Stick with your plan. You will find out if your strategy will work. You have your risk defined. Thats more than most beginners do. I'm not sure that 4 shots is enough but it's only going to cost you $400 to find out. Good Luck!
Looking back at the charts from the past few months, I think it is better to exit a winning trade as soon as YM is up 50 points or ES is up 5 points, whichever comes first. For example, if you look at yesterday's chart when ES was down 5 points, YM was down 40 points and that's where we would take the profit. YM was never down 50 points from our entry.
Thanks for starting the journal and I wish you luck with your daytrading. Have you done back testing on your approach to see what you may expect your model to produce? Are you using limit or market orders for entry / exit / and stops? Again, best of luck and I wish you much success. 1R
I haven't done any back-testing but have watched the market for the past few months and the results were outstanding. The type of the order depends on the situation. For example, say I got a buy signal and am waiting for the pullback. Entry If the YM is stronger than ES, I'll put a limit-order to buy the YM but if ES is stronger than YM I'll buy at market when ES comes down to the price. Basically, I want both ES and YM to come down to the price of the previous MA. If the ES is relatively stronger than YM, YM will probably be below the MA by the time ES gets to the MA. Stop 20 YM points from the filled price. Exit 50 YM points or 5 ES points. My only problem is that I can only trade few days a week and the set-up might not occur on those days, but I have noticed Fridays to be strong trend days. I just need 1 good set-up a week. Thanks for your wishes.
In order to determine which is stronger, I look at the change in YM vs ES. 1 ES points = 10 YM points. So if ES is up 3 points and YM up 40 points I know YM is stronger and vice versa.
Here are the trades from today. Made $115 before commissions. The first exit was a mistake because I had a stop in place and decided to exit out of the losing position. The price never got to my stop point. Second trade was exactly as planned. Third trade was a mistake because YM was outperforming ES all day but during late afternoon. aroung 1EST, YM was not out-performing. I should have stayed out but ended up losing $100 on that. There was one last long signal at 1253 which I decided not to take because I am not going to make more than 3 trades a day. I have saved the charts and will post it later today. Had to delete the earlier post because I had my account number on it.
Not bad for your first day. 2 mistakes and yet you made enough to have another shot. You are now up to 5. Might as well count your commissions , they are part of doing business. Where would you have been if you'd stuck to your plan?