Never thought we'd be discussing my anatomy here, but THANKS! Courage comes from 2 cups experience, 1 cup optimistic expectations, and just a pinch of insanity for flavor. Must mix well and bake for no less than 2 years, but maybe many more than that....
well i was just follwoing the thread and decided to finally type something, cheered upon you making some progress, only to hear it was an accident... lol
That one big trade may have not been an accident. I don't remember each trade. And I was speaking generically. Like I said I have been trying to let the winners go more.
After seeing the spread on the MES drop back to normal levels of 1 tick, but the MNQ and MYM still staying around 2 to 4, I have decided to switch up my charts and trade the MES. (Who knows, I may decide to stay with the MES and eventually the ES). Thanks to those of you who suggested this move. Two of the side benefits of course are that I have fewer charts to look at and less data to hog up my CPU.
I am close to $5,700 now. I started trading MES today and was up over $5,800, but I had some technical issues with stops and targets - and the market was crazy up then down as people waited for the 3rd coronavirus aid package to be passed. I have just $300 to go to reach $6,000. I tried trading today for smaller targets, and even tried two contracts on several trades. I got many correct and some not so much - but in all cases the micro commission took a big chunk. This is the downside of the micros for sure. I will keep it to one contract for a bit longer, especially in this MES instrument transition.
Your base hit strategy combined a with high win rate has been very successful and is far better than my home run strategy. For instance I made 432 on one micro on one trade today s short before the close, sounds amazing right? Guess what though after all the times I get clipped holding for bigger runs (small winners turning into smalllosses) and the slippage and commissions from a lower win rate my strategy is far less successful than yours. I noticed you seem more comfortable and confident or so it seems from your posts. I think this is crucial to success since scared money is doomed money, so stick with your approach and only trade the size you're comfortable with.
Hello Micro MadMan, I am in similar siutaion as you regarding, trailing for big winners or use fixed profit target. I resolve the trade management by measuring the results of both methods.
Thanks for the post. Your $432 micro trade was awesome. Keep it up. Once I read that the market is in a range 70% of the time, and once I got whacked enough times early on, I gravitated to a scalping strategy with S & R and the NYSE tick as the foundation. I have been all over the map since then, but I have never stopped looking for small exploitable reversions. "Base hits, baby!" I have told myself many a time. The high commissions are just the cost of doing business in my book. I have three good friends who make a killing riding big moves, and I am still trying hard to figure out HOW they do this. But it seems to be beyond my grasp, LOL. No, I don't want to change what I do, but I would like to let a winner run from time to time, if it meets the right conditions. "Letting a winner run" would be a very nice little tool to add to my toolbox. In doing so, I don't change my core strategy at all.
If you go for quick scalps in a winning system, this is what happens: 1. 70% avg winners yields about equal avg win vs avg loss 2. 80% avg winners yields 2x the avg loss to the avg win 3. For those stops you don't adhere to the above, giving you an out-sized loss, you'll need to make up for it with a larger trend trade gain. In this market, it's no big deal to take 1 NQ contract and make $500-$1500 a day doing this. But it will tend to wear on your nerves so it's best to do it in the first 2 hours and stop. I'd recommend trading this on a 5 or 10 second chart, using the 1 min and 5 min charts as guides for overall S/R and trendiness. Why? When you can make or lose $200 in 15 seconds on 1 contract NQ, you can better measure your risk vs reward in real-time at these timeframe levels.