Slope of Hope Blog Posts

Slope initially began as a blog, so this is where most of the website’s content resides. Here we have tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. Click on any category icon below to see posts tagged with that particular subject, or click on a word in the category cloud on the right side of the screen for more specific choices.

A Trader’s Journal (by Davis Ramsey)

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In my travels to Slopefests and Expo’s over the last year I’ve had the pleasure of talking to many traders – some are profitable, some are not. My first question when someone is revealed to be in the latter camp is do you keep a journal. The answer is almost always no. I can’t say that a journal is absolutely required for long term success, but most successful traders I know keep one.

There is a difference between an effective journal and a useless one. I had never kept a journal until I started trading full time in June 2013 but I can say without hesitation I wouldn’t have made it this far without it. I didn’t have any hard plan or strategy – initially I was simply doing whatever I thought looked worth doing. I kept track of every trade I took and organized the data by strategy, instrument, chart pattern, even by time of day. It didn’t take long to hone in on what the most profitable categories were – then it becomes a matter of doing more of what works and less of what doesn’t – recognizing of course that this can and will change over time. (Clicking on any of these images will yield a larger, more readable version in a new tab). (more…)