Start of Year Update... 2017: Be The Gatherer

Apologies for my prolonged silence, since starting the day job I have had to adapt the ways and times I go about trading.

I am now starting to view my trading almost as "short-term investing". Often when seeing an entry I think "would I hold this for the next 3-6 months?

charts

I now use W1 and MN charts for building my primary positions. I want MN stochastic to have crossed in the direction that I am trading and for price to be at a MN/W1 area of supply/demand, with a nice candle pattern. I feel I am then trading with long-term momentum, at good supply/demand imbalances with a stronger signal. During the week I try to monitor the daily charts of pairs I am already in to see if I can add or build to them but this isn't always possible.

prep

My technical prep is done over the weekend (MOTR etc) but I now spend a lot more time throughout the week reading and pondering on geo-political and macro events, which are now the basis of almost all my trade ideas. My main sources are MoneyWeek, Pippa Malmgren and ZeroHedge.

setups

I am currently not finding perfectly matched MOTR (momentum and trend) pairs useful. The reason being is that I am often ready to trade a pair before MOTR is completely lined up. Having said this I always try to match an idea to the strength/weakness matrix.

Due to not knowing if I'm going to be in a good state to trade each evening, my mindset is, "get in tentatively when you can and start building" rather than, "wait for perfection" because "I could well miss the move".

The day job and the exhaustion it can create means that I'm sure if I'm going to feel good enough to trade each evening. So I would rather save my major entries for the weekend. I guess this is the price I have to pay. My hope is, with experience and practice that I  might be able to average down in the future.

metaphor

I'm seeing trading and investing as a metaphor of the Hunter/Gatherers of past.

The Trader is the Hunter: spending huge amounts of time and energy stalking prey, setting traps and failing often.
The Investor (long-term trader) is a Gatherer: She simply walks through the fields each day and notices what is beginning to germinate, flower, bloom or wither. She knows what is going to feed her today and has a good idea of what is going to feed her in the coming months.

summary

I feel I am relating strongly to the gatherer. I want to get in slowly when a market is germinating (turning), I want to add to my position as it begins to flower (trends) and take profit once it's bloomed (begins to turn again),  I use momentum to help me predict the seasons, the timings aren't precise but that's quite nice as it takes much of the pressure off "being perfect" which was something that flagged up strongly in my Tharp Report.