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90 Day Blueprint
90 Day Blueprint
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First 30 days
Do the required work on the WADS blueprint. For some people
this can take 30-90 days. Just remember that this isn't a race.
You do it at your own pace. I will be here every step of the way to
help you if needed.
Second 30 days
Forming Habits And Routines
Ok, so you've done all the work and more specifically you
probably already know what you are comfortable with and what
you aren't. At this point prior to continuing on in the blueprint I
want to address what you believe is your greatest weakness in
learning to trade so far.
So, for example say you are having trouble differentiating what
actually constitutes a high probability setup versus what doesn't.
I want you to take the time to email me about your greatest
weakness. I will respond and give you some guidance as to how
to improve upon that weakness. This weakness can also be a
mental problem that you've noticed. If you're having trouble with
multiple things, then you can also list those for me.
Re-Evaluate and Make New Goals
Based on what you now know it's also time to make some new
goals. Still as always the most important goal you need to make
is dedicating a certain amount of time to studying this material.
So, in this month we have a ton of work to do. Let me start off by
saying that if you don't already know how to gauge the
immediate momentum of the market, you'll definitely need to
start here.
In other words are we looking for longs or shorts?
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If you don't already have this down, then you'll need to refer to
Module 14 - Trade Setups.
I try to post the immediate direction in as many of the market
recaps as I can. If needed study these and see why I mark the
change in momentum in certain areas. If you're having any
trouble with this at all, please email me and I will help.
Identifying Trade Setups
If you already have this down the next thing we need to make
sure is that you have Setups #1 -#3 down. I recommend to only
work on these until you have them down really well. Trade Setup
#4 is a bit more complicated and there's a reason I want you to
skip this altogether for now. It will be added at a later point in this
blueprint. So, if you don't already have a good grasp on these,
then I suggest you do any one of the many things below. You can
also do a combination of them.
1. After the close of the market every day, go back and mark all
trades that you see as valid. Later compare them to the market
recaps that I have put out thus far and make sure you seem to be
on the right track. If you have any questions as to the validity of
a trade, email me.
2. Do the same thing as above except use the bar-by-bar
technique as discussed in Module 6. This will take longer to
actually do but is as close to real time as possible. It will train you
to anticipate trades before they even happen.
Once you have a better understanding of market direction as well
as the trade setups, you will now want to proceed with following
assignment.
Market Replay Assignment
What we're going to do in this exercise in addition to bringing
your attention to your emotions, is to actually simulate the
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going to feel the benefits. Think of a time when you actually went
to bed without brushing your teeth, didn't you feel guilty?
On to the assignment:
Pick any week in the past and you will be going back and doing
market replay. You can basically pick any week here, but it would
be easier to take a week where the market recaps are available.
Understand though that the trading in the past month has been
some of the slowest I've seen in awhile. At the same time if you
can win in this type of environment, you can win in any type of
environment. If you pick a week that we have not covered in the
market replays, this is fine as well. The reason being is that I am
personally going to look at the charts you send in.
Once you have your week picked out, make sure you download all
the required data in NinjaTrader. If you need help with that refer
to the section on Market Replay in Module 6.
How I recommend you do this: Definitely do three days of this. If
anything do Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of any week.
Mondays and Fridays are sometimes very dead. But, there is
nothing wrong with you doing five days or more of this. The more
you do the better you'll get.
Part 1
Now once you have that, the assignment is going to be four parts.
What you want to do is load up your historical charts for the whole
week. Once you have those loaded up, identify the spots where
you would take a trade. Mark them with arrows or circle the
areas. Do not really worry if they worked or not.
Part 2
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Once you have those spots all marked write out the times and
dates on a piece of paper. Now we come to part two. Move
market replay to that point in time and hit the play button. Take
the trade and watch the trade happen and mark any special areas
you notice, or anything that happens during the trade. Take an
automatic profit at 1.75 and only move your stop in if the trade
has moved to the area. Make sure all of this is done at 1x speed.
Do not fast forward because you really need to get a feel for how
the market moves in real time.
