Hiding my P&L, but is that enough … ?

Recently I have been studying my trades and found out that I am missing on average my predetermined target in 38%! By that I mean the target which is finally reached but I exit prematurely (the target is reached without me and I am just watching with tears in my eyes :). I would consider this as one of my biggest weaknesses and it all comes down to the emotional state I am in. My average amount of positions per session is 4. I love the first position of the day. No pressure (if its not on Monday). Second position is usually fine as well but my third and fourth etc. are the ones where I am loosing around 30% (out of 38%) of my predetermined target. What that means? Well recently I have stumbled across an interesting article about the decision making. The more decision we make as the day goes on the more it becomes harder for us to make the right decision. But hey, that should not be an excuse and certainly something I want to work on. So what to do? Here are few things I am doing right now:

• after second trade I hide my P&L (yellow sticker would do) and not looking at it until the end of the session
• I am having breaks more often (every 20mins) – I use timer to let me know that I have few minutes off
• I am using visualisation techniques crafted for this particular situation (visualising the process of managing third, fourth etc. position)
• moving to written type of journal where for every candle I define the current close/direction and strength/if it created higher high/low/base position which held well
• going through market replay (after the end of session) on trades I exited prematurely and repeating them over and over again

Especially the last point (hand written journal) is generating the most success so far. So no more journaling in excel after third position but handwriting instead. At the moment it is still too early to judge and this is definitely one of my bigger weaknesses which I need to work on. As in every trade I grade myself if I am following these rules so by the end of each week (& month) I can easily quantify the success rate of my implemented rules.

Let’s see …