Oh yes.. that works quite well. By about there, it for sure looks solid enough to take a long, and then about an hour later that level is even more prominent. So much stuff you see unfortunately far too late! Just for fun, suppose we long went again here at the green dot once we see the 68 level holding up again. The 1st RET above this level might even give us more confidence in the trade. But sadly, price breaks the swing low on that RET and hence an exit at the red dot might be an automatic placed stop loss. But my filter for this now is to see what happens on this bar that penetrates where a stop loss might be placed. Often, as here, price is quickly bought up, just running stops it seems, so an automatic exit shouldn't be placed, but rather, watching to see how the break below behaves. Still struggling with having firm rules versus thinking in real time, but perhaps its just thinking about which rule to apply! LOL
Well by then essentially you'd be trading off a higher low toward a lower high. Could have been choppy. I wasn't at my desk at the time of that proposed long so I can't say what I would have done with that in Rt.
Oh yes.. me too, just playing around with some possible rules. As I indicated in my write-up analysis, staying clear of 62 to 84 is what I was pretty much going to do, just waiting for an exit. Shame I wasn't around when we dropped below!
The green dot (10:53am ish) is a failed 2nd entry short, I use Mack price action rules and that is a classic long setup, good for 6-10 NQ pts.
So here are the charts for the week. The result is that I'm up $258, but its been extremely frustrating, and today espeically sucked. Additional notes for the days are below but the general theme is that I did try and follow rules. Sometimes I didn't, but because I mostly tried, it kept me out of most of the trades that took off. I really missed all of the huge moves. I also saw that some trades didn't fill. I forget exactly which ones, but sometimes price blew right past the entry, and these were the best trades that would have made the profit much higher. This is what would make SIM a bit difficult as I might be counting profits that I never could have gotten. Also, because after about an hour I tune out, I missed some of the huge moves because they didn't trend in the first hour. Monday Dec 8 - Couldn't get into the main move up because no RET, just a bounce off the OL. Tuesday Dec 9 - 2 charts actually... first is the official, 2nd shows the short I actually took. Tried to get in much higher up, but had a problem with the market order. I tried to attach a stop and profit targets for the market order as a preset, and there was a problem with the new preset I created, so it didn't go though and when I finally got in, price was much lower. I didn't want to show this trade because its not by the rules, but fuck it... here is what actually happened. Dec 10 - Same thing... started with a loss, then just silly little scalps in the afternoon to make the day poitive. These scalps mind you were based on shorting below the crest in the RET, so they were legit setups you could almost say, they just weren't held. Not holding is my central problem. I hold through losses, not through profits. Dec 11 - Yup... silly stupid early exit. 2nd chart for the afternoon shows a great trade that I just didn't wait long enough to let get going. Dec 12 - Crappy day.. both for missing that double bottom, and for shorting too early and hence why it ended in a loss. Tanget: Ok... just took one more trade now as shown on the last chart "Dec 12 - Last Trade". Talk about a stupid entry.. the short with a market order right at the bottom. Totally innappropriate and I sat through the huge loss before I got out for a profit, with the exit being based on just making the day positive. Sure it could have gone worse, but I just didn't care. So today now finished at +$23 and the week finishes at +$344. (nobody needs to lecture me on this) Anyway.. I'm getting sidetracked here. The other thing that I learned this week is to keep at it. On the days when I was down, it didn't mean the end. Sure I crawled back up and finished the day positive just because of the money, which isn't a good approach when it comes to a proper trader mindset, but in some respects, this taught me to not give up just because of one or two bad trades. I specifically have a quote from ND saved that says she has lots of losing trades, but its hard to have a losing day when you trade with the trend. CONCLUSIONS Ok... so the week has been excellent in terms of progress, but the results certainly are very much below what was right there for the taking. A positive week in term of profits is of course still a good result, but the trading has been sub par. This journal itself has been a blessing and a curse. I've had some really good help, and this was perhaps the only way to get on the right track. I've had lots of member email me privately with help, and there are a few out there still doing this work like me, but they mention that all the negative energy is what is preventing them from posting. So to be honest, as the only way that I know to give back, I've kept this journal going so that others could find comfort in my struggle and to also keep the experts posting help so that they don't think nobody is listening. But this has taken a toll on me. Sometimes I was more focused on posting than on trading. This whole week I've been focused on just having a good result. The fact that I was using a week meant that a bad day would be ok as long as the week was positive, and hence I was using the "series of trades" fundamental. The thing now is that I know what to do... I don't need more help. The chart itself will always tell me what is the right thing to do. The market itself is really a good teacher. Everyone else is just helping the new trader learn how to see, but not what to see as everyone sees something different. In this respect, I think I'm done with all the help. If I can't make money knowing what I know already, then knowing more isn't going to help. Don't get me wrong, there are probably things that could easily take me to the next level of holding 50 contracts for multiple days to score a monstrous return, but I should already be making money based on what I know, and the reason I'm not is me, not my method or knowledge. So in this respect, the point of the journal is diminished. The reason why I put up with so much negativity at times was to continue to get the help. But I'd love to just lurk in the shadows for a bit and read someone else's SLA journal and especially the advice from the experts. (nudge nudge... hint hint) Anyway... going forward, I think I will do exactly what I've just done this past week. I will collect my charts for another week and post next Friday. My intention is to post regularly when I finally have my shit together, and if Blotto wants to take the opposite of all my trades, I'd love to run his account into the ground. But just so you know Blotto, I won't be telling you to lose 5 points, I'm going to make you hold a trade the whole day so you're down 50 points by the end of the day! These past few days offered amazing opportunity for both me to make money based on my price action reading skills, and to force him into taking the opposite trades as he promised he would do in order to make money from me. I don't want this to be about ego though, I just want to trade well. I know I'm very, very close, but it will still take a while to really make this automatic, and to especially not care which will have the ironic benefit of increasing the profits. PS. I really don't care about Blotto too much, and it would be a waste of my time and quite misguided of me to try and make him lose money, nor do I think he would even keep up his end of his proposition. But I think it was extremely negative of him to say those things, extremely discouraging when ET should be a community of traders helping other traders, and generally a real shitty thing to say to somebody. His point of not believing price action trading could have been made in other ways without making such a personal attack. I only put up with it because I was hoping he would give us something tangible, another way to trade, but he never replied to specific questions so it was all a waste of time.
Good work Kp... I hope everything works out for you.. BTW, if you don't mind me asking, how old are you? Early 20's?
Oh ohhh... I must sound stupid! LOL.... I'm actually mid 30's. I am quite excited about going forward actually because I know I'm at least moving in the right direction.