EA Thoughts and Lessons · InvestCEO with Kyle Henris

EA Thoughts and Lessons

I opened my first EA last week, and thought that I might share some observations now that I have 2 trading days in (this is a novel, so you may want to grab a coffee if you intend on reading this):

First, let me just say that mindset is of the utmost importance. If you haven't watched Kyle's CEO mindset lessons yet, make sure that's a priority. If you have, but you're still struggling, watch them again. I've been consistently trying to find more lessons on controlling my emotions and using the power of positivity to reshape my mentality even when I've made egregious mistakes. We are not the mistakes we make, we are the culmination of lessons learned from those mistakes.

Secondly, research everything. I fully intended on researching Apex, Tradovate/Ninjatrader & the use of Tradingview before even paying for the EA. However, I rushed my decision to purchase and found myself frustrated by my own lack of understanding on how all of this relates. After two bad trades did I finally decide to stop trading and start learning all that I don't understand.

Lastly, keep up with all major world events... EVEN THE WEATHER! LOL Let me explain:

I didn't trade at all on my EA last week because I spent the bulk of that week preparing for a weekend trip and also trying to set up the EA for trading - remember, I didn't fully research any of this prior to purchasing my EA, so I'm already behind the 8 ball. I left Thursday and came back Monday, so my mindset was already not in the right place because I lost three days of trading. Then Tuesday I struggled for find any opportunities, which I allowed to further influence my mindset. So Wednesday I traded MNQ, and it was like I forgot most of what I'd learned from Kyle and from my own practice sessions. I have very little experience with the Jedi strategy, but decided that was the best way to go.

I'm down $277. Ugh... stop trading for today. It wasn't the strategy, but the lack of practice given to it and just bad discipline. Also, Wed CPI data was released which could greatly affect the Nasdaq. I even asked about this on this site before the trade, but didn't wait for the answer before jumping into this trade.

Thursday is set to release the unemployment claims. So now I'm telling myself to be very careful with any trades made on MNQ and MES. However, I did ignore the fact that since Friday I've been following the news of a hurricane in the Gulf and went ahead with a Superman trade in Oil. It hit my supply, had a good signal... but I got eager and switched to a 1m timeframe from a 5m timeframe (I've only practiced 5m timeframes). Set up and pulled the trigger for a short position.... I lost over $700!! But my risk was less than 1%!!! LOL Well.... remember when I said I should have researched. Yeah, I forgot to look into commissions (https://support.atf.com/hc/en-us/articles/24511326984091-Commissions-for-Tradovate). Because I'm on the MCL chart, I went with 90 contracts for a risk of $450. BUT, the 90 contracts are not all bought/sold at once. Without the commission rate, that was a risk of $590. If I stayed with the 5m chart, I would have won the trade I was originally looking at. But the supply that I was in was almost immediately afterwards blown out with a sudden increase in price.

Lessons:

1)Don't trade with the wrong mindset... If you're feeling pressured to win, you will likely make avoidable mistakes. If you're frustrated, you're more likely going to make mistakes... Trading needs to be calculated and unemotional because I promise you, the other side of that trade doesn't care about you or how good your strategy is.

2)Research everything and know what you're doing. Kyle's lessons are specific to his strategy, but it's our responsibility to understand everything else we're involved in. All trades, good or bad, are our responsibility at the end of the day. If we make a mistake because we didn't have some piece of information, then we clearly need to research more.

3)Weather IS news!! If you're trading oil when there's a storm in the gulf, be a little more cautious. If there's unemployment reports coming out and you're trading S&P or NASDAQ, be a little more cautious. I really like forexfactory.com for their calendar, but it's useless if I'm not taking those things into account when I trade.

I welcome any and all thoughts on this novella. But mostly, I'm hoping my story helps someone else avoid mistakes that I've made.

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