Binoculars

Looks like the stars are aligning Stephen Strange’s assignment is somehow linked to back testing other trader’s stock trades.  I woke up at 9AM waiting for the registration form for Tinnitus Chan’s back testing course “Take a Look at my Through My Lens”.  The form was open.  I placed my credentials.  Name.  E-mail.  Phone number.  Next button.  Before the page shifted to the next one.  My entry got in but I saw that the e-mail entry was incorrect.  Darn it!  Missed opportunity?  Perhaps

I messaged Tinnitus Chan in Facebook and told him of my mistake.  He replied.  He’ll look into it after the trading day.  Whew.  Time to go to work.  I waited patiently but at the back of my mind I was worried that my slot would be forfeited.  Fortunately, I got in!

I guess this experience would also relate to trading.  I planned for this event before it happened.  I was on time executing the plan but somewhere along the way I missed a part of the execution.  I adjusted and found ways to mitigate the errors.  Then I waited patiently and trusted the process.  I won the slot.  Now, it looks like I’m going to have an indirect mentor for back testing.

Look at this cool art

21

“Even if you screw up, you get life experience” Ben was forgiven by his friend at the end of the movie and he said this wonderful line.  I think I am going to make mistakes in trading but I wish to take each step as a learning opportunity.  As I am writing this movie review, I haven’t really started trading.  I am not sure if I am just procrastinating by hiding behind this highly theoretical tasks but I want to still believe that I am sticking with the process and what I am doing right now will be a part of my success in trading.

Spread the Word

Today, I decided to make a content for financial literacy to be shared to my family and friends and hopefully to the world.  I’ve been wanting to do this and spread the awareness of financial literacy and I found the opportunity to share it first with my choir mates then to my family members.  Thanks to google slides for offering cool and simple layouts.

Dear Diary Series

Moneygrowers posted a youtube video review of the all new Invest Journal.  I saw how statistics were laid out after journals were encoded.  It showed graphs and charts of winning and losing trades.  Trading is like any other business wherein you need to account all your expenses and all your gains.  It helps you visualize if you are really profiting or not in this game.  My past trades back in 2016 were somehow journaled in google sheets.  I monitored my wins and my losses.  I came up with a P200 peso gain.  I am excited to use Investa Journal or probably Excalibur.

Look how clean that looks.  I hope to get to fill those numbers in.

Eagle Eye Perspective

I was looking at the 3rd liners today in preparation for doing my assignment as instructed yesterday.  Weeks ago I received an excel file containing the Market Capitalization list sorting the 1st liners, the 2nd liners, the 3rd liners and the 4th liners.  The goal was to verify the trend of the stock based on three basic indicators:  Moving Averages, Relative Strength Index and Price Action.  The list was quite lengthy and I thought I’d get lazy finishing this task.  I did not get lazy.  In fact, I enjoyed doing it.  The clarity of the picture and the simplicity of the charts that I made inspired me too keep searching for trends.  The indicators flashed in front of me and true enough they really are indicative of the trends. 

Knowing the trend gives you the foundation on what trend idea you need to plan and to execute.  Here are some plays that I know of that is applicable to a certain trend.

Uptrend: Trend following.
Sideways: Bounce plays.  Swing trade.
Downtrend: Bottom-picking. Bounce play.

I’m not sure if I got them all correctly but I am sure about Trend following.  Bottom line is that I was able to appreciate the value of knowing the trend before planning and executing trades

I never imagined myself looking at stocks one by one until I started to commit learning how to trade.  Now, I am doing it and actually dedicating time for it on a daily basis.

Look at those beautiful indicators

Wall Street

“Every battle is won or lost before it's ever fought”.  After a few live trades from early 2016, it got me thinking that trading is not as easy as it looks.  You don’t just buy at support and sell at resistance.  As I was reading through stock market blogs and videos on how to execute trades, all the intrinsic details on how to execute trades started to overwhelm me.  If I will purse stock trading as an investment, I need to learn how to do this and I need to learn how to plan my trades well for me to be able to maximize my profits.  I have a conservative profile and before I enter any business, I want to learn it first and see if it will fit me.  I somehow think like Gordon Gekko in a sense that as much as possible I want my trades to be a sure win.  Of course, to make that a high probability, I need to plan my trades well.  I need to be able to think about all the possible scenarios and outcome for a particular trade.  This will give me confidence before entering a trade and selling out of it alive.