Part 3
While you are in the trade, make note of any feelings you get of
confidence, uncertainty, fear, doubt, greed or anything else that
is different from the norm. Mark the exact time that this
happened and identify if possible what made you feel this way.
Part 4
Write this out in your trading log under market notes and make
sure to take screenshots of each of your trades. Log in all the
required information in your trading log. Keep gathering all this
because you will be turning this in to me. Finally look and see
what kind of mistakes you believe you made and write that out.
These will be used in the preparation phase of the process model
from this point forward. If needed write this information out about
your feelings and progress in a separate journal. This can be kept
electronically.
Do this for all the days that you picked in your week. Only do the
high volume time between 9:30AM est - 12pm est.
Once you are done with all this, gather all of your screenshots and
your trading log and zip them up. Windows has a built in zip file
program in its system or you can use something like HaoZip or
WinRar. If you need instructions or a program, email me and I will
direct you to one. Be sure to include anything regarding tracking
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your emotions. Mark where you felt that emotion clearly on your
chart. Let me show you how to go about this. Refer to the
screenshots below:
A quick note about the screenshot below. I was not actually
hesitant or uncertain to take the trades labeled below but just
wanted to give you an idea on how to track your emotions.
So, your spreadsheet might look something like above. The final
column has a 1 meaning one mistake was made on the day. The
next screenshot shows the newly added fields I now use in my
spreadsheet:
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The first row is for mistakes. As you can see above I made one
mistake which was I couldn't move the target fast enough on the
1st trade. The move came so strong that I was filled at a 3 point
win. The 2nd row indicates that I was hesitant on the trades #2
and #3. These are the two trades in the chart above right
underneath the explanation about my uncertainty. I just forgot to
label them.
From this I will be able to gather quite a bit of information about
your trading and the possibility of you developing some fear or
overconfidence. This is probably the single most important part
of the whole assignment. So, try and keep good track of this.
Email these to me and I will look through them and continue
putting together your game plan.
Remainder of the Month
The rest of the month you will refer to my instructions and you
will begin doing market replay once daily for at least 30 minutes
and keep track of the things you still feel you need to work on as
well as continue tracking your emotions. You will now be doing
market replay without having the trade times in front of you. So,
it will really help you progress at identifying high probability
setups in real time.
When you do Market Replay you can definitely do this at a higher
speed if needed.
Send these charts into me once a week on a Friday. I prefer to
critique them in batches so that I am able to see your progress or
look for patterns in your trading. This is similar to the analyzing
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frustrated they just quit. They can't understand how they weren't
able to make it work.
So once you decide to enter something into your trading plan, do
one of two things. Use it in the live market for a few weeks
(obviously sim trading) and then see how well it did. Or test it out
on market replay for a few weeks of trading.
Remember that you need to back test things like this. Do not just
take my word for it that they work. Really go out there and test
things out to see if they work for you. By doing this you are also
growing confidence in your trading abilities and convictions.
Second Mistake
There are many traders out there that don't even have a trading
plan. They think that it's all in their head. Heck even I am guilty
of this mistake. I mentioned during our trading plan class that I
had most of my new plan in my head. Let me tell you that the
minute I wrote it out thanks to my friend Don, I instantly became
a better trader. I saw about three-five points added to my bottom
line for that week. An average of two ticks - one point per day. At
even one contract, that's over $250 per week. Who can use at
least an extra $250 per week?
Third Mistake
What's the sense of having a plan if you aren't going to execute it
as close to perfection as possible. It's not going to be possible to
execute this plan with laser- like precision every single day. But
your ultimate goal is to try and execute it as close to perfect as
possible.
Your plan's job is to make you as objective as possible to what
happens in the market. It should be constructed well enough so
that you have no questions in regards to all the situations that
happen in the market. Let me give you an example of what I
mean by this:
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Let's say that you come across a situation where you just aren't
sure what the heck you're supposed to do. This shows that
there's a hole in your plan. What you should do over the next
week is find out what exactly you will do when that situation
arises in the market again. Understand that patterns happen over
and over in the market and as long as you stick to what your
strategy, is you should be profitable.
