Mark Jenkins

25/12/2021

23/12/2021

Back to the home office for the weekend to focus on some work, then back up to hospital hotel for another week 🏡
-

Last week of trading in 2020 for myself. What pairs are you looking at next week? 🖊

23/12/2021

Retiring the 43” for now...what to go for next? (A smaller size) 🤔

21/12/2021

Back to working from the plastic chair on the chemo ward today💉.
Just a little post to recommend again the book ‘The Power of Now’ - observing rather than reacting and become mindful of how your subconscious works really helps in a lot of life’s situations 🧘‍♂️

21/12/2021

It’s been a while since I’ve listened to the great Alan Watts, but reminding myself today. This specific short I used to repeatedly play on the way to a job I despised. This little snippet was one of the deciding factors to begin pursuing a life I wanted - hopefully these words can inspire you too 🙂. Your life is controlled by your own actions and reality. • “Let’s suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream you wanted to dream, and that you could for example have the power within one night to dream 75 years of time, or any length of time you wanted to have.

And you would, naturally, as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfill all your wishes. You would have every kind of pleasure during your sleep. And after several nights of 75 years of total pleasure each you would say “Well that was pretty great”. But now let’s have a surprise, let’s have a dream which isn’t under control, where something is gonna happen to me that I don’t know what it's gonna be.

And you would dig that and would come out of that and you would say “Wow that was a close shave, wasn’t it?”. Then you would get more and more adventurous and you would make further- and further-out gambles what you would dream. And finally, you would dream where you are now. You would dream the dream of living the life that you are actually living today.”

21/12/2021

Anything worth doing, is worth overdoing. Moderation is for cowards.”
Felt tired and a little demotivated once I got in from the office, but I’d rather feel tired but rewarded for completing my evening goals, than s**t for cheating myself.

21/12/2021

Watchlist prepped ✅ .
What’s everyone got eyes on this week 👀

21/12/2021

Another day another dime, coffee and 2 hour drip of potassium 🍌 -

Appreciate everyone reaching out with kind and positive words 🙏. To also clear some confusion - it’s not me who’s going through treatment nor am I a doctor 😂.

21/12/2021

Had the new iPad for over a couple of months now and it’s definitely become a staple of my day-to-day. The Apple Pencil has been the most impressive and been utilising it for reviewing trades with that little bit more detail.

Does anyone else have and use the iPad for something similar?

20/12/2021

Last day of the month 👻
It’s the first month since January this year I have closed a double digit % return.

I used to envision ‘consistency’ as this state you acquire where you suddenly become ‘consistent’ and begin consistently taking winning trades.

It’s not about taking winning trades at all.

It’s actually just about consistently taking the same type of trades over and over again. With no care for the outcome. Simple. “You can’t manage what you can’t measure” - Peter Drucker

For me, it’s been having a Mechanical approach that has really propelled me.

Very key, specific criteria and only allowing discretion when additional confluences can be stacked.

Any subjectivity or discretion that creeps in I find cannot be measured therefore cannot be put against a probability model.

I think you’ll break through as a trader once you understand everything is just noise, until your setup presents itself. There is no need for FOMO, impatience or emotion.

This quote from Bruce Lee pretty much sums up my trading this year - “Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.”

20/12/2021

EURUSD closed closed for 5.4% and now flat for the weekend.
Been doubling down on backtesting a ‘sub-strategy’ I’ve been working on for the last few months. Speaking with other traders lately I still see a lot have not done any backtesting or rarely do so...how do you feel about backtesting?

I recently see a trader say they don’t do backtesting but favour their ASR as backtesting doesn’t provide the same emotions.

This kind of perplexed me 🤔. How can one say whether a trades outcome is down to probabilities if you don’t actually know the probability of that setup over a fairly large historical dataset.

Backtesting has multiple forms and purposes:
- data capturing
- defining an edge
- testing yourself
- strategy refinement.
- management refinement
- entry refinement.
- understanding where price has higher probability of reversing.
I do not think it has to be a replication of the live environment.

I’m a huge advocate of backtesting, but without knowing the probabilities you can’t play the card ‘it’s a game of probabilities’ - you may as well be pi***ng in the wind to take a shower. 🚿