T- Model Trader Blog Post 14 - The Confessional

 Hello Traders.

T-Model Trader is back with his 14th blog post for Decisive Trading (how did we get to 14 so quickly?!)

This one actually had me laughing as I read through it - not at the experience, but at the way it was descibed. 

I hope you all enjoy it.

James Orr

T-Model Trader Blog Post 14

The Confessional

As I have mentioned many times before, I go do a stint of journal writing at my local café most days. I try to get one of the tables tucked away in the corner so as to cocoon myself and get into this process of expressing the previous evenings trading activities.

Over the 15 months of doing this, I have been asked on many occasions as to what I am writing about and in the beginning I made the attempt to be honest and convey exactly what this was.

I soon came to realize the problems in trying to do this.

In my first goes, I would sit there explaining that I am trading and that I come here to write up what took place from the previous evening. After several attempts to elucidate, I came to see that a series of responses tended to follow.

The most common one was….“Oh dear, you better be so cautious cause these things will go down you know”. How do I explain that that is totally okay and in fact I actually prefer selling to buying.

Then there is that facial response. It is akin to having a large pus filled pimple suddenly erupt on my face and the person can’t quite embody the repulsion they suddenly feel at that moment in time. It is like they can’t hear a word because they are filled with disgust to what they are experiencing. For whatever reason, they seem to become terrified, as thou this trading talk zit may burst and so retreat out of the blast zone before they get infected.

The third common response is like they are sailing off over the horizon on a cruise ship holiday and their eyes have glazed over and no one is home. Beyond the occasional “A-ha, right, yes and Mmm” nothing much is registering.

So I made the decision to not say a thing, which really is so much easier.

If I am sitting there writing and get asked these days, I will say something like… “I am clearing out the congestion of my head so as to not get a pressure like build- up of thought causing my brain to want to explode out thru my cranial openings”. I think that the term “cranial openings” is the one that makes them hop it in the other direction with a sense of hast. Also I find that a few spontaneous twitches of the head and a gammy fluttering of one eye also helps. Insanity and the talk of bodily openings is a lethal mix and usually brings the conversation regarding my writing to a complete halt.

The problem though, is that sometimes it’s really good to be able to go… ‘Oh my, you wouldn’t believe what I did in a trade last night”. So dear readers, I am using this blog as my confessional as I need to let out a recent trading blunder.

So….here goes.

“Have mercy on my trading soul, for I have done a really silly thing…..like Really silly. A trade set-up did come on to me and I calculated my entry position whence forth. Price was conveniently a lovely round number, so adding 1.1 points really should have been an absolute no brainer. So it was not to be, as sadly barrenness of the active neuron flourished.

So good was this set-up, that I could hear the distant chorus of angels singing in my head, that this trade was indeed going to be a bloody little ripper. But again, that was not to be. I clicked on the buy button and lay back in feelings of rapture and joy, that trading merriment would soon be mine to have. Once more, that was not to be.

It was plainly obvious, that I had been taken asunder by some mathematical demon in my addition, which was resoundingly wrong, as it came to pass that 50 + 1.1 didn’t actually = a number less than 50. So, enter did I and thus the trade was committed to play out, without it being valid. Oh how I wailed and writhed upon the floor bathed in the realization of complete stupidity when I eventually discovered my folly.

But alas, this was not the end of my tribulations for the demon within blanketed out the more light that I realized, causing further erosion of what little brain power I had going on at the time. For I, thru the sheer power of faith, hung on to that trade. Rather than simply admitting to my trading blooper and bowing out with humility and a loss of moderate proportion, I clung on and was eventually cleft in two.

And in true historical fashion, the seas of the chart did part and offer price a safe passage all the way to my stop loss. At that point I was smote down and reduced to flailing upon the floor once again. I do believe the word moron may have passeth my lips as well (but I am not entirely sure as I was completely dissociated by this time).

Whilst down on my trading knee’s, I heard the voice of that great trading patron….Saint Confluenza (who, legend has it, was a 15^th century Italian merchant who had a vision of buying and selling without there being anything tangible to buy or sell) who said on to thee… “Harken back O trader and you will have seen not one, not two, but three candles reject breaking through and triggering the entry, so even if you cannot add up, visually it was plain to see as it stuck out like large doggy things. Yes, it was that obvious”

And in a moment of dire suffering I thought that compassion might come to pass from the great Saint on to me, offering salvation from the overwhelming  sense of anguish and misery. But not did it come as he continued with….. “Yep, moron is most appropriate….however….D*&khead is eternally and everlastingly better”. Once more I was smote down and reduced to squirming upon the floor, as I knew in my heart of hearts that he was indeed …..spot on!

Tragic hey. The tale of the mathematically challenged trader.

It is the timing of this blooper which is also important, as I had made a commitment to myself only days before to seriously up the ante of my levels of concentration and discipline. Whoops.

If they handed out ratings like they do with countries and credit, then this is a AAA rating in complete and utter day dreaming trading. Once again……groan and moan!

Till next time

T-model