Resistance to Change
By Cliff Clark
We've talked about how the act of learning from your past mistakes can move your trading forward and eventually turn you into profitable traders. Yet, I still see traders in the trading room making the same mistakes day in and day out. It makes me wonder why.
I hear from traders who have obtained no education. They tell me that it cost too much or that they don't have time.
I hear from traders that tell me they don't use stops or sometimes don't take them if they do. They tell me that every time they put in a stop it immediately gets hit.
I hear from traders that tell me they have no trading plan. They tell me they have no idea how to write one.
I hear from traders that have a trading plan but do not follow it. They tell me all kinds of different excuses for not following their plan.
I hear from traders that have no pre-trade checklist. They tell me that using a pre-trade checklist eliminates too many trades and then they don't trade enough.
I hear from traders that have been trading for 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, a year, I've even heard from traders that have traded 5 years or more and are still not making money.
My question to all of you traders is this. If you do something today and fail, then try the same thing again tomorrow without changing anything, do you think you will get a different result? Well, you don't have to answer that, your results speak for you.
If you want to move forward you have to change something. Get an education, stop being superstitious and take your stop losses, write a trading plan and and pre-trade checklist and follow them. You are sitting in one of the best trading rooms in the business. You have all the resources you need to make yourself successful. If you don't have money for a course take advantage of the free videos on YouTube. You really have no excuse for not changing. Get over your fear of change and start on the path of making yourself a success. I can't make you successful, only you can do that!
2 trades for me today with +1.5R total
1st Trade QCOM +2R
148.39/149.97 exit 143.25
12% gap down under pivot support and 50ma after a strong daily double top rejection,. I took it on a congestion breakdown with a fairly wide stop, leaving my 2R target 50c over its ATR, slow but consistent move down with great RW, hit my target on the penny before it bounced.
2nd Trade AQB -0.5R
9.40/9.70 exit 9.56
I rarely trade stocks under $10 and even more rarely short them. I liked this daily chart as it broke its uptrend channel and stayed under a strong 9.50 support line enough room to its daily 50ma. I entered after a pullback with a fairly wide stop but only 1/3 of its ATR used at the time. It failed to break down with the strong market open and stayed in a narrow range.
I actually broke my plan with this trade as I lowered my stop to a pivot where price made a big bounce earlier at 11am with a large seller sitting there. My thought was that if it breaks that level again then it will likely...
1 trade for (-1R)
I took a BD on QCOM. I was worried about the target being close to the daily range, so I took a tighter stop on the 2 min chart. I am looking through PTS right now, most of the examples have 2 options for where to put your stop. It looks to me like one of the stops would be at the bottom of the main consolidation area, and the other at the bottom of where there has been a shakeout or turnaround bar (if there has been one). Due to the daily range I took the tighter one on this. In hindsight it seems obvious to take the wider stop, but in the moment it looked ok.
I was then looking at the 15 min 3BP on QCOM, but the reason I used a tighter stop in the first place was because of the range. The 15 min 3BP would have needed to have gone even further than the wider stop on the 2 min BD, so I didn't take it.
