, I'm not sure which one, said something that sparked my attention. "I wonder if all highly talented people come from that background", to which he was referring to a background of having moved a lot as a child. An adaptive mechanism that drew something out of them, somehow. I hadn't moved a ton as a child, only once, but I realized that what seemed to really matter to me was that beyond childhood I became someone who watched important people and things come and go from my life. Extremely important things.

I think that has contributed to what I am in the sense of someone who has become lately one who has difficulty investing in people and ideas. A way of life that has led me to be a deflector of social things. Yet, at my core I have always been a very social, trusting and inviting, investing creature. I think what I am witnessing within myself is a very recent change due to the events of the past year or so of my life...

For one, I've never felt like such a horrible person in my life. I've hurt people I cared about in ways I never would have thought I would, and I think I am still dealing with that and trying to recover while being as close to loving and investing as I can be. I've watched and met tons of people in my life that were the outcome of what I seem to be becoming and I have always tried to imagine that one outcome of a situation doesn't mean anything concrete, yet I am watching myself degrade into a person that internally believes that.

It's a battle for sure, and although for my entire life I was gathering information about who I was, and I felt I knew very well who I was... events I never forsaw in my life have literally changed who I am, and the learning process is anew. I am a changed person, and I am not really happy with who I am.

So, that is the social part of this, and I can also say that I am scared to fail when I get off the road.

I smoked marijuana once about 7-8 years ago and it was the single most impactful moment of my life. I want so desperately to go back to that moment, because contrary to everything you are experiencing in this moment, that moment deconstructed whatever idea that ever existed of good or bad, right or wrong.. Not as an overarching excuse to do wrong, but literally the obliteration of all relativity that allowed right or wrong to exist.

it was amazing. I knew. I understood, that all the things i cared about or were afraid of were dust. Illusion. And unless you have been there, it seems laughable to hear it or read it maybe, but goddamn if I could go back...

I don't know what I want to say right now, I just know that I am scared. Scared that I will fail. scared that I will not find in myself that pure thing that winners have that just makes them win at all costs. Scared that the things I love and have loved will cease to be. Scared that I will be doomed to be unfree, as I struggle to provide a life for myself that contains meaning, happiness, love and loving accomplishment. In other words, I am scared to be a slave to the bonds of mundane... well, what I would personally call dreadful "Work".

I don't want to lead a life of quiet desperation. I love so many things, and to exist in a world where I cannot persue those things and get by in life in the practice of them makes this all feel like a nightmare.

I remember when I was younger, and had to get up hours before sunrise... already chained at the neck by the bidding of my employer.. and I'd get home well after dark... with barely the energy to enjoy myself.. falling asleep exhausted and afraid of the next brutal day.. I would rather fucking be dead than live a life of that shit. seriously.

My only hope is to somehow turn that fear and hopelessness into power and motivation to make sure at all costs that does not happen again. To get home, get serious, and make this fucking plan work out.

All the people showing confidence in me so far, has only shined a light on the tiny whisper in my mind that tells me "They love you, of course they will only tell you positive things". My fear is that I will find out I am just another loser that doesn't have what it will take, and yet I struggle to rid myself of that worry, and replace it with an iron will that says I WILL NEVER GIVE UP.

That is the only way it will work I think. I think... I have no words left tonight on this matter. It has been a long and hard day and I am going to play rage now.

Losing to Win, or just plain losing?

There are cycles to every aspect of existence that I know of.

I started taking notice those cycles in middle and high school, but specifically my personal cycles of emotional highs and lows.

Our schools would hand out these planner books each year and I actually loved them. They were a nice size with rounded edges and that spiral plastic spline holding everything together. I would doodle in the little calendar days, but I also started making some notes about how I would feel or what I would do that day. I wanted to go back and look years down the road and recall those moments. I began to notice that if I felt great at school I would tend to feel shitty and depressed at home. Likewise if I felt depressed at school I tended to feel better at home.

