Not my charts, LOL. (though with my constant fiddling, I'm getting very near it).

September balances:
9/01/04: $5000
9/30/04: $4680.40

Down 6.39% for the month. Not quite how one envisions a month of "paper" trading. :) Well, it's onto better times and results in October. For the month, I can't say I've found the consistency I'm striving for (as to charts, narrowing down my specific setups, feeling confident with my front-end executions, etc) but I did develop the first framework for my new trading plan. I have determined to limit my number of trades, which I've been accomplishing the past couple weeks. I'm still fluid as to ideal target/stop loss numbers, whether to concentrate on the ER or YM or both (I've been trading both this week), how to breakdown my market screen time more efficiently, and there's always the constant battle with the charts (which indicators, which setups, etc) that is always the sign of underlying confusion and lack of confidence in any concrete thing.

That said, today was my best paper day: 11 trades (4-0-0 on the YM for +$55, -$16.48 comm) and (7-0-0 on the ER for $280, -38.40 comm). The problem with the runner getting taken out for less than the quick scalp target continues. Many in the chatroom have shifted gears and gone to an "all in-all out" scalp. I finally did get a runner to run on my final ER trade, and it paid off more than my 6 other winners combined.

My paper results have been pretty good. My win ratio is also decent, but it's been mostly small wins. The key, of course, is to start translating these results to real trades. Paper trading serves the purpose of testing (testing setups, testing executions, testing intratrade skills and psychology) and hopefully to build confidence. It's not real trading anymore than batting practice isn't stepping into the box in a real game situation, but to get the most of it, you need to make it seem real in your mind. In August and the beginning of September, I didn't have my real game face on and the results showed it. I've found more consistency now. The confidence is building. It's still baby steps and a lot of 2 steps forward, 1 step back, but it's definite progress now.

3 min ER. 11 trades (8-2-1) for $135 (-$50.08 comm).

Another not-so-bad day with decent trading opportunities. Gotta bear with me. Suddenly, I've got two farked up keys on my keyboard and they happen to be E and I. Half the time, they work fine, a quarter of the time, they print nothing, and the other quarter of the time, they get stuck and I have a bunch of eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee's and iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii's to backspace on. I go through a keyboard a year it seems. I learned my lesson last year and bought the cheapest Made in China piece of shit keyboard, as opposed to the expensive Made in China pieces of feces (that rhymes!) I got before. We've got to stop outsourcing these keyboard manufacturing jobs. I hope these Presidential Debates address this crucial issue.

I woke up naturally at 4:30 am here (that's 2 hours prior to market open) and that sucked. Couldn't go back to bed because I knew I'd be twice as tired when my alarm clock went off an hour later. By the market open, I had too many pitch black coffees in me and I was a zombie. I zoned out the first half of the day, but snapped out of it for the second half.

The 2 contract strategy did not work that well today. I tried it five times and wound up with less ticks on the runner everytime. I've got BT set to b/e +1 as soon as my first scalp target is hit. A couple times the stop got hit, then the trade took off. My other trade was a 1 contract inverted ghost short attempt that should've been 2 contracts, but I messed up on BT again. The execution botches continue.

Today's ER 3 minute chart. 9 paper trades (6-2-1) for $220 (-$41.84 comm).

Price bars added again. The CCI looks like a melting painting. Those are the added ribbons mentioned yesterday. I also added an indicator that I found somewhere changes the 14 CCI green and red. I'm not clear yet on what the color change specifically indicates, but it's obviously some up/down thingy more indicative of trend than being a setup signal. The turbo CCI is in white. The indicators look messy, but somehow it wasn't that difficult to focus on the CCI and turbo.

Today was basically an uptrend day with the usual prolonged periods of chop to drive you nuts. The big winners today were ZLRs with the trend. They've fallen off in effectiveness recently. From Woodie's renowned 80% success rate down to around 65% the past couple months -- or so say the recordkeepers in chat. In the hands of botching amateurs (like myself), they've been epic adventures in buffoonery. Today was good though, and nobody can complain (much) on a day like this when things work pretty much as advertised.

I was a bit pissed early on, having started with a couple winners, but having very little to show for it. The problems with scratching out chickenshit winners is that 1) you need a fairly high win % and 2) you need to stay extremely vigilent and make sure your losers are of the chickenshit variety also. This is always the agony of trading a small account. That "let your winners run" stuff goes out the door. Perhaps in this simulation stage, I shouldn't even be this concerned with the final dollar totals pulled in (or thrown away) each day, but I am. Profitability is the bottomline, and I'm concentrating on that as much as learning the setups, mastering trade executions, and trying to hone a psychological edge.

I'm going to practice hard with 2 contract entries now, using one for my chickenshit quick target and keeping one on as a runner. I did this successfully twice today, first on the dreaded YM (which I always fuck up on), where I was able to get 14 combined ticks in a situaton I'd probably get 5 from normally. Then on the ER, I got a combined 11 ticks. On a subsequent ER loser, I took off the 1st at b/e, and the 2nd at -2 ticks. There have been many times the past couple months my entries go nowhere quickly. Volume is gone, and the next price movement as to when and where is anyone's guess. Other times, a loser appears immediately. The reflex has to be to peel off one contract immediately, and make it a regular one contract trade. I'll be jumpy on dumping a loser or potential loser and risk having it turn for the positive, but I think immediate damage control is best for me at this stage. Hopefully, the positives of carrying the runner on clear winners far outweigh the nervous nellie bailing.

