Wonderful New Year’s greetings to everyone from Shanghai! I have spent the last 10 days with my parents, sightseeing, eating like a pig and drinking like a fish, far away from any screen and/or chart. I had a lot of time to reflect on 2016 and to think about what I want to achieve in 2017.
2016 on many fronts has been far more successful than we planned for. Both Tradeciety and Edgewonk far exceeded our expectations regarding growth as well as progress. We launched the second version of Edgewonk and turned it into the best trading journal on the market – and we have yet tons of ideas about where to go and already a lot of unique features in the pipeline for 2017.
At Tradeciety, a lot will change as well, in the coming year. As you might have noticed, we took down some of the recent articles regarding our trading strategies and I can only say stay tuned because in 2-3 weeks you will see our reasons for doing so. As for me, I got tons of requests as to how my daytrading strategy applies to markets different than Futures, especially Forex, and I can see why. Forex is much, much easier to access and much, much cheaper to trade and I realize that a lot of you guys don’t have a lot of starting capital, so I made the choice to apply my strategy to time-based charts on the Forex markets, and have been testing and developing adjustments in the past few months.
The results have been pleasing and we will get into the meat of it very soon. The principles are the same, multi-timeframe analysis, trendfollowing, daytrading. As before, we will trade flags and pullbacks. We will keep the factor 3 for our charts (5 minutes and 15 minutes charts), but trade more instruments, as there are fewer setups to follow on the M5 charts as opposed to the 333 ticks charts. The adjustments lie mainly in the triggers we use for getting in and out of trades, as well as the indicators we consult because on time-based charts a lot of the indicators stop being useful or become much harder to read in my opinion. But step by step! The next article will be much more in-depth. And yes, the strategy is applicable to every market you can imagine so you are all welcome to celebrate and suffer together with me as we chop off the Hydra’s heads one by one.
There are tons of things I still want to do in my life or get back into but haven’t found the time for yet. Luckily, the life I am creating for myself allows me to do anything I want. However, in 2017 I want to fix mainly one thing: my ability to perform on a high level consistently. As a daytrader, obviously, this is crucial.
As a poker player, how much money you make mostly depends on how long you can do the grind. Your hourly rate of $200 isn’t worth much if you can only play one hour per week. But the longer you play, the more your hourly rate will go down, as you will get burnt out, lose focus, etc. For daytraders, this is mostly true, as well, but mistakes can hurt a lot more in trading because of several reasons, so anything less than A-game is suicide. My solution so far for not playing my B- or C-game was simply not to play (trade). I would only trade if I really felt like it. Sometimes I wouldn’t trade for a day, sometimes for weeks, and I did just fine. But I always felt like there was more I could achieve. This is a dangerous way to think – we all know greed hurts in trading – but I can’t stop thinking about the potential. All the setups I miss every week (in hindsight) because I stopped trading too early as I lost patience, and so on. I am really good at quitting. Actually, I am a master at quitting. As soon as I feel the slightest deterioration from my A-game or I catch myself daydreaming while looking at the charts, I simply walk away. That’s how I make money, I don’t force myself to do anything. So I will have to take this slow, increase my trading times step by step. I will never force myself to trade if I am not on my A-game so I have to find ways to perform my A-game longer, “simple” as that. I have a lot of ideas I want to try out and we will see how it goes. Expect some angry rants soon!
If I can achieve just that one thing for 2017, I will be more than happy. That sweet spot between performing and grinding is a thing that’s different for everyone and we all have to respect our personal limits – but we can always choose to stretch those limits, millimeter by millimeter. At least, that is what I strive to do, because it’s what keeps me motivated. I don’t need a lot of money, I don’t need a flashy life, I just want to be me, whatever that is.
What are your goals for 2017? Have you thought well about them? Now is the time.
I am eternally grateful for the life I’ve been living so far, and gambling has played a huge part in making my life so awesome. Who would have thought that the quiet boy who was always sitting in the last row in school and was struggling to get D’s in maths, would make his living one day by calculating statistics and probabilities and betting money on them while traveling the world. Life always makes sense in hindsight, it never makes sense in the now. That’s just something we have to live with. But as professional gamblers, we all can write whole novels about dealing with uncertainty, can’t we? Everything has worked out incredibly well so far for me and while sometimes I was close to despair and found myself in very dark places, I have learned that eventually everything will always be ok. I will be turning 30 this year and I can’t wait for the next 30 years.
I wish all of you that you get not only what you want in 2017, but also what you need, and that in these crazy times you can find peace of mind. Stay healthy, stay crazy, stay true to yourself, and most importantly, stay with us! I just want to say thank you for your continued support and I truly appreciate each and every one of you. I am proud to be a part of this community and would totally buy you all a big jug of whatever drink you prefer someday. Let me know when you are in Hong Kong. I’ll leave you with great words by a great man for now, and I will see you all in 2017. IDDQD-mode on.
The dominant myth of the day seemed to be that anybody could do anything, even go to the moon. You could do whatever you wanted -in the ads and in the articles, ignore your limitations, defy them. If you were an indecisive person, you could become a leader and wear lederhosen. If you were a housewife, you could become a glamour girl with rhinestone sunglasses. Are you slow witted? No worries -you can be an intellectual genius. If you’re old, you can be young. Anything was possible. It was almost like a war against the self. – Bob Dylan
