Thanks for your suggestion. I guess if I hadn't exited on the first trade, I'd have re-entered again when ES was at 1253 and YM was at 11230 with a 20 point stop. My goal on that was 100 points which I could have had easily. I had already made 2 mistakes and did not want to trade more than 3 times a day. I am up $102 after commissions. I have created a trade journal in excel where I deduct the commissions from my P&L. I can't really complain here. My current goal is to be profitable this month. I am going to see how this goes and if I have a successful month I will add to my account.
Here is today's chart. On the left I have YM and on the right I have ES. On the YM chart at (1), the MA was 11183. I had a buy limit at 11183 and stop at 11163. I got filled but the price went down. I got a little scared and exited at 11168 then the market rallied. The price never went to my stop point. Then I re-entered at the next bar at 11288 which was the MA at the previous half-hour. I had my stop at 11268 but the market rallied strongly and I exited at 11246. By this time I was up $215 from being down $75. I re-entered again at (IV) but I was not supposed to because the YM had been out-performing ES all day long and was losing steam. I got stopped out of that. The next bar was both the ES and YM again moved higher than the MA. I got a buy signal when ES was at 1253 and YM traded between 11220 and 11230. I could have bought the high at 11230 with a 20 point stop and not be stopped out. YM was up 150 points from there.
+90 going long on a down day. At 11.30 - 12cst both the ES and YM closed lower I never got the pullback to go short. I used a trailig stop as ES approached the morning high and it was a good decision.
-$100. I am not following my own rules that I had tested for the past few months. After a break-out or breakdown, I was supposed to wait and let the price just hang there but I am not doing so. I guess live and learn. Still positive for the week since I won't be trading tomorrow.
I did some backtesting of bollinger band settings years ago and came up with 14 period and 1.4 SD, very close to what you observed. I don't recall that I ever found anything that was this side of random though, not to discourage you at all, I'm not the last word on trading for sure. I might do some more work with those since I worked out charting for executions and trade management since then but have not looked at setups recently.. I can get setups from news events and whatnot, finding more setups is the current quest. I separated out setups from executions and have completely different charting styles for each, it's a lot better than anything I did before. I recall a video that came with my Supercharts program way back in the 90's, the guy mentioned that all his working systems, in fact he said "all good systems" if memory serves well, have a setup and an entry... I noted that and never forgot it, it seems to be right on the money... essentially we are looking for increase in volatility or predicted increase [refer to Toby Crabel for that one] and then we have to play it well......
I have no idea. After a break-out or a break-down, I want to see the price just stay there and not pullback much and the MA to approcach the price. All I need to do is be a little patient and let the trade come to me.
Welcome to the world of trading your own money. Fear and greed come into the equasion. You are entering trades because you are afraid of missing a move. The hardest thing to do is to stick to your plan. Just wait till your stops get taken out by one or two ticks then the trade moves in your favor. It's bound to happen just to test your discipline. To see if you'll give the trade a little more room to work. Give your strategy a chance. Stick with your plan. Take your 4 shots and see what happens. Like I said before, it will only cost you $400, then you'll know. If you adjust your plan every day then you'll never be sure.
-90 today. As soon as I enterd the order I knew that it was a mistake. Back to break-even. I am getting tired of looking at charts and I don't think this is for me. I will give 1 last shot tomorrow and see how it goes, so if I get stopped out tomorrow I will be down about $130 including commissions and that's it for me.