Another positive is it's a better way of reaching my 10 daily trades. I've found it hard to find setups recently because 1) they've been hard to find on many inactive days and 2) I've missed a lot of action being lulled to sleep by the prolonged chop and slop ranges. I'm surely to fall prey to inventing trades the longer this type of market exists. Perhaps 5 trades a day (of 2 contracts each) is a better number to target. I also need to figure out how to budget my market hours screentime, because the slimjim stuff is numbing me. I'm thinking of 2 hours trading 6:30am-8:30am (my local time), 2 hours of break, then 2 more hours of trading 10:30am-12:30pm, which is Woodie's 3:30pm EST end of trading. The purpose isn't necessarily to accurately avoid the midday lull (as sometimes they don't happen or they occur at different times on different days), but to keep me fresh and focused when I am in front of the computer to more effectively use my (lagging) energy.

Had another "family" weekend here. Everyone loves seeing the baby, and we had a good time. Unfortunately, it takes away from my studying time. I went back to paper trading on Friday and continue so today. Actually, I've never left paper and there's no reason to leave paper at this precise moment. My loss on last Thursday was a fluke in every sense of the word, and the only argument I have for taking real trades right now is to immediately attempt to make up what I lost. That, to me, is a bad reason for taking a trade, real or fake.

The schedule I had in mind was at least 2 months of studying and simulation trading. That was the first week of August, so I'll revisit this upcoming weekend where I am, and whether I'm ready to do dive back in (or at least dip a toe).

For whatever reason, I'm having a seriously hard time picking up setups. My daily trading plan is to "limit" myself to 10 trades a day, and it's been a challenge to find those 10. The urge to invent trades is strong, though my (mostly) refraining has been the thing I'm most proud of the past few weeks. The post-Labor Day pick up has been a bust so far. Blame it on whatever: oil, the War, the election, mixed gov't numbers, etc.

Last Friday: 10 trades (7-3-0) for +$35 (-$47.32 comm)
Half day today: 2 trades (2-0-0) for +$100 (-$9.60 comm)

I've been experimenting with chart settings again, which indicates my current boredom and frustration with the market and my progress. My latest thing has been to add CCI "ribbons" by adding a 34 ema, 50 CCI, 70 CCI and Fisher Transform to Woodie's setup. It makes for mighty purty lines. A nice rainbow of things crossing and bouncing off each other. Maybe there's something significant and useful in there. I won't bother showing it here unless it proves more than just novel.

Kiwi Trader seems to also have been bitten by the bug to improve the CCI. He has come up with a CCI2 (found at http://www.e-minitraders.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=929) using a CCI based on the 20 ema, rather than the regular 14 sma. I think what we're both trying to do is to "fix" a market that's been plagued by prolonged flatness and lack of follow-thru.

Elevator down.

I slept late, but soundly. Missed my 5:30 am alarm, and missed the open by 5 minutes. I found out today is actually Thursday, not Friday as my foggy brain previously thought. Now I seriously wish this was a Saturday.

The good news: I got my first real trade in with IB/BT this morning. The fills in and out were quick and seamless.

The horrendous news: It was a monster loser for -$300. OUCH!

I uninstalled and reinstalled BT last night, thinking I'd be clever and see if a complete reinstall would "trick" it to reset its countdown nag, saving me $100 in registering the damn thing. Well, that didn't work. Today is my final day before some of the features turn off. Anyway, I did a WTF trade just to make sure it was working as before. Why? I don't know. I didn't have my morning coffee yet. I was waiting for my CCI charts to catch-up since I missed 5 minutes at the open. For some reason, I increased stop loss and target to 1 full point (10 ER ticks), remembering the success I had with those settings on AutoTrader yesterday. Then for the grand finale, again for some unknown reason, I set it to 2 contracts instead of 1 just before hitting the SELL button. The short went against me right off the bat. It was about to hit the full stop when I peeked at my IB TWS (Trader Workstation) and realized this was a real fucking trade. The capper on this nightmare was as soon as I (again brainlessly) widened my stop loss another 5 ticks, CNBC comes out with some alert about crude oil going down. The ER zoomed up a bit more and finished me off.

I took a shower. I strapped my son in the baby bjorn and took a walk around the block. I had a cup of yesterday's coffee with a slice of toast. I sat down at the computer again. My thoughts of going hogwild and "getting it all back today" subsided, thankfully. I recalled some advice to get back on the horse after falling off, but do a paper trade immediately after. I did. It was a 7 tick loser. I followed that with a paper scratch. My thinking now is to stay on paper the rest of the day. If netting a $150-$200 profit everyday is my current initial goal, then I definitely need a loss limit to call it a day. I think -$300 is sufficient. More than sufficient, so I won't press my luck. Chalk it up to the neverending cost of a trader's education, right? We'll make it back. Sigh.

The mood in chat is somber. Very quiet for a couple hours now. Right after my fuck-up, Woodie announced that one of the chat members has his 15 year old daughter in the hospital. She has some rare disease and her condition is worsening. Another guy said he lost a child to cancer last year and it was with the positive spirit of Woodie's room that helped him keep going. It's sad news. Prayers and best wishes go out to this girl. Tough to feel sorry for myself now. So I don't.