It's also a subtle signal that we talked about briefly earlier
regarding your emotions. This is fear at the onset. If you don't
take care of this uncertainty, eventually it can grow into a flat-out
fear. So figure out exactly what you're going to do in this
situation from this point forward.
Ok, so now make sure you have some sort of trading plan before
you continue to the next section. Try and make it as complete as
possible and once you have this down, email me your plan. I will
look over it and let you know what I think.
Why Your Standard Trading Plan (Plan A) Is So Important
I'm going to give you two examples here as to why it's very
important. One is going to relate to poker. Many of you are poker
players and this is one of the best ways that I can describe why
this is so important. In fact when I discovered this in poker, it
took me to a whole other level. It made me that much tougher to
play against.
For those of you that aren't poker players just skip to the next
example.
Poker Example
In poker you should start out by playing poker with one standard
strategy (plan A). But as soon as you catch on to some of the
habits of your opponent, you have to make an adjustment to what
you actually classify your opponent as. For example, if you have
a maniac and a nit in the same situation and the maniac is raising
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and raising he could have just about anything in this situation. But
if you have the nit raising and raising, chances are he has a
MONSTER. So, unless you have the absolute nuts, you'd fold.
This is an example of how you adjust in poker. You adjust to what
your opponent is doing based on the classification you've given
your opponent (Plan B, C, D and so forth). It's no different in
trading. The market is your opponent and as the market
environment changes, so should your plan. You have to adjust to
what your opponent is throwing at you. This makes you a tougher
and tougher trader. You'll skillfully take money at will away from
the market and all of your opponents if you can adjust quickly
enough.
Another Example
Let's now give the example of adjusting related to something that
most people know about...sports. The sport really doesn't matter
as much as the adjustment made by the coaches and players. It
also differs a tiny bit from the market in that the opponent is
known beforehand. Whereas in trading, you really don't know
who your opponent is.
So your favorite sports team has a match versus their arch rival.
You can guarantee that they will come ready to play with a game
plan (Plan A). Similar to you coming to trade with your standard
trading plan (Plan A). But as soon as some part of the plan isn't
working because the opponent has thrown something unfamiliar
to them, you can guarantee that the best coaches are going to
make an adjustment to their standard plan (Plan B). This should
be no different in your trading.
Ultimately what I'm getting down to is recognizing when it's time
to make an adjustment (Plan B). The only way you are going to be
able to identify this is by being in tune with the market
environment. I didn't actually start to learn this until about one
year into my trading career and I was already winning. So I can't
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even imagine how well I could have done from the get go if I had
known this.
How Do You Begin Learning This?
First off, you have to understand how the market runs. Typically
when we have a change in the direction of immediate
momentum, we are presented with either Trade #1's or Trade
#2's. These are always trades that happen at the beginning or
onset of the start of a trend. There is a picture below to illustrate
this.
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you will notice is that I don't over think anything. I try and make
it as simple and basic as possible.
Write these into your trading plan.
At this point your plan should be nearly complete for the time
being. Now it's time to test it out.
Step 4
For the remainder of the 30 days, test out your plan with either
some market replay or some live sim trading. Both are extremely
beneficial in developing your skill as a trader.
With market replay and the fast forward feature, you can replay
days and days of market action within hours. This helps you
develop the skill of spotting trades and market environments and
then adjusting to those situations.
Live sim trading though develops your skill of being a patient and
disciplined professional trader. There is no other way that you
can develop this skill other than trading in the live market.
Regardless of which one you decide to try, make sure that you
continually record your emotions similar to the examples I gave
you above.
If you do this from the beginning, you have increased the chances
that you eventually become profitable.
Adding in Trade #4
At this point you have graduated to being able to add Trade #4's.
Trade #4's are really no different than the other trades but take
an entry pattern to have to enter. They are discussed in detail in
Module 18. The important thing to remember about these is that
the safest way to take these is with valid entry pattern. Just
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