Follow the Trend

I met with the next batch of traders from the South also in my search for finding the appropriate type of crowd that can help me boost my confidence in my trading journey.  Different traders have different profiles and I seem to gravitate towards traders who find their niche in trend following.  The DNA of a trend following stock comes from a break out from a minimum of 6-week consolidation.  This seems basic as it was marketed by most of the trading gurus that I follow.  This will probably be my starting point in back testing up trends stocks.

These are just trend following assumptions coming from long consolidations that formed the Alignment of the Starts.  After two years of consolidation it formed a mini uptrend that lasted for 30 days then it consolidated for half a year broke out to form a parabolic move that lasted for a month

Boundary

The VUL trade dissection as mentioned in the video is more advanced than the previous one.  The key takeaway is to figure out the Key Levels of the stock based on the identified trend and the trade idea.  I may need to review this video again if ever I want to trade a sideways stock.  I was reminded never to consider RSI as an indicator to buy or sell a stock.  Use it as secondary indicator only. 

On a side note, I was also reading Trading in the Zone.  The market is a limitless playground and we are like children wandering around.  If we don’t put fences around we might go into an abyss of possibilities which might be good or which might be bad for us.  Setting up rules creates a sense of control to those limitless possibilities.

Coach

Today I was watching how the IDC stock was being back tested.  As I was learning how it was being dissected I came to realize that stock trading is very keen to details.  It was different to what we’ve been taught because the stock was on a sideways movement.   Key important notes that were considered takeaways are:

RSI is only relevant on trending stocks not on sideways.  For momentum traders, ride the momentum and not the trend.  Always find a sign of strength of buyers.  Learn how to find the true resistance for Darvas box tops.

Boxer

Today, I was reviewing how to plot Darvas Boxes and trying to differentiate strong boxes from weak boxes.  I need to figure out how this will come into play when I am already planning trading ideas.

Here are some of them:

I heard one of my Project Seed friends practicing one of the basic plays in trading.  52-Week All Time High play (ATH).  You will screen stocks waiting to breakout from ATH price partnered with uptrend indicators.  This got me thinking about updating my stock screener to include this type of stock.  I will need this play in my arsenal.  Let’s go basic gaming.  Boss breakouts.

Amy

I felt curious today because I hear a lot about them talking about Amibroker so I went out and searched for it in the internet.  They say it is a backtesting tool that helps you dissect past stock price trends.  It took me more than an hour to find the software installer but I was fortunate enough to find one that works.  Next step is to learn and watch tutorials on how to use this monster or better yet find someone who can teach me how to use this

Look how cool AmiBroker's desktop Icon looks like

Willpower

I finally finished reading the book Willpower by Roy Baumeister.  Willpower is a finite resource and we should be mindful on how we use it every day.  Willpower is like a battery and it gets depleted over time during the day.  Take note that that battery is being used for a day for any type of activity being used.  If you don’t use it wisely, it may get depleted for the wrong activities and you will end up not maximizing your productivity for the day.  As much as possible it is highly advised that you schedule your day to perform tasks of high value when your willpower is still at its maximum.  Decision-making depletes willpower as well as performing deep analysis of problems or calculations.  Avoid making critical decisions when your willpower is low because it may lead to bad choices and preferences. 

According to studies, glucose intake can increase willpower in humans so when studying, planning or executing trades, I can take sweets to boost will power.  Form good habits and seek ways to automate tasks so that willpower consumption can be minimized when executing tasks and when making decisions.  This is one of the reasons why I invested in Investagrams trading platform (soon to be brokerage) to automate my stock-screening and so that I stock alerts that will watch over the prices for me.  I also have a lifetime subscription to the InvestaJournal which I can use hand in hand with my InvestaCharts.  The GTD (Getting Things Done) workflow helped me manage my tasks in an organized manner so I lessen my time thinking of what to do next and I can focus on executing tasks.  One can feel paralyzed when he or she is given a variety of choices and it can impede decision making.  Making a commitment to something or a belief reduces that paralysis.  It frees you up from the paradox of choice because when you commit, you limit your choices.  In trading, these are rules.  Rules in trading limit your execution setups and it provides clarity in decision-making.