I'll resume paper trading this afternoon, get some playback time after the close, and go live again tomorrow morning. The anxiousness/nervousness of doing a live trade is no longer there. That's good. It's been a few months, so the cobwebs are cleared. I'm not donning the cape as Superman today. Best to start with a clean slate tomorrow and stick with my trading plan discipline. The damage is already done, and the mood is wrong for today. I'm all right.

2 paper trades (2-0-0) for +$140 (-$9.60 comm)

Though it was a gap down and strong downtrend day, there seems to have been some good trading opps for all today. Let's hope the market is getting some life back into it. I was using AutoTrader. It lacks a DOM like Bracket Trader, which is the sort of thing I'm used to with my previous J-Trader experience. I haven't figured out how to set my own target and stop, so I was stuck on the default 1 full point (10 ER ticks). That's a pretty wide stop in this usual tight range environment we've been suffering through, and my first trade was during the midday slim-jimming. It was a ZLR short that went wrong on me after a couple bars. I just waited it out for an hour until it was back in my favor and left with 4 ticks. The 2nd trade was a ZLR short that clicked and never looked back. It hit the 1 pt target before I could screw anything up manually (even if I knew how).

With one day left in the week, I'm feeling good about my progress. Working with a foreign front-end is a slight setback. I have to figure this thing out. But since outlining the first draft of my trading plan earlier, I'm showing much better discipline. My # of trades has fallen drastically. I'm also pleased to be focusing more on the CCI, sticking with trend trades and real setups, and allowing myself to backoff intraday when my physical/mental level falls off.

With that said, I still feel like shite warmed over. Some kind of stomach bug has added to my woes and drained me further. I have no appetite and all I've eaten today have been some potato chips and a slice of toast. Oh yeah, and more of those sugary good Pepsi's. We tried to unload a 12 pack on friends, but they returned it with an additional 6 pack. I hate to let things waste.

It's Gio Wednesday!

I'm falling apart physically. Maybe it's the flu or exhaustion or maybe it's me falling off the South Beach Diet wagon and chugging Pepsi's the past few days. Anyway, I couldn't answer the bell for the open this morning. I've got some bodyaches, my mind's a bit woozy, and I figured it better to listen to my body and get a couple more hours sleep. I started watching the markets at noon (9 am my time). Everything's flat.

I figured out who Gio sounds like. Dr Laura.

My Bracket Trader is telling me this is the last day to register (fork over $100) before a bunch of its features are disabled. Great. Today, I'm trying out a different IB front-end, AutoTrader.

Sierra's 125 tick chart which I use to emulate the Esig 250 volume chart used by Woodie.

3 paper trades today (3-0-0) for +$100 (-$14.40 comm)

Things got slow as molasses today as the markets waited for the FOMC rate hike announcement. Volume seriously dried up midday, but I knew we'd have the usual flurry of trades post-announcement so I keyed on the 125 tick which would be good for some afternoon CCI squiggles. I only took 3 trades today, all within 45 minutes, as that was all I could muster up for a window of heavy duty concentration after letting my brain rot most of the day on the sidelines. I missed a fill on another nice ZLR short which was at the tail end of the trendline shown and called it a day.

My personal debate question of the day: Is it all about the Benjamins?

Newbie traders are advised not to fixate on the money won or lost, but to concentrate on the methodology and discipline. Then, it's said, the money will take care of itself. In Woodie's room, it's a cardinal sin to post the number of ticks or dollars made. I think most people are fine with this because, honestly, most people aren't making money. I'm going to stick with the daily tally of dollars (or at least ticks) as my personal preference. Win ratio is important in this profession for survival. It's a very raw indicator of success though. Money's the bottomline of all this, and it's always the ultimate tell.

I'm a 7 year trading veteran fulltime born-again newbie. I'm setting small incremental goals for myself, currently back to paper trading as I search for my missing mojo, but these goals necessarily culminate with money. This isn't a chatroom or messageboard where talking about dollars is untoward and eyed with suspicion. I'm not here for ego's sake, to win praise, envy or pity. I'm here to hopefully cut through the bull that clouds and distorts the average person's "self-reflections" by putting all this on cyberspace paper. My "goal" for the 2005 is the same I had for 2004, and that's to make a living as a futures daytrader. For the remainder of the year, I'm striving to go live once again (hopefully very soon) and with the eventual aim of netting $150-$200/day with a maximum of 10 ER trades. That would be $750-$1000/week and $3K-$4K/month. Those are real numbers that are achievable, I believe, and that won't make my family rich, but it would be give us a functional living, and I'd be mighty proud of that. In the back of my mind, those numbers also seem out of reach, but this is what taking small incremental steps is all about, and it's what having larger goals are all about. For the rest of 2004, I'd like to double my $5000 account (now $4990) to $10K. Doable? Anyway, my paper results are part of my baby steps and indicates to me whether or not I'm stepping in the right direction. Whether I post my money results here or not, I'll still know them, so they'll be here, too.

It's FOMC Tuesday, and I've been on the sidelines this morning. Looks like we had a little pop when Bush started talking at the UN, but that's flattened out.

