4 Trading Goals as at 02-24-2015

Instead of doing the playbook review today I decided to do something a little different but what I feel is more important for me to focus on for my trading at the moment. I have already posted in my reviews about my need controlling risk, and getting good quality patient entries. However, there are a few things that need to be added to the list, so I will post about them and what specifically I will do to achieve them.

List of goals (in order of importance):

1. Control risk. 
1. High probability grinding type setups. Do not go for the home run type trade.
2. Keep position sizes "relatively" constant. Risk $50-$150 to make $150-$500.
3. Rinse and repeat. Similar to poker goal is to grind and grind. Serious opportunities present themselves with time. I have been playing a bit of poker semi-casually recently which helps my mindset on this.
4. No losses on any individual share to exceed $300.
5. Use starter positions for every trade idea.
6. Withdrawing every $500, while expensive in withdrawal fees will limit the size of drawdowns and help psychologically keep my sizes under control. Similar to in cricket how to make a half century or a century just focus on where the next 5 runs are coming from.
2. Focus on correct patient entries.
1. Get the good entries when everyone either really wants it or really doesn't want it.
2. Get the good entry by anticipating. E.G. How much momo is left?Trend? Prior levels? Where has it come from? Has the well been visited before?
3. Get the good entry by determining max pain point and that's the spot for extremely good entry. E.G. Line in the sand wash, enter, reclaim.
4. Patience!
5. Remember the feeling when a trade goes straight in your favour from getting a good entry.
6. For swing trades, it doesn't matter if you didn't get in yesterday because most of the time there will be a retracement the next day, providing an entry (possibly even higher probability.
7. The 9:30-10:00 opening madness most of the time can't prove your thesis wrong (there are exceptions of course), so you can get seriously good entries in this time zone.
3. Curb the level of overtrading.
1. Sometimes this can be solved by getting correct entry by following the above process. With the correct entry I can avoid some stopouts, and the resulting emotions that cause a fomo entry back in. This way a stopout will usually prove the thesis wrong.
2. Avoid changing directional bias too easily. There's being flexible in thought processes and reversing after blowoff tops etc, and then there's being hyper sensitive to movements.
3. In general I believe using limit orders rather than taking liquidity will help with this. When I'm trading well and not all over the place I tend to be taking liquidity. This is obviously a generalisation.
4. My overtrading/impulsive/boredom trades all tend to be longs. I'm not sure what solution to offer here, but just keep it in mind.
5. There is no harm in revisiting a trade idea in 2-15 minutes later before getting back in. There is in fact a high probability that it could offer a higher probability setup. So get it off the screen briefly to refresh mind.
4. Better scanning for stocks throughout the day. I need to be regularly checking and setting alerts for (a) top gainers, (b) top losers, (c) SMB radar stocks, (d) watchlist and prior watchlists. The first three are all slightly related, however this is completely different. Overall I am just giving up far too many opportunities just by not having scanned through the stock recently.
1. Set up a regular alarm (for times to be determined with more experience) as a reminder.
2. Set alerts for interesting stocks at particular levels, e.g. vwap, hod, lod, yesterdays low etc etc, major daily level.

These 4 things represent the main things I am unhappy with in my trading at the moment. Obviously there will always be things to work on, and this list is by no means exclusive, nor will I ever be able to truly tick all these things off. 

One thing I have to be careful of is that focusing on more than one goal at once can cause issues. However, I will try because the first three are so similar. If not I will have to revisit.