Cheese Sports

One needs to take time and relax and spend time on things that matter beyond your hopes and dreams.  That is God and your family and your friends.  I haven’t been able to go home for two straight weekends so I spent this Sunday going to the Feast in PICC, spending lunch with my family and relatives, serving for choir during mass and catching up with my best friend.  In trading, you need these moments and take a step back from all the hustle.  Your biggest Why must be rooted with the thought of being able to give back to something bigger than yourself.  Always remember that God is first followed by relationships and everything comes thereafter.  Here’s a picture of cheese overload.  Give yourself a break.

Night's Watch

I met with traders from the South today.  I rode a bike all the way from my house to the coffee shop meeting place.  It rained but it did not stop me from showing up. 

“Learn to be humble and consider each experience whether big or small as an opportunity to learn”
When I entered IMPACT, I felt like most of my peers were already way ahead of me.  Each person I met always had experience in actual trading and they were speaking in trading language that I cannot understand.  In group discussions, I always felt like I was just leeching information from other people and I had nothing to contribute.  Today, I was able to share my own process and my own experience with my peers.  I think they learned something from me as well.  Going back to the roots and basics of trading:   Paper trading, journaling and back testing.  Never skip a beat and make consistent habits.

“Being with like-minded people”
Being with like-minded people generates meaningful conversations.  It is like me talking basketball with my basketball friends or ranting about work with my IT friends.  We came from different backgrounds but we talked as one in trading.  I thought the meeting would feel awkward but it didn’t.

“Sharing trading ideas”
My classmates shared with me their trade ideas for $VUL and $IDC.  I have nothing to share right now but in the future I can probably chip in one of my trade ideas.

Stairs

I backtested ANI today as I was practicing how to draw Darvas boxes and this is how it looked like

It is a mix of strong and weak boxes.  It is easy to adjust those boxes and they are quite subjective if you come to think of it.  I could have also merged some of the boxes to create a bigger box.  I wonder how this can help me execute trades.  I was also looking at the behavior of the RSI at each of the box breakouts.  It seems like box breakouts are normally linked to RSI 70 breakouts.  Maybe this can be validated with other uptrend stocks

They look like stairs now

Kwarta o Kahon

Next up on my review is how to plot Darvas boxes.  I’ve already read the book by Nicolas Darvas on “How I Made $2000000 in the Stock Market” 2 or 3 years ago and I was amazed on how simple his method was.  I think making boxes on uptrends is easy to do but if I want to do this right, I need to practice and I need to know how it’s really done.  I watched Moneygrowers video on Youtube on how he plots the Darvas box (see link below for reference) for the second time.  He was back testing $MAC and he drew Darvas Boxes by simulating prices movement day by day.  I practiced.  I plan to practice drawing boxes in the next coming days

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3XTt-GtUno

Key Areas

I started reading the Project Seed Batch Eternus mini-book that was given last ZFT rift weekend.  The booklet deep dives on the mind and on the experience of the ZFT members who completed their 3-month training.  To succeed in trading, it has been advised that I will need to focus and make a solid habit on the three key areas below:

Back Testing

They say back testing may take hours to complete.  I think back testing is synonymous to dissection of trades.  It allows you to pinpoint indicators of could have been and should have been trade setups.  Probably it can also define the DNA of the stock

Paper Trading

Paper trading builds your muscle before you play in the market battlefield.  You simulate your trade setups and exercise execution of you trading plans.  Building confidence in executing trades is key to profitable gaming.

Journaling

Journaling allows you to assess and reflect your trades down to the deepest level from the planning stage, execution stage up to the selling stage.  You are building a historical data of yourself which will aid you in your future trade plans and execution

In this early stage of my pursuit in trading, I really did not have hands-on experience on the three key areas above.  I am yet to find out so good luck to me. 