If you're into market and trading psychology, visit Innerworth.com. You can sign up for daily emails where they send you the "feature article" for the day. I usually let them accumulate, then read them on the weekends. I'm plowing thru some now. Here are some samples from the past week's articles:

"There are three key strategies the novice traders can use to persist in the face of adversity: (1) Cultivate a fighting spirit, (2) set up an alternative reward system, and (3) focus on the process not the prize."

"Accepting what you can and cannot control can do wonders for your outlook. There's a sense of freedom that comes with knowing one's limitations. The more you can accept what the markets can offer you, rather than you trying to unrealistically control the markets, the more profitably you will trade."

"Throughout our lives, we learn that our value as people depends on what we do, and often, how well we do it. Our parents may have implied that they would not fully love us unless we did what they wanted. Only when we were "good children" did our parents love us fully. Our teachers may have often told us that if we didn't follow the rules, we weren't "good students" or "good citizens." Eventually, we arrived at the conclusion that we were only as good as what we accomplished in life. Our job, the amount of money we make, the car we drive, the house we own, and the neighborhood we live in are all indicators of "success." We tend to believe that they are the ultimate measure of our worth, and that if we were to "make it," we would gain the respect of our friends and loved ones... It may seem ironic, but in the end, it is essential that you isolate your feeling of worth as a person from your performance as a trader. If you put your self-esteem on the line with your money, you'll choke in the end. If you can separate your self-worth from your net worth, you'll trade more profitably and consistently."

"Trading is much like learning a risky sport, such as motocross, skateboarding, or skiing. In these sports, you play by yourself and try to stretch the limits. But if you try to perform beyond your skill level, you'll get hurt. If you try to make a jump before you even know how to maneuver around basic obstacles, in all likelihood, you'll fail when you make an attempt. It's better to take it slowly. Build up your skills through practice and preparation before trying something too difficult. This is a commonsense approach, but when it comes to trading, few follow it."

"All animals, even humans, need a reward before they act. Why do something if you can't get something out of it? Our strongest motives are to satisfy physical needs, such as hunger. When an animal is hungry, for example, it is willing to go to great lengths to find food. Humans are a little more complicated, however. We can, and usually are required to, postpone the gratification of our needs. We don't need to eat immediately just because we are hungry. We can put it off until the appropriate time. We can also replace a natural reward, such as food, with a symbolic reward, such as money to purchase a savory meal. Money is a powerful motivator, and that's why it is so strongly associated with emotions, such as fear and greed."

If you're into this kind of stuff like I am, then definitely sign up for the emails.

7 trades (5-2-0) for +$190 (-33.60 comm)

I'm pooped and should've called it a day earlier. Just got nicked on a WTF trade taken out of sheer boredom, so that's a sign to go do something more constructive like take a much needed nap.

I've been skimming some Woodie threads on http://www.elitetrader.com/ as suggested by Coastal. They looked familiar. I haven't been to that msgboard in 6 months or so and only irregularly back then, but I'm aware of the bashing, defending and everything in between that goes on there. Regarding Woodie -- the man, and no one will ever accuse me of being a brown-nosing sycophant of anything or anyone or any idea in this universe, I admire him. Hard as it is to imagine in this cynical bullshitting world, but he's put himself out there to share what he successfully does and teach others his method simply out of the goodness of his heart. Disregarding (for the moment) the nuts & bolts of his methods, he's a remarkable fellow.

Many moons ago, I was reading Tokyo Joe's wild, incoherant postings on one of AOL's stock boards. He used to pop into the Motley Fool chatroom on AOL to bash IOM (Iomega) which was a Fool favorite. Quite the character. He then formed a paid chatroom and I joined up. Now you talk about bastards, Tokyo Joe was the king. Still, people made crazy money with him, and even I made a buck or two. So even when he got exposed and nailed for pumping and dumping on the sheep in his room and for getting kickbacks and boatloads of stock from CEO's of penny stocks to pump them, I don't recall any significant venom being thrown his way from traders. More typical was the outrage why Tokyo Joe got picked on when Cramer, his hedgie cronies, and every two-faced pumping bastard guest on CNBC was getting off scot-free or with a slap on the wrist.

So with this background in mind, I'm really shocked at the attacks on Woodie -- the man. Maybe if somebody had a shred of evidence that he was scamming somebody or fading his own chatroom or in anyway profiting off his sheeple in the room and seminar and trade-a-longs or whatever, I could understand the bitterness better.

Now, as for the Woodie CCI techniques, effectiveness of the chatroom, etc, of course there's going to be varying degrees of success and failure. There's a million different ways to trade successfully. Here's a Chinese menu of different setups. I'm sure somebody out there can find success with any of them, and I'm sure the vast majority will fail with all.

What I've seen with Woodie then (a year+ ago) and now is that while he's grown in popularity, there is a lot less of Woodie in everything now. He doesn't moderate everyday anymore. Each of these new moderators I'm seeing now have their own bastardized twist on the basic Woodie CCI. Why does Woodie allow this? I don't know. He's kinda lost control of things, and I suppose he doesn't care. Of all the Woodie instructive documents and chart efs and .dll's floating out there, Woodie's written none of them. Everyone's distorting things a bit around the CCI core, which is natural and to be expected. It's confusing for newbies who want the Woodie Way and hear him pounding the table on only using the CCI indicator, getting rid of prices, sticking to 1 time frame per vehicle, etc, then going into chat and having 1 or 2 or 3 different moderators each day with their 3 different ER charts with prices, MACD, flashing lights and whatnot.