It's not anything I took serious study with, but it was just enough of a pattern to become noticeable to me. I think those were the formative times of me starting to analyze myself and life in a serious way.

Well, fast forward 16 years and here I am noticing different things about myself that I have never noticed before. Much of which I won't be writing about in this post or even perhaps this blog, but what I did want to mention is that I have been in a pretty shit place for awhile now.

One thing I can say, is that being in a shit place makes it an emotional challenge to even look at the trading progress right now. Losing basically 25 times in a row is pretty stressing in a way I haven't felt since 2008-2009; the last time I was actually in the market. I was trading real money back then and like I mentioned in a previous post, my risk per trade was 10 times the percentage it has been on this blog.

Here, with a $10,000 account a $10 loss is only 1/10th of a percent. 25 losses basically puts me down 2.5% but back in the day that would have been a 25% draw down.It's bugging me and it's still only a demo!

I know I keep saying that I have to remind myself that I am letting this robot just do whatever its going to do because I am gathering data, but damn is it difficult to watch 7% gains get eaten away by a market I know I shouldn't even be trading in.

What kind of data am I gathering you ask? Sometimes I am unsure. At first is was really just to see how the robot responds to live data instead of a historical backtest. It seems to do alright honestly as long as there isn't any crazy volatility from news releases coming into the market.

I suppose part of this data, is actually about me and how I psychologically handle a string of losses. It's also a curiosity of the unknown. As simple "What if I just let the fucker go?".

For those of you who have been keeping up with my posts and paying attention, you'll recall that the market has been doing pretty much what I have estimated it would do. I am thankful for that because it means I am not totally inept at reading the market, yet my actions and losses seem to reflect otherwise haha.

I have said a few times now that I expect the market to be choppy and for me to wake up to losses. That has happened.

An issue rising up in my consciousness is a question that says "If you suspect all of that rubbish why do you even have the robot running?"

Again I think curiosity is the best answer I can thoughtfully give. I think when I set out to test this concept, I wanted to just really put it through its paces. I want to discover just how bad it can get... I guess I want to see the worst it can get now with fake money rather than real money.

So far, even in my 25 sequential losses I have had several opportunities to take profits that would have the account well above the $700 in gains that were there before it started losing so much. When I get home, I plan to take a good look at the performance and document charts showing all the obvious profit that there was to take that I simply didn't.

There is a part of me that has evolved as a trader that makes this process pretty stressing to go through. You see, when I first started out trading I thought to myself "Well, everyone seems to lose money because they can't cut losses and they can't hold winners, so I'll just learn to do both."

Well, the key to doing that successfully as I have learned and am still learning, is to do it in a balanced way. And more specifically in a way that your approach requires based on expectancy and market conditions.

Back in the day I had much less of a problem taking 10 losers in a row because in 2008 when the US markets were crashing there was enough movement in a day that my 10 losses could be made back pretty easily. In the years since, directional volatility and daily ranges have died down considerably. This recent downtrend in the Euro (strengthening of the Dollar) is bringing back some of that large daily range again, but I don't think anyone can or should expect it to last. It feels to me like it is simply a result of the market struggling over whether or not this is the bottom of that drop or not. Very wide swings show a big fight between buyers and sellers. I think once the battle is over those daily ranges will decrease substantially back down to how they were on the downtrend to begin with.

When I had learned to hold winners, my problem became that I learned to hold them so long they became losers.

(I have a whole post about "Making it all back" coming up that will make a lot of sense to you so stay tuned for it. Very relevant to this situation.)

In short though, because I was down 10 losses already for the day, when I was  finally under a winner I would want to hold onto it until it caught me up from all those losses and then some. In a market that's moving, that is possible depending on how many losses you've actually taken, but on a slow, choppy, unsure market day... The market will likely only have so much to give you and it won't be all you are asking or hoping for.

