Day 19 is January the 19th and it is a Tuesday.
Not a particular outstanding trading day, but I think it is okay.
This morning I was watching the account and the Equity was at about $74 above the Balance.
Yesterday I made a rule that I would close all trades when the Equity is at least $100 higher.
Therefore I didn’t manually close any trades and now the Equity is at about $200 – below.
So was it a mistake not to bend the rules?
I don’t think so, because I learned that you need to have strict rules for every game.
It is necessary to define what you want to do and what you don’t want to do.
Soccer is a game where you don’t use your hands to play the ball and basketball is a game where you don’t use your feet to play the ball.
Ice hockey is a game where you have no ball and you have to use a hockey stick.
None of those three games include any horses, cars or race tracks, but horse races or car races require a race track.
For a poker game you need cards, but for a billiard game your cards would be useless.
And chess would be boring if you would try to play it with 8 pawns and nothing else.
So we need to define the trading rules for our system and I have defined that I am willing to close all open trades when the Equity is at least $100 above the Balance.
That is defined, measurable and it is easy to say if the ball is inside or outside the playing field.
Therefore I didn’t close all open positions this morning when the Equity was about $74 above the account balance.
And now we have four profitable trades, that is about $185 gross profit, but the Equity is down.
Is that good or bad?
How do you know, if you have no former results to make those decisions?
It is easy to do it with a demo account, it will not cost you anything, but the problem is that it is also easy not to do it.
Jim Rohn, the mentor of Tony Robbins once said that it does not matter what you want, say or intend to do.
The only thing that matters is what you actually do.
I think that you need to decide what you are going to do and actually do it.
That is why I was on the treadmill today.
Because I decided to do that twice a week back in autumn 2018.
And I always need to defeat myself to not skip it, but I like the results.
I was looking like a pregnant sea cow before I decided to do that.
Therefore I believe in the power of self made decisions and I think that you should too – and not bend your own trading rules for quick benefits.
If you want to join this journey and benefit from the findings to improve your own algorithmic trading system, just keep watching this automated content and be my guest!
So what do you think? Are you often tempted to bend your own trading rules? Let me know.