Another change is that Woodie switched from Sierra to esignal charts. He forever preached about "why pay more? Sierra does the job." Now he has expensive esignal because they pledge to donate $50 to Make-A-Wish. That's great, but why should people pay $500 extra a year for charts to get that $50 donation? Now we've got a chatroom with half the people on Sierra, half on esignal, plus the strays on TS and others. The charts don't align. I swear the first half hour of the market day in chat is just people saying "my charts don't look like that."

The last major change I see is Woodie (and most mods) doesn't call out specific trades anymore. Everything is vague. Yes, the CCI system is discretionary, not mechanical. I, for one, don't expect to be spoon fed trades. Of course, I want to learn to fish, not be handed breaded fishsticks everyday. Unfortunately, hardly anyone announces their trades in chat anymore. There used to be a slew of people like NickTrader who gave entries/exits with reasons. Now the usual case is the occasional person boasting about their exit and profit only which is worthless to anybody. Then end of day, everyone chimes in with their "8 trades, all winners, thanks Woodie! CCI rocks! Good night!"

So how to effectively use Woodie's techniques and chatroom for my personal benefit? There are two roads to take as I see it. One road is to try and emulate Pure Woodieness. This isn't easy, as I've stated, Woodie is seriously diluted now. Maybe this road is preferable for total trading newbies who don't have other methods clogging up their minds, but it's harder and harder to learn directly from the horse's mouth. Seems even his trade-a-longs are now diluted with a swarm of "I'm not Woodie" mentors who'll help you in their "not quite Woodie" way.

The other path is to be open-minded and flexible and incorporate the CCI with your other stuff to effect your own "not quite Woodie" method that fits your own style, personality and bankroll. For the greater majority, Woodie isn't giving anyone the Holy Grail. His is just one selection on the Chinese Menu. For some people, it clicks as is, and it works as ideally advertised. For most, you have to learn it, take it apart, see what makes it tick, and then incorporate it into your own stuff or discard it. Chat is the same thing. You have to take what you can effectively use out of it. I'm finding the market hours commentary more and more useless, but the mod's voice is still a good background soundtrack for me (yes, even Gio's). Trading is lonely, so it's good to know I'm not alone. After hours, chat is good for technical questions and once in awhile a veteran will answer questions. Plus newbies come out of the woodwork to post trades during off-hours playbacks and I've found seeing how they're thinking is as instructive as seeing a veteran post their trades.

The latest official Woodie Chart (for esignal only). The price bars are still available on top (for the 99.999% of Woodie's followers that still use the price), though Woodie chops them off when he's moderating. Even without the prices though, there are... what... 8 or 9 price indications printed to the right of the CCI. You also have the signals flash in front of your eyes like the ZLR shown. All the 5 CCI lines (+/- 200, +/-100, zero line) have green/red indicators and when they line up, you get a MATCH signal. I'm telling you, the next step in this evolution will be CCI-less charts that just flash green to go long, red to go short and yellow to eat, shit and piss.

The priceless CCI for this morning.

We drove up to San Francisco last Friday for the weekend, so I only had time to put up my new "priceless" CCI chart for the 3 min ER. As you can see from the side window I just added, I'm not entirely priceless. :) However, I must say that with the CCI-only charts expanding the CCI lines, it highly improves my focus on it. I put 90% of my focus on the CCI, whereas before maybe it was 50/50 looking at price bars + CCI. My "cheat sheet" as I call it includes moving averages crossovers (more for trend confirmation), Heinkin-Ashi (sic?) candlesticks (another device to stay in trend longer) with Woodie's 25 lsma and GB's 34 ema (for support/resistance), the Fisher Transform indicator which is handy for both turning points and trend. The "Herrick Payoff Index" is something I added Friday to mimic a "sidewinder" indicator that Woodie is currently beta testing on esignal. It helps to indicate sideways chop, so we know when to stay out of the market. Right now I'm seeing HPI = 0 on the ER/YM so this is as flat as it gets (and a good time to sit on my hands and blog a little).

Paper results with this new setup so far...
Friday: 5 trades (5-0-0) for +$160 (-$24 comm)
Monday morning: 5 trades (4-1-0) for +$180 (-$24 comm)

I'm very encouraged. The roller coaster I'm on is back on track, at least, and I feel I can make concrete progress sticking with current setup.

P.S. The new Woodie chart setup for esignal is quite something. His "priceless" CCI is chockful of cheats, as well. Of course, Woodie didn't program it. He's just using what a couple of programmers in chat put together. It's not available on Sierra, and yeah, I'd like to get my hands on it. But I'm just a stumblingborn again Woodie newbie looking for any simpleton edge, and the official Woodie setups are getting closer and closer to idiotic green light/red light Wize Trade charts. I have no doubt Woodie trades well without the prices and all the bells & whistles of the new charts, and he keeps preaching simplicity, so I'm scratching my head why he's endorsing such constantly evolving charts that bastardize his CCI-only mantra. I'll have to post a pic of it later.

My (cheat sheet) side window next to the CCI.

3 minute ER_09.17.04 (no prices)

Again, no chart today. I'm still working out the kinks on that.

