I opened 23 positions in January, 19 positions in February, and 11 so far in March. There were approximately 22 trading days in January and 21 trading days in February. March will provide 21 trading days. It's pretty clear from these numbers that I average about 1 trade a day. I'm not trading everyday though. Trades sometimes come in bunches and on some days, I open multiple positions. It's also clear that I'm a forex day trader. I attribute this to my personality. I'll be the first to admit that I'm a bit impatient. I accept this and therefore design my strategies based on my self-evaluation. This is the only way I can see doing it. Fight yourself and it will show in your bottom line.
Until I actually broke down the numbers above, I felt like I was "under" trading this month. "Under" trading to me means that I'm missing trades that my systems are generating. The simple fact is that every month I miss trades that my systems generate. So I'm not strictly a mechanical trader because I do use discretion in my trading or maybe it can be called intuition. Intuition usually turns out helping me a lot more than it hurts me. How do I use intuition in my trading? Quite simply, sometimes a signal I get just doesn't feel right. In this case, I won't enter the trade. Sometimes if I'm already in a trade, I'll get out before it completes. I'll admit that sometimes it may be due to fear but many times, it's just gut feeling. After today's total meltdown of a certain financial firm's stock (they were all over the news), I now believe that I should trust my intuition even more. I worked for this financial institution. I left the firm two weeks ago. There were a lot of contributing factors to why I left but every January of every year, I could have left the firm but I never did until this year. Luck? Maybe but maybe not.
I think intuition should play a role in every trader's decision-making process. How do you know if intuition, logic, fear, greed, or other emotions are expressing themselves in your trading? The key is to find the right balance which will come with experience.
