Puddles, Any thoughts to adding a filter to your trades based on ATR of the stock. For example, RIMM has a ATR of 29 cents on a 5 minute chart which makes your stop really easy to hit. I was thinking you add a filter where you only take a trade if your stop was higher then the 5 minute ATR of the stock, thoughts?
i have no idea what ATR is... tbh, I'm not looking to add indicators to this system. I'm sure geez can chime in on this too. The next two rimm lower highs after my stop out would have hit target too.
DT3, I personally think your idea is worthwhile to incorporate if it fundamentally makes sense in your brain and it suits your beliefs and style. My personal belief (which can only be proved/disproved with sufficient backtesting and/or forward testing) is that it won't change the overall edge. If you use a bigger stop to align with an ATR calc, then you'll have bigger targets and will miss them more often. Puddles smaller stop is only a result of a smaller preceeding bar. And since we all know that most trades work out best from the get-go, I fundamentally believe that the price will respect the highs of the previous bars as resistance more than it will respect how much it has been moving every 5 minutes. But again, if you don't like getting stopped out in 45 seconds when you have a smaller stop, then applying a method to maintain relative larger stops seems very appropriate. Just my two cents during my lunchtime boredom. Keep trading. JS
JScott, I'm not talking about adjusting the stop based on the ATR, rather just passing on the trade if the stop is smaller then the ATR. What you said about the best trades working from the start is very true though. Puddles- ATR stands for Average True Range. Basically it measures how volatile a security is over a certain time period. In case of RIMM the 5 min ATR was 29 cents, which means that given any 5 minute period RIMM can move up or down by 29 cents