Cap the Night Off

As I was reading that excel file yesterday about Market Capitalization, I felt curious about what it meant.  I learned that it is the measure of the market value of the company.  It somehow seemed like the net worth of a person.  Market Capitalization is the total outstanding shares of the company multiplied by the current market price of the company’s stock.  In trading, Companies are usually categorized into three Large-cap (First-liners), Mid-cap (Second-liners) and Small-cap (Third-liners).  These categories also indicate the volatility of the stock and its potential for trading.

To summarize:

Market Capitalization	Risk	Reward
First-Liners	Low	Low
Second-Liners	Medium	Medium
Third-Liners	High	High

Light-bulb moment:  That’s why traders play with third-liners because that’s where the money is

Here I was still picking my stocks.  I thought I cannot find uptrend stocks in a bear market but I did.  I think I thought I did.  Here are the stocks on my watch list currently

I will still sort them out tomorrow.  GLO should not be there but I might paper trade that one outside this 90-Day Challenge.  I know there are still 2^nd liners and 1^st liners on this list and I will weed them out.

No to GLO

I am still reviewing my notes from Impact.  Today’s lesson is stock picking.  In one of the chat support groups, I found an excel file of Market Capitalization.  I will use that for filtering my stocks.  Using my Investa Screener+ I searched for fast moving uptrend stocks.  During that period I was adding stuff to my trading rules. 

Since I was rooting for a trend following setup, I focused on searching for uptrend stocks.  It was a slow process as this was my first time to sit down and actually pick a stock.  First on the line was ARA and it looked like this:

“yaaaaak” – Kapitan Kidlat said.  Yes, this did look like a yuck stock.  Candles looked volatile and there are too many gaps.  On to the next stock.

We go to GLO.  This looked promising I was even able to plot some signature Kapitan Kidlat indicators.  The Fibo retracement moves.  I am tempted to make a trade on this.  Hmmmmm

But no to GLO.  This one’s a first-liner stock.  Trading rule:  Only trade third-liners.

New Toy

I started setting up my Investagrams account making myself ready to plot charts.  Finally, my Investagrams pledge badge is already up and running.  I feel like a kid getting his new toys: the InvestaScreener+, Investa Journal, and unlimited subscription to Investa Watcher.  I will probably talk about each one of them when I get the chance to play around with them.  Next was setting up my indicators.  Talking about clarity I saw how Zeefreaks and Alpha P Centauri plots their charts and I decided to imitate how their chart looks like.  I aimed to make it look simple as possible removing all clutter and hiding all unnecessary indicators. 

All the numbers and lines that float in the screen were hidden.  The only indicators that can be seen are the Patintero lines (if you’ve read Zeefreaks’ blog, you know what I mean) and the RSI indicators.  I wish I could remove the text behind the charts to make it look more minimalistic but I can’t find the settings option to do that. 

Following one my mentor indirect mentors Kapitan Kidlat (indirect because I only watch his Youtube videos and I am too shy to approach famous celebrity-like traders), I modified the Gann box and the Fibonacci retracement to look simpler with minimal lines and numbers. 

Look at that Gann box.  I can see a Darvas box formation but it looks like the RSI is going with it.  Let’s see if Ms. Market holds up to that box support

Here you can see Ms. Market hitting that 0.5 and 0.382 Fibonacci retracement.  I hope it breaks out from that 0.382 line and bounces back to 0.5 and beyond

Golden Age

I attended ZFT Rift today and learned from the best mentors of the ZFT.  This year marks there 5th and this is that momentous day that the great Zeefreaks has unmasked himself in public

Tor P. Do
I need to learn from someone experienced in trading if I want to speed up my learning process in trading.  Aside from me having a support group, I need to find a direct mentor.  I plan to study for a year before entering Project Seed.

Rooting for Celeste
The trading journey will be long and hard.  You need to find someone who understands you during your up time and especially during your down moments.  Not everyone knows how to trade and having a support group gives you confidence that you are not alone in this journey.

Zeefreaks
I found some good tips on how to execute Trend following setups.  I may even make rules out of them.  “You can never sell at the top as a Trend Follower”.  He also made clear indicators on when and how to set trailing stops for selling.

This day I also found out that I have two friends who passed the Project Seed application.  I am fortunate enough to be indirectly mentored by these would-be greats hopefully.  I need to do this on my own first.