11 paper trades (7-3-1) for +$170 (-52.8 comm)

Doggy woke me again at 4am to pee. Gotta break her of that habit. Anyway I had my Trading Plan thoughts still fresh in mind when I turned on the computer. I wrote "10 TRADES" at the top of my daily trading journal and underlined it twice. The ER gapped up and stayed up for the first hour. I was asleep at the wheel on the only chance to jump in long on a nice ZLR, so I sat on my hands and waited and waited. My first trade was a ghost short. There was a slight hesitation as I saw it setting up since a countertrend short on a strong uptrend morning didn't strike me as the savviest of trends. No one else in chat was mentioning it either. What the hell, though. I saw it and I reacted, getting 4 ticks. By my mid-morning showertime, I had 8 ticks on 3 winning trades and was feeling pretty good about myself. I had a plan and was sticking by it. It was a solid start and I had plenty of bullets left for the rest of the day.

Post-shower and after playing with the baby for a 1/2 hour, I took my 3rd straight ZLR and got another 3 ticks. No mega-winners, but I'm not out there for them at this point. I just want to recognize good set-ups and get my little chunk consistently. I took another ZLR short and bailed quickly when it was having trouble breaking down thru R2 support. Woodie trades without prices, just staring at CCI charts. This is impossible, as far as I'm concerned, and would be like me driving without looking at the road. Woodie's the CCI guru though, and it just might be that his level of trading enlightenment is unattainable by mere mortals, but it's still a worthy goal for me right now. In this case, he was right. The price bars scared me out of the trade, while the CCI alone would have kept me in. I took a 2 tick loss, and the trade went on to go 1.5 points (15 ticks) in my favor. I was happy though. It was a good quick loss on my part. There was tough resistance on an up day, so no use pressing my luck on a countertrend trade and possibly undoing my good start. It was now noon EST, I was 4-1, +$90 with half my trades remaining for the afternoon.

I then proceeded to empty the chamber into my foot (that's a return to the bullets analogy I made earlier). 1) I entered a bad ZLR setup. 2) I chased into it late. The 25 lsma remained green the whole time, warning me this wasn't a short Woodie would take. 3) I didn't take the quick loss. I definitely had that last loss on my mind. It was a loss that turned out to be a big winner. This next trade was 20 minutes after my last exit. I guess I was hoping for a do-over, and this time I'd ride out the downturn. Well, it turned further down and was about to hit my hard stop for a 6 tick loss. This would've flattened my profit for the day. I noticed the 34 ema was approaching overhead and was hoping it would be the ceiling. 4) I added another contract short. It busted thru the 34 and continued climbing. I added another one short. This trade got ridiculously bad in a hurry, and when it was all said and done, I was sitting on 6 contracts short, waiting to get bailed out. I waited for 171 minutes.

So screw the bottomline results of today. The afternoon was a disaster. As the President calls Iraq "a catastrophic success," so was my execution of my trading plan today. It just goes to show you how much focus and discipline counts. Just one bonehead trade can ruin an otherwise solid day. I was down over $400 at the worst point of the trade. That can do more than ruin a day. I need a mouse that gives me a 5000 watt jolt when I try to add to losers.

I do have playbacks with BT/Sierra. I had been doing them religiously every night and on weekends in August. I admit to not doing it as much so far in September. That excitement one feels when starting a new system and switching to a new broker/chart service has definitely died down, and I'm hitting the wall of reality. Eventually, it'll all come down to results. Baby steps can only take me so far. Tomorrow should be a challenge to my patience. I think we have early morning government numbers, plus quad witching tomfoolery to deal with. Probably a good deal of dullness mixed in too. I'm looking to bounce back strong.

Here's something that Woodie received in his email and just posted in chat:

1. I will not trade every day just because I feel as if I have to.
2. I will develop a proven trading system, and realize that one bad trade does not negate the system.
3. I will set up proper MONEY MANAGEMENT, use my exits, stops and not allow myself to get into hope mode. I will not change in an effort to create "just a little more" profit.
4. I will not let emotions sway my trade decisions.
5. I will approach trading as if it is a business. I will be strategic, and logical.
6. I will learn something every day, no matter how small, that will give me a greater trading edge.
7. I will keep a trading journal, and note when and why my analysis failed and succeeded. I will review this journal weekly.
8. I will not fight the market. I will capitalize on whichever direction the market is going.
9. I will take small losses rather than let them become large losses. I don't have to be correct with every trade.
10. I will become an expert in one area of trading, whether it be options, one certain stock, or an index. I will master every detail particular to those trades.
11. I will invest in my success, I will put in practice time, playback time or any thing else that will help me to be a good trader
12. I will act upon what the market is doing, rather than what I think it "should" be doing.
13. I will not allow myself to create trades or make up trades just so I'm trading as i know this will lead me to disaster.

These are nice affirmations to keep in mind, even to print out, tape next to the computer and repeat out loud every morning. Right now, I'm in the midst of fucking up a few of these rules royally, so let me get back to my catastrophic "prayer mode" trade. Back later...

A nice short nap and lunch out at Farmer's Market with the family has refreshed me. So where was I... oh yeah.


MY TRADING PLAN -- this is a rough work in progress, subject to vast changes as I go along on this journey and figure out where I am and what I'm doing.

I've been paper trading Woodie's setups for a couple months, plus a month with Bracket Trader simulation on Sierra Charts. I've been having a hard time. Other traders in chat talk of getting the mandatory chart time in and one day, the light will go on, the fog will lift and it'll all be crystal clear. That's fine and dandy, but for now my continued inconsistency has had me (for the first time) really start to doubt if I can ever be successful in this business. Scarier yet, the fantasy of being successful and consistently so year after year is getting to be such a far reaching outrageous thought that I am starting to view myself as perhaps everyone I know in the world views me: as a doomed dreamer. There, I just had to get that out of my head and written down.

My trading capital has shrunk over the years. My $5k IB account is the smallest I've traded. Actually, it's $4990 now because IB took out $10 for data fees since I didn't meet their minimum commission level for the month. It's not that difficult to blow out such a small account in a short time. My worst paper days have had me lose nearly $500. My worst sins have been: 1) inventing trades, 2) adding contracts to losers and 3) not honoring my initial stop losses. All are recipes for disasters. Taken together, it's a pitcher of Jonestown Kool-Aid.

PATIENCE, PATIENCE, PATIENCE

Can't beat myself over the head enough about this. The usual roadmap to hell starts with a series of invented trades aggravated by attempts to "dig out" of the hole I made. Whether I can cut that morning $300 hole into a breakeven or not, I find out at the end of the day, I've compounded my pain by the slew of commissions I've accumulated. It's frustrating to see at the end of a long day that it took me 20+ roundtrips to squeeze out a +$50 on the day. It's a nightmare to know that the $100+ in commissions wipes out the gain and puts me in the red.

My solution has been to put a daily 10 roundtrip cap on myself. I jotted down this 10 trade idea in my journal on August 24th as a goal to keep in mind. When I've actually stuck to it, I've done well. Regardless of the fact that I'm still apt to invent trades or misread setups or cut my winners short and let my losers run, capping my trade total is a very effective way to do damage control.

THE WOODIE SETUPS

I'm a master of none. Not even close. I started by keying in on the ghost. What's simpler than a head & shoulders? Or so I thought. Woodie and his moderators call the damnedest looking things a ghost, while disregarding perfectly fine looking H&S setups. It's had me all confounded and screwy that I've come to doubt my data, my chart settings and my eyes. The other setup I concentrate on is the ZLR (zero line reject), which is the bread & butter pattern for most of the successful Woodie traders. Supposedly, if you take the ZLR with the trend, you'll have an 80% success rate. Tough thing with ZLR's is the entry. Early entries face reversals or at least flip-the-coin stalling action. End of bar or near end of bar entries are late many times and you wind up like the dog that likes to chase cars. The combination "ZLR & TLB (trendline break) w/ trend" is probably a more promising setup with a more definitive entry point. I'm just not good at picking them up visually yet.

THE CHARTS

I traded the ES for two years with little success. I'm only watching the YM and ER now. I like their larger daily ranges. I've found much greater paper success with the ER rather than the YM. I don't know why, and I won't question it. That's just how it is. Woodie uses the 5 minute YM and 3 minute ER charts. He also has an esignal ER 250V chart for faster signals. I'm using a Sierra ER 125 tick chart to approximate that.

No chart today.

Calling it a day early. Another paper day scalping the ER: 10 trades (9-1-0) for $170 (-$48 comm).

I'm in SoCal and usually wake up around 5:30 am to boldly face (with bleary eyes) the market open. Then I take a quick shower and grab some breakfast a couple hours in or whenever we hit a prolonged market lull. Sometimes I have the shower and breakfast in that hour before the market opens, but that's usually not the case. It's not the ideal trading conditions, but that's my schedule. There was a time I woke up energized and was active in the pre-markets. Holding wildly moving equity positions overnight did make waking up exciting. I've always gone flat overnight since starting with futures. The thrill is gone.

This morning, my dog woke me up at 4 am to go out and then the baby started crying at 5 am. It's been a long day. I'm pooped and need a good nap.

REMINDER: Some quick points I'd like to hit on in more detail later: 1) my trading plan, 2) my flagging energy level/enthusiasm/optimism, 3) finding the chart/trade setups that "speak to me," 4) misc. other stuff brought up in the comments.

5 min YM - 09.14.04

Test Chart -- Daily 3 minute ER (09.13.04)

Well, I'm going to have to mess around a bit more to put legible charts up here. Past couple days (Friday & Monday) were frustrating. I've suddenly been hit with sporadic connection losses with IB/Sierra. This was my worst fear when switching over to them. IB was known as "Inactive Brokers" awhile ago, but from all I heard and read, they had greatly improved their connectivity issues. It was smooth sailing this afternoon, so hopefully it was just a tiny speed bump. We shall see.

Sitting on my hands. My learned lesson for today is to be aware of and be prepared for contract rollover every quarter. This wasn't a concern with my prior data feed/charts services as they kept historical data on their servers and rollovers were handled easily. Sierra charts don't store any data, and the only data I have is the stuff I collect and keep daily on my hard drive. So this morning I was caught unaware and have had to build up new Dec contracts from scratch. That's the difference between paying $672/yr and $90/yr for charts and data.

Yesterday, was Alan Greenspan day. He was testifying somewhere, and that's usually good for a prolonged snooze. I figured it was a good day to run some errands. We picked up my son's birth certificate at the County Recorder's. We'll need that as we're going to be flying with him in November. We also took him to JC Penney to get some photo portraits taken. That was a mistake.

We previously went to Sears around the 3 month mark and were pleasantly pleased with the results. My wife had a JC Penney's coupon this time and wanted to give them a try. We had to wait nearly two hours because only one frazzled woman was working there. Apparently, everyone else took off for lunch and decided never to come back. When it was finally our turn, our baby was tired, hungry and in no mood to smile. The photographer was some other lady who finally sauntered back from the Food Court. Her idea of getting a baby to smile was snapping a hand cloth at his face. She also kept putting him in reclining poses when we wanted to show off his new sitting and standing with support skills. She also didn't try any different backgrounds. We finally chose 1 shot out of 10 taken, got the cheapest coupon package ($7.99), and my wife is still grumbling today about that crappy experience and why they're cheap for a reason (just like Sierra Charts). Now I have to take her to Picture People, which charges an arm, leg and neckbone for photos.

Market day is over. I'm having an unagi bowl with brown rice. My wife insists I eat brown rice though I can't digest it well. She says to chew the hell out of it. I'm sure it's still going to chew the hell out of me, but I'm hungry. My son is peacefully napping. He's teething now, so any quiet time is appreciated. My dog is usually by my desk when I'm eating (eating at your desk is a horrible habit, btw). For some reason, she'd rather be under the bed right now.

I wound up paper trading again today. My intention was to start trading after Labor Day, but it didn't happen today. More than a handful of people in the chatroom have started with real money very recently with great results. I don't know why that's more discouraging than encouraging for me. One bastard even went 6-6 today on his first day. All winners on ZLRs (zero line rejections) and he had the nerve to whine about only getting 8 ticks on his last trade.

This is why I'm so ambivalent about the benefits of chatrooms. The stuff bragged about accumulates like plaque in my arteries. Am I a bad person? Why can't I be happy if a fellow trader is gleefully making money (when I'm not)? Woodie's motto is "Traders helping traders." Why do I occasionally want to kick the shit out of some of them? Why did I sign up for another year of this chatroom this morning for $159? What the fuck is wrong with me?

Just a housecleaning note. I changed my template this morning. Yeah, it's ironic in light of my self-criticism yesterday about wasting time messing around with my charts, but what can I say? I'm a doofus.

Anyhoo, the old Partridge Family Bus template I was using had the top cut off with the new navbar across the top. That annoyed me. This new one has a nice green (like money, get it?) background, much like Woodie's charts. Think green. See? It does have positive psychological ramifications, so I'm not just shitting around. So there!

Great Woodie-related lectures can be found here. This is from gb007's lecture on "Discipline & Money Management"

Another key thing I got from the lecture is that most traders spend 85% on their charts and only 15% on mastering discipline/money management. Successful traders do the opposite, spending 85% of their time on discipline/money management and only 15% on their charts. One may quibble with the percentages, but the bottomline seems pretty much on point. I know I'm certainly guilty of being a chart maniac. I study chart setups until my eyes explode. I do playbacks on the weekends and after the markets close each afternoon. I fool around with indicators, adding/removing them, then removing/adding them. I mess around with the colors, fonts, etc. You get the picture. All the while, none of that improves my trading results. They're just distractions used as time-killing crutches to convince myself that I'm keeping my head in the game and doing something useful. It's all a resounding lack of discipline and focus.

The charts are the charts. Honestly, staring at them just during market hours everyday is more than enough acquaintance needed. It's all probabilities, and a successful trader just needs an edge. Proper money management takes care of the rest.

Note to self: spend more time "studying" discipline and money management. Focusing so much on the charts is actually self-defeating. Traders think everything's in the charts, and forgetting that while the charts should look the same to everyone, traders are going long and short, taking profits and getting killed all at the same time every moment of the market day. Something obviously is happening out there beyond the charts, and it's happening in everyone's head. I can't look into everyone's thoughts in the markets, but I can delve further into mine (scary as that seems).

Daytrader, heal thyself. I'll try.

Restarting again.

Well, that was an eventful year. I just turned 37 a few days ago. If that wasn't scary enough, my beautiful baby boy is now 6 months old. Nothing will wake you up in a hurry than looking in the mirror and realizing you've become your father.

On my new quest for the stock market holy grail, I'm starting over with a newly funded account ($5000), a new broker (Interactive Brokers), a new real-time charting service (Sierra Chart) and following a new guru (Woodie). Hopefully, I'll be fully acquainted with everything and ready for live trading after Labor Day -- when everyone's back from vacation and the real fun starts.

I've followed Woodie in the past when he was a lesser known guru touting the CCI to trade signals on the ES -- emini S&P futures. He was a great guy, very giving of his time and efforts to teach people, and he never took a cent from anyone. I've rediscovered him. He's really blown up, drawing over 600 people to his chatroom. He's still doing the CCI, now concentrating on the YM -- emini Dow, ER2 -- emini Russell 2000, EUR -- euro futures, and even commodities.

I think I'll stick around this time. It's an active and engaging crowd. There's a spirit of sharing and teaching, stemming from Woodie. I'm not sure whether I'll be staying in his chatroom, as I have qualms about how useful and beneficial it is. From my experiences, chats tend to be either time-killing distractions or mental drains as you start comparing yourself to everyone else's results (and believe me, 98% of the posted trades will be magnificent winners while the losers stay mum and wonder why they aren't having magnificent winners).

In any event, here's to the start of something good.