not adjusting all the highly impossible exit yet. I may exit all longs and revert to short depending on tomorrow's market condition. Especially if there is a bear market upside pop. Happy trading all.
I think there is a good chance stock market will open up tomorrow. Stock indices are up to only down 1/3 percent after 3AM EDT Europe open and IB is marking some of my long stocks using some low internal IB not shown bid not 4PM yesterday close. I think they are trying for some margin calls that suggests longer term trend hasn't changed.
exit a GC position held for months at original target price. Plan to buy it back at 1220ish. retesting the breakout point. Happy trading all.
confirmed bear market mood for at least a few month. