For the first time in 3 years my account crossed the threshold to 5 digits again.
I can tell you it feels great. And I can see Mr. Market waiting to humble me again, but not today. Today I will just leave it as it is and start tomorrow with a clean slate.
After making 2 nice HSI trades I posted in the room, that I made my DG, and that my plan calls for a stop once I made it. Not to stop me dead in the tracks when I'm hot, but to make sure, I have consistent profits, not the home-run, deep fall days. But at 8.30 am in the morning being finished for the day? No, I thought about trading more cautious. Sure enough the next trade I took gave me some heat, but I finished it without violating my rules for a profit, ending the day on a real nice tone prior to lunch.
Buffy has a great article on her site, which I read at new years eve. I will repost it here as I think it's a great description, of what is necessary to become a trader:
38-STEPS TO BECOMING A SUCCESSFUL TRADER
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Steps to Successful Commodities Futures Tradingas published in Commodity Futures Trading Club Newsand in Traders Organization's Real Success Daytrading Course
1. We accumulate trading information - buying books, going to seminars and researching.
2. We begin to trade with our 'new' knowledge.
3. We consistently 'donate' and then realize we may need more knowledge or information.
4. We accumulate more information.
5. We switch the commodities we are currently following.
6. We go back into the market and trade with our 'updated' knowledge.
7. We get 'beat up' again and begin to lose some of our confidence. Fear starts setting in.
8. We start to listen to 'outside news' & other traders.
9. We go back into the market and continue to donate.
10. We switch commodities again.
11. We search for more trading information.
12. We go back into the market and continue to donate.
13. We get 'overconfident' & market humbles us.
14. We start to understand that trading success fully is going to take more time and more knowledge then we anticipated.
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Many Traders Will Give up at this Point as they Realize Work is Involved
15. We get serious and start concentrating on learning a 'real' methodology.
16. We trade our methodology with some success, but realize that something is missing.
17. We begin to understand the need for having rules to apply our methodology.
18. We take a sabbatical from trading to develop and research our trading rules.
19. We start trading again, this time with rules and find some success, but overall we still hesitate when it comes time to execute. We start trading again, this time with rules and find some success, but overall we still hesitate when it comes time to execute.
20. We add, subtract and modify rules as we see a need to be more proficient with our rules.
21. We go back into the market and continue to donate. We go back into the market and continue to donate.
22. We start to take responsibility for our trading results as we understand that our success is in us, not the trade methodology.
23. We continue to trade and become more proficient with our methodology and our rules.
24. As we trade we still have a tendency to violate our rules and our results are erratic.
25. We know we are close.
26. We go back and research our rules.
27. We build the confidence in our rules and go back into the market and trade.
28. Our trading results are getting better, but we are still hesitating in executing our rules.
29. We now see the importance of following our rules as we see the results of our trades when we don't follow them.
30. We begin to see that our lack of success is within us (a lack of discipline in following the rules because of some kind of fear) and we begin to work on knowing ourselves better.
31. We continue to trade and the market teaches us more and more about ourselves.
32. We master our methodology and trading rules.
33. We begin to consistently make money. We begin to consistently make money.
34. We get a little overconfident and the market humbles us.
35. We continue to learn our lessons.
36. We stop thinking and allow our rules to trade for us (trading becomes boring, but successful) and our trading account continues to grow as we increase our contract size.
37. We are making more money then we ever dreamed to be possible.
38. We go on with our lives and accomplish many of the goals we had always dreamed of.
Where are you at the moment?
