Ray's amnesty page

[Nikita]

Thanks for detailed answer!)

[wiseambitions]

Thanks for detailed answer!)

Thanks

In most respects I think I am more attentive to the discipline than ever before.

Not just in respect of money management and tracking the indicators, but also in respect of my daily routines.

I analysed briefly that some of my worst days last years happened to be days when I initially made excellent profits. For example 50 pips in a morning. But I carried on and either due to the fact the New York session was crazy and erratic, (that's a belief of mine), or the fact that I was happy-go-lucky for the rest of that day if not a bit tired, I gave away the winnings.

Therefore what I have done is to prepare a simple spreadsheet with daily targets. When those targets have been comfortably achieved I am happy to retire for the day, which is what happened to me about 10 am GMT. It has given me time to relax, to review my month, and to do other things, and I would rather go into the weekend with positive feelings than carry on trading and give it away again. I don't think this decision is one built on fear, it is better to stop having exceeded my daily target and my expectation for the whole week (which did have moments of concern).

[wiseambitions]

From BBC magazine, March 2013.
I have long held the view that it takes thousands of hours to become an expert in trading.
It takes thousands of hours to master a violin, or to be a good surgeon
The main difference with forex is that after about an hour familiarising with websites it is possible to trade online, well or badly, and there must be no expectation of instant success. True, all we do is buy or sell, hold then close, but it has to be done in the right order, and with the right lot size relative to the capital.
After 4 years I'd say I've put in half of the requisite 10,000 hours, but I feel many times wiser than the day I started.



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26384712

Can 10,000 hours of practice make you an expert?
By Ben Carter
BBC News
Dan McLaughlin
Continue reading the main story
In today's Magazine

T
A much-touted theory suggests that practising any skill for 10,000 hours is sufficient to make you an expert. No innate talent? Not a problem. You just practice. But is it true?

One man who decided to test it is Dan McLaughlin, 34, a former commercial photographer from Portland, Oregon.

"The idea came in 2009. I was visiting my brother and we decided to play a par three, nine-hole course," he says. "I had never really been on a golf course and went out and shot a 57, which is horrible. It's 30 over par on an easy nine-hole course."

Far from being discouraged by his apparent lack of any natural talent for golf, Dan and his brother started talking about what it would take to become a professional golfer. Dan soon decided he wanted to try.

"When I announced I was going to quit my job, my co-workers started bringing books in and I read Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, Geoff Colvin's Talent is Overrated and The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle," he says. "These books all had this idea of 10,000 hours in them."

Continue reading the main story
Dan's plan

Dan McLaughlin
American Dan McLaughlin, 34, decided in April 2010 to quit his job as a photographer and, with zero previous experience in the game, dedicate 10,000 hours of practice to golf
Half way through, he now has a handicap of four
The Dan Plan
The 10,000-hours concept can be traced back to a 1993 paper written by Anders Ericsson, a Professor at the University of Colorado, called The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance.

It highlighted the work of a group of psychologists in Berlin, who had studied the practice habits of violin students in childhood, adolescence and adulthood.

All had begun playing at roughly five years of age with similar practice times. However, at age eight, practice times began to diverge. By age 20, the elite performers had averaged more than 10,000 hours of practice each, while the less able performers had only done 4,000 hours of practice.

The psychologists didn't see any naturally gifted performers emerge and this surprised them. If natural talent had played a role it wouldn't have been unreasonable to expect gifted performers to emerge after, say, 5,000 hours.

Anders Ericsson concluded that "many characteristics once believed to reflect innate talent are actually the result of intense practice extended for a minimum of 10 years".

It is Malcolm Gladwell's hugely popular book, Outliers, that is largely responsible for introducing "the 10,000-hour rule" to a mass audience - it's the name of one of the chapters.

Malcolm Gladwell
Gladwell puts greater emphasis than Ericsson on natural talent
But Ericsson was not pleased. He wrote a rebuttal paper in 2012, called The Danger of Delegating Education to Journalists.

"The 10,000-hour rule was invented by Malcolm Gladwell who stated that, 'Researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: 10,000 hours.' Gladwell cited our research on expert musicians as a stimulus for his provocative generalisation to a magical number," Ericsson writes.

Continue reading the main story
More or Less: Behind the stats

Listen to More or Less on BBC Radio 4 and the World Service, or download the free podcast

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Ericsson then pointed out that 10,000 was an average, and that many of the best musicians in his study had accumulated "substantially fewer" hours of practice. He underlined, also, that the quality of the practice was important.

