Frustration

Why do you feel like you're trading worse and worse?

Also, how are you studying the course? Are you creating summaries of the videos, or creating a knowledge base or are you just watching them?

This is something that happens to a lot of people. With more knowledge come worst results. A lot of people I know say that they traded better when they first started and didn't know anything about the market. This is all connected to the feeling of fear and using too much subjectivity when trading. 

My advice to you will be to choose 5-6 patterns that you know and just trade them mechanically using pre-defined stop and profit targets. Do this for 20-30 times and see what your result will be. Don't put too much thought into what will happen. Just focus on selecting reasonable setups, take the trades and see what the market will give you. Do not move your stops after you place the trades and trade with an "i don't care size" position or with a SIM account.

Thank you both

I am trading a sim account, simply because I know fear sets in the moment real money is on the line and I want to build confidence.

I am "just" watching the videos, but that is because I'm a visualizer and have never profitted from condensed notes. I see the charts and they stick with me.

Also I completely agree with the notion of the more you know, the more you know that you don't know and what can seem easy to begin with, often becomes infinitely much harder as you progress.

David I think you have a very valid point in choosing a few specific patterns to focus on, because I think maybe I'm trying to much and to hard. The weeks I did well I was only taking 2-4 trades per session as Al recommends to beginners.

Again thank you to you both for taking the time and giving feedback.

Hi Riembaus,

I think what you're experiencing is something very common between traders. Every now and then I experience the same ups and downs.

It seems like the more you study, the more you start to realize that the market indeed have good arguments for both sides during the majority of the time. If you add that with the added knowledge obtained, it's easy to see that the result might be an analysis paralysis to some extend.

Another thing I noticed is that, when I started to improve my abilities, I became less criterious in terms of which trades I'd enter. That was one of the biggest issues for me.

I'm still fighting these difficulties, but one thing that is proving to be very effective to me is to give more importance to higher time frames (specially 15m), instead of the 5m.

It might be something to consider.

Hope that helps.

Best,

One of the main things about trading is that you have to be able to trust your edge. Your edge is the trading system you are using, in our case it is Brooks Price Action. Trading 5-6 patterns (or even less) will allow you to backtest those patterns well and prove to yourself that they work.

Take for example Double Tops/Bottoms. They have 40% probability of success. Meaning that there is 40% chance you will make 2 times your Actual Risk in profit. So trade only those 2 setups over a series of 20-30 trades and mathematically you should be able to make money.

And remember the Trader's Equation Al gives is based on Actual Risk. I think all the probabilities he gives work for Actual Risk.

And the other important thing is that the probability of success is over a series of trades containing the same pattern. So you might have 10 Double Tops that fail in a row but the next 10 setups might work. That is why you have to trade them as part of a series.

Thank you all

I really appreciate the experiences you share here

Hi Riembaus. I don't know how relevant my suggestions will be but I will try and give you a few general problems traders face and the common ways to counter these problems. I am a newbie to price action so take my views accordingly. However, I have a market experience of probably 15-16 years so I am a bit familiar with some of the issues traders face.

First of all, Dr. Brooks himself speaks of 'analysis paralysis' in the course. Sometimes, knowing too much can become problematic and I think David was quite right in suggesting that you use 5-6 setups which you regularly employ and trade on a limited amount. Also, I am too familiar with your way of learning. Taking notes never suited me either. My suggestion would be to organize yourself just a little bit more and the answers to your problems will come through that by itself. Knowing too much is a problem but the actual problem lies when you know too much but you are not applying that knowledge very efficiently. In short, your knowledge has grown but you have not fully condensed that knowledge and therefore finding it challenging to apply that knowledge in real-time. I would recommend practicing what you are learning from the course repeatedly through time(back-testing perhaps). Scroll through the chart of what you are trading and find instances where your newly learnt knowledge could be applied - don't limit yourself to the successful setups and do find the failures too. I think that is a pretty good way to condense. When you feel you have mastered that setup, only then take it in real-time(SIM account too). I think your results would start turning favorable.

The second thing would be, keep a journal of your trades. After taking a trade, make a note of the date and time of the trade and along with it, write down the level of expertise you have of the setup(your estimation - make a note of the setups you are confident in, and also of those you are not too sure about). At the end of a certain period, you can compile the results of the trades according to the category the trades fell into and you will know where you need to improve I think.

