Getting Organized

While it is only the beginning of 2012, I already seem a little lost.  I have not been pleased with my progress so far this year.  Now I could come up with many excuses as to why I have not accomplished as much as I would like (wedding planning, marathon training, etc.), but really there are no valid excuses.  I have been watching the market daily, learning the various aspects of NinjaTrader, programming some basic indicators, and researching/backtesting various trading ideas.  It seems like everyday I come up with new trading ideas for indicators or strategies, then i get lost on focusing on evaluating previous strategies.  I have been committing effort to trading almost everyday, but I still feel like I have not made any progress.

I have thought about this for awhile now and I attribute the feeling to not having a clearly defined plan.  I need to get organize and lay out a clearly structured plan for the year.  I have the major points and timeline sketched out, but it is the intermediate steps to achieve each milestone that I need to determine.

In addition to a plan, I have not actually been trading the past three weeks, I have only been researching.  This has made me feel like I have not made any progress because there is no documented trading results to evaluate.  Even simulated or paper trading, whether the results are positive or negative, makes me feel productive because I have the ability to clearly evaluate my performance.

So this all needs to change.  Below is a list of items I need to accomplish to get myself back on track:

• Develop a weekly trading schedule that outlines when I will paper trade, research trading ideas, program new indicators and strategies, make blog posts.  This will be a detailed schedule and will be added as a blog post in the side bar.  At the same time I need to update my daily trading schedule to reflect my current trading activities
• Learn to use market replay to record the 7-10am market action, then practice trading it each night using the trading simulator to simulate real time performance.
• Begin documenting all trading ideas so I can have an archive which I can reference for researching.
• Develop a step-by-step system for evaluating trading ideas and strategies.
• Develop a simple strategy for investing in my 401k.
• Revise and update my market breadth monitor on a weekly basis.
• Post at least one blog post everyday to track progress. The post does not have to be extensive, but the important part is contributing daily to keep my accountable for my activities.