"In contrast, Gladwell does not even mention the concept of deliberate practice," Ericsson writes.

Gladwell counters that Ericsson doesn't really think that talent exists.

"When he disagrees with the way I interpreted his work, it's because I disagree with him," he says.

"I think that being very, very good at something requires a big healthy dose of natural talent. And when I talk about the Beatles - they had masses of natural talent. They were born geniuses. Ericsson wouldn't say that.

"Ericsson, if you read some of his writings, is... saying the right kind of practice is sufficient."

The Beatles in 1967
Talented or just hard workers?
Gladwell places himself roughly in the middle of a sliding scale with Ericsson at one end, placing little emphasis on the role of natural talent, and at the other end a writer such as David Epstein, author of the The Sports Gene. Epstein is "a bit more of a talent person than me" Gladwell suggests.

One of the difficulties with assessing whether expert-level performance can be obtained just through practice is that most studies are done after the subjects have reached that level.

It would be better to follow the progress of someone with no innate talent in a particular discipline who chooses to complete 10,000 hours of deliberate practice in it.

And we can, thanks to our wannabe professional golfer, Dan McLaughlin.

"I began the plan in April 2010 and I basically putted from one foot and slowly worked away from the hole," he says.

"Eighteen months into it I hit my first driver and now it's approaching four years and I'm about half way. So I'm 5,000 hours into the project. My current handicap is right at a 4.1 and the goal is to get down to a plus handicap [below zero] where I have the skill set to compete in a legitimate PGA tour event."

Continue reading the main story
“
Start Quote

Imagine being in calculus class on your first day and you look at an equation and think 'Wow, that's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen,' which some people do”

Malcolm Gladwell
David Epstein hopes that McLaughlin can reach his goal, but he has some doubts. In the sporting world innate ability is mandatory, he believes.

A recent study of baseball players, Epstein points out, found that the average player had 20/13 vision as opposed to normal 20/20 vision. What this means is that they can see at 20 feet what a normal person would need to be at 13 feet to see clearly. That gives a hitter an enormous advantage when it comes to striking a ball being thrown towards them at 95mph from 60 feet (or 153km/h from 18m).

Using an analogy from computing, Epstein says the hardware is someone's visual acuity - or the physiology of their eye that they cannot change - while the software is the set of skills they learn by many, many hours of practice.

"No matter how good their vision is, it's like a laptop with only the hardware - with no programmes on it, it's useless. But once they've downloaded that software, once they have learned those sports-specific skills, the better the hardware is the better the total machine is going to be."

But is there a simpler way to think about all this? Maybe talented people just practise more and try harder at the thing they're already good at - because they enjoy it?

"Imagine being in calculus class on your first day and the teacher being at the board writing an equation, and you look at it and think 'Wow, that's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen,' which some people do," says Gladwell.

"For those people to go home and do two hours of calculus homework is thrilling, whereas for the rest of us it's beyond a chore and more like a nightmare.

"Those that have done the two hours' practice come in the following day and everything is easier than it is for those who didn't enjoy it in the first place and didn't do the two hours' homework."

What Dan McLaughlin is hoping is that what he lacks in innate talent he more than makes up for with his 10,000 hours of deliberate practice.

If Dan's plan goes well he could be mixing it with the likes of Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy in 2018. If not, he will just be a very good golfer.

[Nikita]

Thanks for detailed answer!)

Therefore what I have done is to prepare a simple spreadsheet with daily targets. When those targets have been comfortably achieved I am happy to retire for the day, which is what happened to me about 10 am GMT. It has given me time to relax, to review my month, and to do other things, and I would rather go into the weekend with positive feelings than carry on trading and give it away again. I don't think this decision is one built on fear, it is better to stop having exceeded my daily target and my expectation for the whole week (which did have moments of concern).

Very interesting approach! But I found that it s not always possible to achieve goal of the day. Markets are tired or smthg else. And such situation create an additional pressure. May be it s due to lack of experience, may be because I trade only one pair. But I think goal of the month is more productive!

[wiseambitions]

Thanks for detailed answer!)

Therefore what I have done is to prepare a simple spreadsheet with daily targets. When those targets have been comfortably achieved I am happy to retire for the day, which is what happened to me about 10 am GMT. It has given me time to relax, to review my month, and to do other things, and I would rather go into the weekend with positive feelings than carry on trading and give it away again. I don't think this decision is one built on fear, it is better to stop having exceeded my daily target and my expectation for the whole week (which did have moments of concern).

Very interesting approach! But I found that it s not always possible to achieve goal of the day. Markets are tired or smthg else. And such situation create an additional pressure. May be it s due to lack of experience, may be because I trade only one pair. But I think goal of the month is more productive!

Hi, I am not too worried about daily targets, as I prefer to consider my progress on a weekly basis. However the point I would make is we don't have to trade all the time, and we don't have to keep going if we've had two or three losers to start the day. We have to keep out of revenge trading (a weakness to me!).

I watch about 6 or 7 pairs, but only trade 2 or 3 at a time at the most, and look for diversity (eg that not all trades are dollar related).

One of my recent experiments has been to open up to 3 trades, and keep an eye on the total profit/rent and to close all of them simultaneously when the day's target (in financial terms) could be achieved and exceeded. Typically one of the three will do very well, (20 to 50 pips within 2 hours), one will give a small profit and the other a loss. The sensible thing to do, you might say, would be to close each when the indicators tell me to, perhaps I would get a better total gain, but I think it's acceptable to take a target profit when it's on the table and go away and enjoy that nice warm feeling of achievement.

Perhaps you or another member might like to comment on this strategy?

[wiseambitions]

One of my recent experiments has been to open up to 3 trades, and keep an eye on the total profit/rent and to close all of them simultaneously when the day's target (in financial terms) could be achieved and exceeded. Typically one of the three will do very well, (20 to 50 pips within 2 hours), one will give a small profit and the other a loss. The sensible thing to do, you might say, would be to close each when the indicators tell me to, perhaps I would get a better total gain, but I think it's acceptable to take a target profit when it's on the table and go away and enjoy that nice warm feeling of achievement.


34 pips today from this strategy. Best win 33 worst rent 15 pips.
No great observations or conclusions, but it was a positive outcome
In fact for risking 2% on 7 trades I came out of it with 5.7% return on capital for the day

[wiseambitions]

With Aims, we ought to be able to cope with any type of market

I saw this and I had to look twice!

[Michal]

One of my recent experiments has been to open up to 3 trades, and keep an eye on the total profit/rent and to close all of them simultaneously when the day's target (in financial terms) could be achieved and exceeded. Typically one of the three will do very well, (20 to 50 pips within 2 hours), one will give a small profit and the other a loss. The sensible thing to do, you might say, would be to close each when the indicators tell me to, perhaps I would get a better total gain, but I think it's acceptable to take a target profit when it's on the table and go away and enjoy that nice warm feeling of achievement.


34 pips today from this strategy. Best win 33 worst rent 15 pips.
No great observations or conclusions, but it was a positive outcome
In fact for risking 2% on 7 trades I came out of it with 5.7% return on capital for the day

Im reading and reading and not sure if understood correctly
you open up to 3 trades a day with aims setups? right? and once you achieved 3 trades you're done for a day regardless of what is the outcome ?
im sorry if you wont be able to understand - im working on my english also

[wiseambitions]

One of my recent experiments has been to open up to 3 trades, and keep an eye on the total profit/rent and to close all of them simultaneously when the day's target (in financial terms) could be achieved and exceeded. Typically one of the three will do very well, (20 to 50 pips within 2 hours), one will give a small profit and the other a loss. The sensible thing to do, you might say, would be to close each when the indicators tell me to, perhaps I would get a better total gain, but I think it's acceptable to take a target profit when it's on the table and go away and enjoy that nice warm feeling of achievement.


34 pips today from this strategy. Best win 33 worst rent 15 pips.
No great observations or conclusions, but it was a positive outcome
In fact for risking 2% on 7 trades I came out of it with 5.7% return on capital for the day

Im reading and reading and not sure if understood correctly
you open up to 3 trades a day with aims setups? right? and once you achieved 3 trades you're done for a day regardless of what is the outcome ?
im sorry if you wont be able to understand - im working on my english also

Hello, actually what I meant was I might open a trade and two others fairly soon (if the signals say so) and then be running say 3 at the same time
I can quickly see the total gain or loss from all trades put together, and I may be happy to close all of them at the same time when the total gain is a bit above my target.

I may open more trades later, but only if I have plenty time left, I would not want to give up the early gains!

[Michal]

I actually thinking about setting a daily target as i did give back to market my profit in a past and most of that was caused by trying to squezze as much as i could instead closing when i was in nice profit! :-s i think you got a very good approach and inspired me to set my daily target and see what happens if i manage my account this way... cheers Ray