Third, I would suggest taking those trades where you get the confluence of at least 2 setups coinciding at or about the same time. Your probabilities of success would increase substantially in my experience. I personally prefer setups that is supported in 3 ways. For example, if I am trading a wedge, I don't take the wedge alone. It is good context if the wedge is part of a bigger wedge, even better if the wedge is near a MM target. It does not have to be this way always but I think this example illustrates the point I'm trying to make?

Once you have mastered the setups through rigorous practice over the years, I think you will develop a Spidey-sense like I think Dr. Brooks has. I suspect he knows(obviously knows does not mean 100% sure, he is reasonably certain probably) which setups will work and which won't before the fact. This skill is I think developed through years of practice and not by going through a course alone.

Finally, sometimes you get in your head too much. Intense and rigorous practice is good but you must disconnect at times. Just monotonously going headfirst into the process day-in and day-out will not work well and you need to completely and totally disconnect from the markets sometimes. If you are motivated enough in trading, your brain will keep working subconsciously and condensing the things you are experiencing and learning. The brain actually works that way.

So, I hope I could offer information of some value to you. Do revert if you feel interacting more on this would help you as speaking on this topic might help me as well.

Also, I would like to add to David's comment

And remember the Trader's Equation Al gives is based on Actual Risk. I think all the probabilities he gives work for Actual Risk.

I don't think that is. I mean if it is, it makes no mathematical sense in trading as you're losing all of your stop every time you lose and only gaining 2x the risk in cases where you win and you're winning only 40% of the time. If this is true, trading as a profession would become utterly pointless and all the time, money and effort spent in this venture would be better spent elsewhere.

Thank you Abirfor that very well formulated answer.

I really appreciate all the support that offered in this thread and it far surpasses what I was expecting.

Abir, I would love to enter in a dialog sharing experiences and advice along the way. I find that I accumulate knowledge even faster when I get to apply it in dialog, where I am not only left to my own thoughts and opinions.

Hi Riembaus,

 Here is my 2 cents for what its worth because I can see the illusion of doing a ton of work an not trading well myself in the past. I look at it as being a mechanic having to try to fix a high performance sports car. With the videos Al is just giving you all the tools you will need to fix the car. In the beginning you may not even know all the tools that you will need. Then comes the hard part of being able to identify the problem real time and use the correct concepts. Therefore just watching the videos is really just building up your toolkit nothing more. First you have to know all your tools then you have to be able to use them correctly too 

Hi Riembaus. It's good to know that you found some help here. I don't mind discussing but please take this into consideration - if you're limiting your discussion with me, you only get my perspective. To be honest, while I might have some experience in the markets, I am not that good at PA. I still belong to the beginner category. To add to the problem, I couldn't limit myself to PA alone and I am venturing some other aspects too. So, I will share my contact if that helps you - I don't mind at all, although I can't find much time but would it perhaps be helpful if you are discussing with all kinds of people here in the forum itself? I mean, whenever you feel like you might want to discuss something, you can always post on this forum and there are people from all spectrums of expertise and experience who might help you even more. So, that's my point of view.

If you think that talking to me especially would help you, I will share my contact with the next post, not a problem at all.

In case you missed it (I did for the longest time), for the BTC Daily Setups (under 'Online Course' tab), it allows you to mark up a unmarked chart before seeing the marked up version. Which is a good way to test your charting accuracy as well as improve your charting speed.

It can be frustrating to mark up the chart with just the 1 color pen, but you'll get used to it. For example, for Al's blue box buys/sells, I just put red dots above/below the bars.

P.S. Make sure to watch Al's  '5 Steps to Finding Today's Trades' Youtube video, if you haven't already.

Man I just found that part. Thanks

BTW where is the definitions of the abbreviations located?

oh wow, I have this exact same problem. Before I did price action, I simply trade reversals based upon instincts and stochastic. I was slightly profitable.

However as I learn more and more price action I became worse and worse. I second guess myself and was afraid to enter or let the swing run its course.

Furthermore I find myself taking huge losses and it was emotionally draining for me. At one point I kept revenge trade myself to $5k loss a few times daily.

Psychologically I was not in a good place at one point.

What I did now is do the SIM trading and then once every often venture into MES instead of the ES. I also limit my loss to about $300 per day in SIM or $30 per day in MES

One thing that helps me understand more now is Measured Move and channels and wedges. Before this I got so angry when rally suddenly just stopped and reversed.