After the event, we had a quick catch up with our Impact support group to determine the progress of each individual.  Majority of the group were starters and we were lucky enough to be joined by Lance Ling who provided his wisdom on trading.  He taught us about his mastery of his trading craft.  I don’t need to trade every setup I see.  I just need to focus on two to three trades that is marked as profitable based on my trading plan.

"Fate whispers to the warriors, 'You cannot withstand the storm.' The warriors whisper back, 'I am the storm." - ZeeFreaks

Will Smith

Back in 2016 I decided to build a habit of reading books during my idle time.  I made a choice to make myself better and improve the way I think and how I organize my thoughts because I am a pessimist. 

I’ve always doubted myself being the good guy who always plays it safe and never breaking the rules.  I see other people living the good life and enjoying themselves even if they do not care about what the world thinks of them.  I thought I can never live a happy life following the rules and sometimes I wished I could just bend them all and have fun.  If I could just quit school and do what I really wanted to do.  If I could just have a relationship with a girl and have sex like every teenager did.  Then the lines below hit me:

“The best way to lessen stress is to stop screwing up” – Willpower, Baumeister

Maybe I did make the right choice of not screwing my life up and not become an entitled person who thought life was about me.  If I quit school, I’d probably not be an IT professional and earn enough cash and be capable of learning how to trade for a living.  If I had numerous relationships with girls, I’d probably be a dad right now raising kids and not having time for self-development and improvement.  As the book said, willpower is a finite resource.  It is better not to screw things up before it even happens.  Conserve your energy in planning your life ahead of you instead of reacting to all circumstances life throws at you.

In trading, I do not want to put myself in a lot of stress given the daily job that I currently have.  I think I am making the right decision of building knowledge and confidence first before doing the real thing.

I had a conversation with my cousin today and I hope that I can pass on that message to him.  I will try to build that strong context of not screwing up in life within him.  He already did though that is why he is not yet a graduate but I hope we can make it better for him.

the Bow

Looking back at the things I need to purge, there’s really not a lot to give up because my life basically revolves around work and partially with my family and with my friends.  I do church service on Weekends.  I just realized I don’t have a reward system for myself. I need to set time thinking about that.

I chanced upon reading Daedalus Kairos post about his learnings on his 7-month as a full-time trader.  He had good runs and bad ones he said.  He needed to go back to basics.  I am at that stage.  I will use some of his notes as building blocks of my trading vows. 

“You don't need to try every set up you know, you need to focus on one, specialize in it, and then make it your bread and butter”

These are the lines that Mesino mentioned as well when he started trading.  I hope to find that bread and butter as well in Trend following.  I think that is what currently fits my lifestyle.

Google map

I spent my time applying the knowledge I gained from the book Getting Things Done by teaching my cousin how to do it.  He failed college class when he was entering 3^rd year college mostly because of playing DOTA 2.  Now, he is living with me at the same apartment catching up on his remaining Architecture units.  Since he’s schedule is irregular, he has a lot of idle time because school hours are minimal.  We plotted his schedule to find that out and I taught him how to visualize the time he is spending on each activity.  Since a big part of his week is idle time, it is highly probable that those times will be turned into leisure time if not managed wisely.  I told him to allot time for more productive work like learning AutoCAD and stock trading.  I remembered the Trading RX forum episode of Kapitan Kidlat with Palzer Gozon where he taught him how to create his personalized course outline for Stock Trading.   By having a course outline, one can directly visualize what he or she must do or learn in order to achieve mastery. 

I plan to create a course outline as well so that I have a guide on how I will study the market.   

You Create your Own Clarity

I plotted out my long-term vision and my short-term vision for trading.  I did not believe in writing goals and I had a hard time writing goals when I was younger.  When I turned 30 years old that’s when writing goals mattered because you will realize and you will start to feel that time is becoming more limited.  A good way of looking at it is that I have a better picture of the remaining years of my life and I am able to quantify and to set priorities on what I think is important to me.  I wish I could live a balanced life spending time with my family, myself, my would be lifetime partner and bringing service to my community.  According to the book “The One Thing”, I can’t do them all at the same time and I need to choose one if I want to be successful.  I need to decide and I need to commit.