So when I say this has been hard for me to go through, it's because I feel like I am watching the same shit happen to me that happened back in the day; where I have a decent profit and I am just not taking it. But this time I actually want to take it.

I'm looking at these charts and where reversal points are likely to be and I am like "I should totally take this profit, but I'm not because of this stupid curiosity to see what the hell happens."

I'ts kinda making me feel like a fool, which is why I have to constantly remind myself that I am choosing to stay disciplined to that curiosity because it's what I set out to do.

Let me explain something though, because it's crucial to this situation: I can't physically be in front of the charts to monitor them.

I feel like if I had the control and the time to trade this robot the way I actually saw fit, I wouldn't even have it trading as much as I do. I would wait until the market where likely to be alive with movement and I would carefully choose to place the robot at key reversal areas.

If price got to that area and didn't immediately reverse I would like to be present enough to gauge whether or not it would be wise to implement my martingale risk profile into the mix. (Martingale by the way is usually a deadly stupid way to trade, but I have no data as to how it pertains to what I am currently doing with this robot.)

Not only that, I would really love to see how I can implement this robot during news trades with the martingale side of it. If price is just really directional and going to pop but I will take a few losses before it decides where to go I think that might really be useful.

But because I am driving all day and don't have the remote control I'd like to have... my only options are to watch it do whatever it's going to do, or take all the profit on any particular position, with no ability to relocate the robot yet.

The following sentence is something I think is a good question for all people to ask themselves:

If the flow of opportunity is never ending, what good does it do anyone to become obsessed with picking exact tops, exact bottoms or capturing the entire move?

I honestly think that as long as trading exists and volatility is tradeable, we should keep that question in our minds because it can help us cut losers quickly and take profits when the market makes them available.

But besides that, at the end of the day... there is still the serious risk that my broker's live execution will kill this strategy altogether and I'll need to keep looking. I have had problems with them before while trading live money and if those issues still exist, putting tens of thousands of dollars at the risk of a shady brokerage is not worth it. I'll have to be extra careful just to try and not get taken advantage of.

Thank you for taking the time to read this if you indeed did.
-Francisco

P.S. By the way, if Orange Juice hits $1.55 again I am selling. I wasn't watching and it totally hit it... I'm just calling it out now so no one can say it's hindsight trading ;P

95%

Well, it's Friday....

Currency markets close Friday afternoon and open back up Sunday evening. So, on that front no one's equity curve will be moving much over the weekend ;) My positions in the AUD/CAD pair is basically where it was when I opened the third trade.

So I guess it's time to start talking a little trading eh? By the way, I would really love to start some kind of dialogue if anyone is actually reading this and interested. It would help me feel a little better about the direction I take my posts in as far as what to actually delve into content wise. But also, maybe not.

Without the help of an initial question, (or a beer) its kinda difficult to feel on point about where to start. I can only really start from what it is my own opinion worth talking about, which is usually the psychological side of things.

All of us that get into trading do it because we are primarily #1. Hooked on the dream of getting rich and #2. Fucking lazy as hell.

Like I said in a previous post, if you currently just do enough to get by at whatever you do for a living right now, there's a good chance trading is not for you because it takes hard work. On another note, remember the post from Forex Factory about mistakes, and how I said those people don't realize what the real mistake in general is? Well, it reminds me of a great blog I really enjoyed the hell out of reading.

This blog BY AGE 23 follows a young man August of 2008 until July of 2010 in his dream to trade for a living. I found it one day and read the whole thing in a few hours, so it's really not that long. This guy's blog, is a striking resemblance to the struggles of many people who never get there, to profitable trading. I'll have to admit, I was laughing my ass off quite a bit at his misfortune, because he was stuck in a way that so many people trying to trade get stuck. I don't think I was much different though.

They spend countless hours obsessing over indicators, signals and trading systems in the attempt to do one thing: Find a way to basically NEVER LOSE MONEY. They don't know that's what they are trying to do, because they won't admit it to themselves. Yeah, at first they might consciously be looking for a way to always win, but very quickly they come to the "horrible truth" that you must lose money. Problem is, most people never truly accept this fact internally, but only on the shallowest of levels. They become delusional, and they change into something different.

