November Performance Review
Here is the progress on the two main directions I decided to go in November and how the month unveiled itself.
- Enhance the Core
Even at the beginning of the month I had the feeling that I don’t trade the setups as a result I wanted to focus on Breakouts (Qullamaggie style) and EPs setups. Around mid November I did an in-depth analysis of my trades and this was fully confirmed especially for Breakouts. Thats why I put myself couple of new rules in place, here they are:
- Focus on the setups you know - Breakouts and EPs
- No setup on the daily— No trade!
- Trade KQ Style, if it worked for him it should work for you.
- Stay at the 5 or 10 shares size and max 20 USD loss/day until you have 5 consecutive green days.
- Continue to innovate and fine tune your process to increase efficiency
- Stay open minded to learn new techniques and tools that will increase your chances to be right
Due to these rules I almost completely stopped trading. I didn’t chase stocks anymore; I was just looking for setups. From 5-7 trades per day, I decreased to zero and I was not feeling bad about it. I found breakout setups but didn’t trade them. I was just watching them in play and looking for the confirmation that I do the right things and that they do what they have to do. Seeing that was super rewarding. FOMO disappeared almost completely due to setup logic but also due to Trade Ideas process I have in place.
The biggest learnings in November, after 3 years of studying and trading is:
I heard this sentence from a lot of traders, and I thought I got it but still…I think this month, my brain, within conscious and subconscious levels accepted this truth that the market is a harsh environment that will chew me and spit out without mercy if I don’t trade the setup. Its interesting how the brain works…you think you know but you actually don’t know… :)
Next, my logic was that a setup that fits my style very well, I understand it better than the rest and I like to trade is the Breakout setup. In addition, Kristjan Qullamaggie shared a lot of his skills and knowledge online so studying his approach in detail felt like the right thing to do. Based on watching him hundred of hours I know that his setup works, I know he shared everything about it and I know he had significant profits. So, my next step was to go back and listen KQ again (possibly by now I have more than 750 hours of listening KQ) and realize that I still didn’t internalize what he is saying. From mid-November I am doing a deep dive on Breakouts and I am very happy with how it goes so far… (Its possibly the most important decision of November). I will share the results later in December.
- Explore for Further Innovation
- Master a master: I read all the posts of the following traders mmonis, comito, TGIF, thermos (members of stockbee.biz community). They all share good knowledge but by far the person that shares a well defined methodology on the forum, trades based on it and shares how he fine tunes during the process is mmonis. The idea of levels is legit and he definitely fine tuned it to make it his own style. Thank you for sharing it mmonis. It helped me right away to remove extra randomness from the stock movement. Stocks consider historical behaviour more than I thought. They move from Level A to B and then back from B to A or if they have momentum go from level B to C 😊. (Implementing mmonis levels to my daily chart was another good achievement in November).
- Develop Day Trading Skills, Processes and Tools
I wanted to develop more the daily skills, however as you saw so far, I realized that I still have problems with my swing trading techniques so I focused more on learning and trading the setup then getting into daily mechanics. For now, half of November I am on Breakouts deep dive, and it will take me still some time in December. I may get to this goal later but I didn’t progress much on understanding day trading.
I did some extra progress on the other tasks that were defined: Switch to Interactive broker and understand the trading platform (done); Buy the stream deck and integrate hotkeys in the trading process (done). The stream deck helps reduce mistakes and keeps me focused on the chart not on some annoying buttons on a broker’s software. Its a good device to have. (Implementing stream deck and fine tuning the broker was another good achievement in November).
Self-Leadership and Mental State
Overthinking
I always compare how I feel, act, behave, sleep, eat, interact with people, evaluate my emotional balance, how my brain learns and gets challenges etc. against my 7 years as a Product manager in the corporate world. I am happy with how full-time trader is so far but I saw a phenomenon I wanted to share.
As a product manager, I was super busy, more than 75 emails per day, phone calls, meetings back-to-back with people from all areas of work. I was hardly having time to talk with myself, I was just focused to get stuff done.
The full-time trader environment puts me in a position when I am most of the time with myself. I have almost no meeting with anyone, I don’t have 75 emails to answer. This results in the fact that I study or trade and I am a lot of time by myself and I obviously start talking a lot with myself )))). To the point where I have headaches from what I call now overthinking. Thats why, extra actions were put in place in November to tackle this thing: I will study meditation, awareness, being in the present moment thing, staying calm and not being taken by thoughts left and right. I think this will help me stay productive and healthy on the long run. But wanted to share it here, because it sounds like an important aspect of mental health…
I already found a way to stop this acceleration of the brain due to overthinking. I fully recommend you to go to the swimming pool + sauna! My gym has gym, pool and sauna all in the same building and its just perfect. I advise you to find something similar for yourself. You will thank me later and just take breaks and don’t overthink stuff!
Team Up
There are couple of traders from the community I talk with on discord, and I found that teaming up with 2-3 traders that are good people and motivated about trading is cool. It brings a momentum of debate, critical thinking, working on the same goal etc. You always have something to learn from them and it also breaks the pattern of being just by yourself in this journey. I encourage you to find 2-3 good traders, but make sure they have good integrity and intentions as people, and they are super motivated to make it as traders. Otherwise, they can become a waste of your time.
A long post in November but hope you found it useful… Thank you guys for subscribing to the youtube channel and for all the cool feedback you gave me on the EP deep dive.
December goals on the way…
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