Where I've Been

I know I've dissappeared recently, at least as far as this blog is concerned. I've been reflecting. I've also been making plans. But first, I think you should know on what I've been reflecting. As a few estitute readers have mentioned, I can be a little hard on myself from time to time. I have quite a lot of drive and desire to be the best, yet I know I'm new to trading and therefore am the worst I will ever be. That's the good news. The bad part is that it can be a bit frustrating & discouraging.

I have not been placing trades (not even virtual) for the past couple weeks. Why not? Good question. It's not that I'm that discouraged, it's just a matter of me wanting a better trade journaling platform in order to get quantifyable, objective results. I was using Trade Tracker Online (www.TradeTrackerOnline.com) to journal my trades, but the free 30 day period expired. I was introduced to TTO by Jordan Stokes. It's a decent trade journaling/tracking program and I was excited to use it because I haven't found any other worthwhile pieces of software or services out there for trade journaling.

As you know from reading my previous posts, keeping a trade journal is an essential habbit of a professional trader. I started with free-form text & chart captures (in Microsoft Word) but now find it too limiting because it lacks an easy way to quantify the trades. I can also maintain a spreadsheet with my entry & exit numbers and get some basic metrics of my success rate. Unfortunately that means entering the data twice. I don't know about you, but I hate double data entry, not to mention the fact that this still only offers a very broad indication of the results of your trades. Trade Tracker Online does a much better job by offering a platform which helps you evaluate a trade and record entry, stop adjustments, profit taking & exit. This avoids double data entry, and gives you the benefit of looking through your journal for you best & worst trades helping you to fine-tune your trading rules and trading style.

As you may recall, I'm a computer programmer and naturally I'd already been mentally designing a trade journal database. Initially when I saw Trade Tracker Online I thought: Cool! A solution that I can put to use today, rather than having to spend the time to develop my own. After all, my goal is to be a professional trader, not a computer programmer or database designer. I've been programming professionally since the turn of the century and I'm a little bored of it. Trading is more interesting to me, not to mention that the income from trading is scalable based on the amount of money you have in your trading account, not on the amount of hours you can sell of yourself in a given day (assuming you're an employee or contractor, of course).

As nice as Trade Tracker Online is, it doesn't offer the level of insight that I'd like to see. I have some very specific ideas of how to create a better trade journaling platform and have assembled a team of programmers to help me create my vision. I don't want to give away too much about what we're developing before it's ready for public release, but it will provide a trader with far more insight than anything else out there that I've seen. I'm very excited to be creating this solution and can't wait to tell you more about it. Until it's finished with the phase 1 release I won't have time to be trading. It is a related discipline though, and I won't be far from the markets.

Recommended Reading

It's near that time of year again, when you're scrambling for that perfect gift (or at least one that passes) for people in your life. I've assembled the following list of recommended books. These have been recommended by some of the traders I've been in contact with as well as my own personal picks.

The Complete List is available on my Amazon astore

There's another benefit from you clicking through from this page. I have an associates account at Amazon and your purchases through the above links give me a small kick-back. This is the only money I make from this blog. Consider it a way to donate to me for my time and effort being your inside man giving you the low-down on becoming a professional trader from a new trader's perspective. I'm happy to bring you my personal experience with Teach Me To Trade/EduTrades Inc. and what it actually takes to be a successful trader without hype and inflated claims.

I hope my experience helps you evaluate your own path to success and if trading is something suitable for you.