What they think they are looking for, is the way to make the most money while losing the least amount along the way. You will hear idiots refer countless times to this thing called "The Holy Grail". That thing that is the best ever method of trading ever. (EVER) Well, there are a few ways in this world to pretty much guarantee a profit every time, but you and I aren't funded or connected in a way that makes that even a remote possibility for us. And even for those who are, sometimes it's illegal and just not worth it long term.

So, the thing about that blog that had me laughing my ass off, was all the contradictory statements the guy was making... "I need to pick one thing to do and just stick with it no matter what! Starting Monday that is what I will do!"  and in two days of losing, its "I backtested a change to the system and this time it's even better!" You'll notice the flip-flopping if you take the time to look at it.

Throughout the entire blog he can't stick to one thing for long at all, and here is one of the reasons why:

He hasn't truly accepted the risk of trading. He is still looking for something that ultimately doesn't lose money. Not only that, I highly suspect he is trading with way too much risk. You never once (that I recall) hear him mention what his risk per trade is, (percentage wise which is all that really counts) but if after literally 3 losers in a row you feel the need to change your system, you are losing enough money to fuck with you emotionally.

I started cracking up because I knew as soon as I heard him say how awesome this new system performed, that in just a post or two he'd be abandoning it for something else. His problem (one of many) was not truly accepting the risk, and/or not knowing his true personal loss threshold. If his system really was so great, why else would a few losers in a row knock him off the path?

A huge problem every new trader faces, is learning what a loss really means. In life, when something doesn't work out, it can often be a sign that we did something wrong, or that something needs to change or that we are going down the wrong path. In regular life, that makes sense in a lot of situations, but there are certain psychological frameworks that are counterintuitive to trading profitably. In trading, losing money does not mean you are a loser! But how many of us have people there to explain that to us??

I strongly urge you to get it through your head, that losing money in the markets does not make you an idiot!

Now, I can't just leave it at that, because THE WAY you lose your money does matter. This will be explained of course in the future, but its basically all about being smart with your capital and doing the least amount of damage to your account so that you will always have a chance to come back for the next opportunity.

There is the widely held idea/myth/legend, that 95% of traders lose money. Well, guess what? 100% of traders lose money. There is no way to avoid it, but there is a way to put the odds in your favor enough to counteract those losses by a multiple and end up positive over the long run.

THAT, is what trading is all about. Being profitable over the long run. And you will NEVER reach that point if you are risking too much per trade. it's just that simple, and yet you can scour the blogs, the forums and whatever and see nothing but a bunch of people so focused on profit and win rate... never truly just accepting the risk and trading safely.

There are so many factors to trading that people don't realize, however trading is not complicated, or at least it doesn't have to be. The problem is, we are complicated and we get in the way.

Come to think of it, if you consider yourself intelligent, look around. How many idiots do you see in your daily life? People who very clearly shouldn't even possess a drivers license. Of all the simple things that humans have been doing for decades, you would think EVERYONE knew how to drive a fucking vehicle, but no... we see it all the time. Accidents for the dumbest reasons. Traffic for the dumbest reasons. Now try to imagine a reasonable explanation as to why any one of those idiots would fare well at trading, let alone running any kind of business successfully?

I used to hear that 95% statistic and let it scare the shit out of me, like "The odds are against you Francisco!"... but you know what? I've actually come to think that the odds are in my favor, simply because I am not an idiot. And I don't mean I'm educated so that makes me smart. There are plenty of people who are well educated who think their success will carry over into trading, and they eat shit. Being educated is entirely different than being smart. Educated people seem to know the rules a little bit better than the principles.

I am not downing an education at all either, I am just trying to make the differentiation between the two.

I think that's enough for now.

-Francisco