I recently received my InvestaJournal and the Impact trading journal.  I activated the InvestaJournal.  I hope I can use it for my actual trading fund.  I also browsed through the Impact journal.  It looks nice and exciting to use although I don’t know how to use it still.  I will wait for further instructions from Kapitan Kidlat

Looking Back

Filled up the background part of my thesis today and I was able to trace back my roots on how I was able to discover the stock market and how myself moving forward in learning more about stock trading.  Next step for me is to rediscover my WHY because currently my excuses are getting in the way of my success. 

I’ve been working for an IT company for almost 9 years now.  I was a graduate of BS Electronics engineering in UST but I never had the chance to apply what I’ve learned or even use my license for work.  I learned stocks from Bo Sanchez’book called “My Maid Invests in the Stock Market” and was a fan of the buy and hold principle ever since.  I’ve read Robert Kiyosaki’s book, “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” which built my thirst to thrive for passive income because I wanted to build financial security and financial freedom for myself mainly because I wanted to get out of the rat race.  I wanted to provide for myself, my family and friends.  Also, Bo opened my eyes to live a life in service of other people and live a life beyond myself.  Money is an enabler of purpose.  I’ve been educating myself with financial literacy since 2010 and my appetite for financial gains has leveled up throughout the years.  I’ve tried looking for different kinds of investments namely bonds, mutual funds, UITF, owning a franchise, multi-level network marketing, etc. but it’s either I invest time or I invest full effort on top of my daily work to achieve high rewards.  A friend of mine introduced me to zeefreak’s blog and I’ve been reading it leisurely during my free time but I never really had that urge to take it seriously.  When 2016 came, I was looking at the returns of my buy and hold stocks and it did not look as rewarding as I hoped it would be.  Buy and hold strategy will not get me the financial freedom that I’ve been dreaming of.  I needed to find a way to earn more money and fast.  I sold all my shares and tried to trade three times during that year.  I earned P200 for a year and it was not a lot.  I am now thirty-two years old this year and my responsibilities in life, in work and in my family is increasing.  I can feel the turn of the rat wheel spinning faster and I am still in it.  I need to take stock trading seriously but I need to learn it and I need to understand it more and have confidence to play in this game to reap the rewards that I want.  I am a fan of the Zeefreaks tribe and I am a fan of their vision to give back to God and to the community.  Thanks to Bo Sanchez, Marvin Germo, Aya Laraya and to that veteran stocks guy who gave out a seminar on stock trading in our office.  Thanks to Kapitan Kidlat and Moneygrowers who helped build my knowledge in technical trading.  I will self-learn until May 2019 and apply for Project Seed to be mentored by one the ZFT Tribe.  

After having dinner, my cousin suddenly asked me what I was doing.  I went on teaching him the basics of how stock market works.  We simply started on defining what a support is and what a resistance is.  He became interested and asked me more questions so I told him how to read price charts and the possibility of earning money in the stock market.  Then we went on relating stock market trading to playing Dota that made more interested in learning how to Stock Market works.  I shared with him how he needs to have a system and he needs to have the right mindset to play in this game.  I told him to watch Youtube videos of MoneyGrowers and when he has learned enough he can probably read Zeefreaks blog.  I can see the potential in my cousin to trade stocks because I saw his discipline in playing Dota which he can apply in this game.  We could learn together as I continue this 90-Day Challenge.

what is your WHY

I’m still thinking about how I will pursue this trading journey.  As Stephen Strange put it, the three common reasons why traders fail are the following:
a. Fear of Failure
b. Procrastination
c. Excuses

As I embark in this quest of finding my niche in trading I fear that I may not be able to do it consistently because my WHY is not strong enough to overcome my excuses.  I am afraid to do the work and too lazy to take responsibility to do what is needed to turn this into a lifestyle.  My life right now revolves around work, family, friends and more work.  Although I don’t want it to end that way.

