Saturday, April 02, 2005

Teddys Trading Safari

I wanted to write about Stops and the Defense, and I still might today or tomorrow, as the reasons, why one trader chooses this or that trading path still occupies my thoughts. But when I came to my computer after dinner I saw this e-mail:
 
I just found your blog I had no idea you had gone to Teddys room. No one mentioned it in woodies but lots of the Euro traders asked where you were at the time. The morning session is like a morgue!! I have only been trading for about 6 months. I miss watching decent traders as I believe it’s the best way to learn. Is it worth joining teddys room?? For some reason I just cannot seem to make money trading woodies way, not in realtime anyway!! Although I use the CCI I am using other indicators now, especially to keep me in a trade and things are turning around.
 
and answered it with a letter I thought, might be of interest not only to the writer, who will remain anonymous here in the Blog.
 
Hi Anon,
 
yes it sure is worth joining Teddy's room. Most of the "old" traders are now there, and I would say, if you knew Woodies old Paltalk room, that's the atmosphere we now have in Teddy's room. You will like it.
I no longer use the cci (even if it is still on the chart on first glance, but that's just a Stochastic using the cci scaling, which I'm so familiar with) and have to say I'm doing better than in all the 2 years in Woodies room. That's not Woodies fault, he laid a lot of groundwork, but at least the last 6 months were lost. I did no longer develop. This has changed with Teddys room. Free flow of ideas between traders you know trade for real is all what is needed to get you big steps forward on your trading path. Reading my blog gives you an idea in which direction I have evolved. When I was in Woodies room I already traded S/R levels but was always feeling like I jumped the gun and saying ok see, this or that cci signal was just developping when I entered the trade. But that's just BS. Of course there is a cci signal, if the trade works and goes in your direction. But it's just not there in Realtime. It is developping and if the trade fails it will be just something else. EG a ZLR or Shamu. If the ZLR does not work, fine then let's call it a Shamu.
 
But when does the ZLR work and when does it fail. How do you manage your trade. Is there an alternative for being Stopped out. Only when you see all options you can decide which way is the right one for you.
In Teddys room I got the new ideas, the alternatives presented and I now can decide which way I want to go, which I feel comfortable with. Because you will only be successful, if you don't have to fight yourself. Sure a lot of the stuff discussed is beyond a new trader and I would forward these to the WCCI to learn trading, to learn the discipline necessary, but I'm not sure newbees still get the most important lesson there: Screentime, Screentime, Screentime
 
To give you an example of the new ideas which are bounced around, just take a look at Friday's log's and see how we discussed spread futures trading in the afternoon. Darth Sidious came up with it, posted and followed up on the trades he did and we started discussing it in earnest. It sounds absolutly intriguing. Still it took me 2 hours only to understand which side to short and which side of the leg to go long when I saw a H&S pattern on a Spread chart, which I would have shorted. Sounds stupid, but that's what I mean, when I talk about getting new ideas and being able to follow them as long as there is someone you can discuss them with. No restrictions. Noone monitoring, if you said something you should not have said or making a reference to a non cci indicator.
We for sure had such discussions in the WCCI 2 years ago, but that stopped, as you yourself might have noticed.
 
Watch and learn. You won't learn in 6 weeks to trade profitable, it will take a lot of hard work and dedication. There is just no shortcut.
But sometimes the way you are forced to go, is just not the way which would be natural for you, which would work for you, because instinctively you understand and accept as correct what you do.
 
Relaxed trading,
 
Chris