This is the after-action report for the Rockwell trading session with Damon session one. Want the audio version? Listen or watch the video below. Also the actual Rockwell Trading Session is below this AAR.
Introduction
I’ll start from a high level and then work down from positives, negatives, with suggestions for next steps.
Important note about the tone of this document and its purpose. I’m direct in this document so that we don’t waste time and that we focus on improvement is quickly as possible. Please take any criticism or harsh judgment on my part is meant to communicate how to correct and improve in the quickest way possible.
Each trader walks his or her own path in this journey. That means that they know how to take criticism and praise and they know how to self correct and they do this through the lens of making the RexDog Trade System their own .
I completely understand if you ignore suggestions because you know who you are. You know what it’s going to take for you to take the foundation of the best trade system on the planet and make it even better by making it your own best trade system on the planet.
As I reflect on the overall session, there were multiple times I was a bit frustrated with the way you were executing and analyzing the trade opportunities.
To condense what would be multiple reasons, I think you’ve fallen into a common trap when learning anything new, especially a new trading system.
You jump in with just enough knowledge to have a limited understanding on to apply and operate in that environment. Put another way, you know some, but don’t realize what you don’t know is a hindrance to your success. I have figured much of this out for you. You don’t need to figure it out.
You have an engineering and technical background and I bet there’s a part of you that probably feels you get it on a conceptual level and you’ll figure it out as you go along.
I’d suggest for most cases and most things in life that probably have served you well. Here’s the challenge with trading. Just about everything else that you learn in life it you typically provides you with ongoing positive feedback.
Since I think you understand programming, just imagine if you were learning a program language and for three months you try to compile the simple hello world program and every day for those three months it fails to compile. Plus you don’t receive any error messages. How long would you continue to get that program to work or would you move on to another programming language?
Imagine you didn’t have access to stack overflow or nowadays ChatGPT.
Not a perfect parallel but trading is like this. Trading is different from anything else you typically try to accomplish because often the feedback you get is consistent negative feedback. It’s like this until one day you’ve made all the mistakes you could, and you learn how to repeat them constantly. Then you get consistent positive feedback.
I bring this up because you’re in a tremendous danger zone the way you’re currently trading. You’re getting both positive and negative feedback and the challenge is your most likely not fully benefiting from the lessons these provide.
If I’m completely off base, then obviously ignore what I’m saying. But I would like you to consider what I’ve just shared as I continue.
The Positives
Your ability to cut a position that’s not working in your favor will serve you as you become an elite trader.
It takes traders a while to be able to naturally adopt this type of behavior. It appears you are past the hard part of making this happen for you.
This is more positive than negative and the obvious negative is that you don’t stick with trades long enough, but we’ll get into that later.
The next positive Is that you have a good handle on fundamental price action. But this will play into the negatives that we’ll talk about below. Overall, your ability read and assess the chart from question prompts tells me you’re visually able to read the charts rather well.
The PnL you shard for that day was green. I didn’t do a thorough analysis into the statistics, but at present I’m confident you probably have more consistent green days than red.
We talked a bit before both the test stream and the actual stream and during the stream your mindset and psychology are right for the ability to reflect and self correct. I look for this to be present in traders because it is a good gauge for conquering the various plateaus and mountains that you will climb.
The Non-Positives
It’s obvious that you have probably half of the knowledge you should on how to trade the system properly.
There were various times I prompted you for questions and the answer should have been almost immediate. It took you a while to get close to the solution. These aren’t arbitrary questions— these are questions that have very distinct answers.
For instance, when I prompted you on the 60 minute golden time frame chart, there was a straightforward answer that should have been answered immediately.
Also, your failure to use chart 4 in total means that you’ve ignored using the information provided by the structure of the market. This you need to correct almost immediately. At the end, I’ll share how to make this happen.
The other major issue is that your trades were just too late or, in most cases, the real challenge is you weren’t trading at the reaction areas. You waited too long after the reaction, expecting the reaction would continue.
Many of your trades were already 60 to 70% over, if not more. You weren’t using the predictive nature of the trade system that you’re trading.
There are a few more things, but they don’t really need to be covered because my recommendation, if taken, will solve them.
One last thing to note here. In two instances where you entered the trade at the right location, you simply didn’t have the patience to stick with the trade. One time I might have prompted you, and that might have affected your patience.
You caught the best momentum trade of the day using chart 4 around the RDA but you did not stick to it.
The one where I intervened, I should explain why I intervened. I knew you were down for the day in that trade. where you had your stop loss was too tight. When I saw your stop loss to close I realized you would get stopped out and I figured instead of making just $40 or less maybe get closer to $100. That way you get back positive quicker, and you wouldn’t let the pressure of being red for the day.
Maybe it didn’t play a factor, but I know this from streaming you’re putting yourself out there in the world and you don’t want to fail. My advice should have been to you to move your stop loss above your entry and give it room and time. But I didn’t really want to intervene that much because I wanted to just see you in the natural state, so to speak.
The Solution
I’d suggest you take a step back from trading and go through a couple of core segments of the training if you haven’t already. I’ll send you links to the training but at a high level here’s what will get you 90% of the knowledge you need.
I’d bet that after you do this and if we did another stream in a month, it would be night and day as far as your execution and management of trades.
- Watch the full 4-Chart section.
- Watch Trading with Tick Charts.
- Then watch the Recap section. If you have a full grasp on the concept, then just move on to the next training/video module. The recap section will help with higher timeframe analysis, trading with and around alpha candles, and proper identifying of levels.
- Next, dive into the pattern library. If you haven’t, you must watch the strong level pattern.
- The next one is the RDA Test Pattern.
- The momentum entry training module is in the Entries section of the training, but we will be releasing an updated entries pattern section shortly.
- The other training sections I’d suggest you still check out. Read over the page or watch the first 2-5 minutes or jump around the video module. If you feel there are elements that will increase your edge, you’ll know if you should dive deeper.
Concrete Advice
You need to learn how to scale into trades properly. This appears to be the type of trader you are.
You should always know the room for the trade, so I should be able to instantly ask you for the highest probability take profit areas. You should know TP1 & 2 before you even execute the trade.
Stick to momentum trades until you master them. The only fade trade I’d suggest you look at are C4 SL tests.
If you do this, it will amaze you at how simple, elegant, and dare I say easy it is to trade the system.
My frustrations came because you strayed to far away from that. Look, you’re not alone. I have strayed a bit as well.
Here’s a new rule that will be added to the system. It’s based on the universal 80/20 axiom. 80% of your trades should be momentum, 20% should be fades. Those 20% fades need to B+ or above fades. Nothing below that.
In Closing
I really enjoyed the session, and I learned a ton.
Much of this might seem that I focused on the negative, but you’re well on your way to becoming elite.
When someone thinks like or is an engineer, sometimes they have the tendency to over-complicate what should be simple. I believe I shared with you that I had a client once who had this amazing ability. He could overcomplicate making an egg. Not just once, but every single time he made an egg.
As an engineer, you want to figure this out for yourself and it might seem way too easy. Don’t punish yourself with this. The goal here is to consistently and reliably pull capital from the market. If you over complicate this, one day you will wake up after you’ve figured it out and wonder why you made it so hard on yourself— don’t do that.
I look forward to seeing you become an elite trader, you’re on the right path.