Yesterday, I rode a Grab car going to the TRX Forum and I was inspired by this man who drove for a living now that he’s retired.  He’s fortunate enough that his son got a job in Google and yet he’s still working.  His other son is now an engineer working for ABS-CBN and he is still working.  His wife is still working.  He looks 50+ to me and he is still working.  “If I stay at home, no one’s gonna pay me” he said.  “I was not raised to be fed by my children when I retire” he added.   He is a religious man and he believed in God.  He worked hard and is still working hard as a full time call agent and a part-time Grab driver.  So what is my excuse? I can maybe teach this man how to trade and make better money in his retiring years

Today I picked my sister up from her friend’s house and tagged her friends along.  One of her friends lived near my best friend’s former apartment and suddenly I remembered how he started with humble beginnings.  He was not fortunate to have been well provided by his parents so he had to take responsibility for himself at his early stage in high school up to now.  I saw how he built himself up and developed himself and his career working as a freelance animator.  He did not have the luxury of a having a semi-well off family like me.  So what is my excuse?

I’ll rediscover my WHY in this 90-Day challenge I know I can make this work.  I have to make this work.

“Action isn’t just the effect of motivation, but also the cause of it.” – Mark Manson, Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

The New Meta

The very first trading RX Forum was held today in UP College of Engineering theatre.  It was themed like the TED Talk series where speakers get to share topics related to stock trading and trading psychology.  I needed to get back on the drawing board and re-evaluate my vision of the future.  The immediate goal this year is to be able to find my trading niche doing paper trades.  I’ve been building on intangibles for the past weeks and months.  I need to take that step into learning the technical and I’d be patient and be able to trust the process.  I need to get on that execute phase somehow.  I need to eliminate my excuses and start doing the actual work. 

While going home, my friend and I met a full time Forex trader who shared his ideas on how to perform trades.  I learned some differences between the forex and the PSE.  He stressed on following rules for trading and finding a system that fits your lifestyle and fits your profile.  It’s interesting to know that even though he is a Forex trader, he was still interested in learning other trading styles from other trading groups.  On our way home, we also met a housewife who is doing full time trading.  Given my novice experience, I can sense that she already has a lot of experience in trading.  Swing trading means holding a stock for a period of days or weeks.  It is different from Trend following which sets target price on trail stops. 

I bought a shirt for a cause and it looks cool.  Simple and clear

I started opening up my own stock trading blog to fortify the habit of journaling as I start to embark on this quest of finding my niche in the trading world.  I started off by pre-reading blogs of Zeefreaks, Sirius Lee and Imbang Klase.  I wanted to get a feel of what the content of a trading blog should be.  Zeefreaks has a witty and mysterious style of posting trade ideas.  It’s fun to read and mind boggling at the same time.  I plan to back read and reflect on all his previous posts to acquire some learning on how to plan and execute my trades.  I was also browsing through Sirius Lee’s to check how he started and it’s funny how it progressed from a Tagalog-themed blog which eventually turned into an English-themed blog.  I think he has good content and I might consider back reading his posts as well.  I also checked how Imbang Klase did his blog by reading one entry.  It was about how to manage a 1M loss.  His style of writing is also good for newbies like me.  It is easy to understand and has on-point details.

Rekindling

I went on to invest in Investagrams by availing the Platinum pledge which entitles me to have unlimited InvestaWatcher, InvestaScreener+ and InvestaJournal.  I will need all the tools that will help me master my craft in Trading.  I am waiting for the response from the Investa team to activate the functionalities.  I believe in the Investa team and in the vision that they shared in the recent Investa Uprising seminar

I plan to review the notes I acquired from the previous Impact seminar in the next coming days.  I started plotting my daily schedule and fit in my time for studying the how to trade stocks.  I came upon my old blog which I started last 2007.  I can see my past self browsing through old posts.  I’m thinking of creating a trading blog.  hmmmm

Know no Fear

"Remember, the best traders think in a number of unique ways. They have acquired a mental structure that allows them to trade without fear and, at the same time, keeps them from becoming reckless and committing fear-based errors" - Trading in the Zone

In order to stay long in this game, I needed to have my fears in check.  Trading involves a lot of risk and I need to prepare myself physically and mentally.  The goal is execute trades mechanically and without emotions.  After reading those chapters related to fear and risk only then did I realize that the market really is just a game of emotions because all of the traders are trying to execute their trades based on their decisions which is mainly driven by their current state of mind which is heavily influenced by their emotions.  I am still struggling with depression hangover and I hope this journey in trading improves my mental well being as I first focus on building on the intangibles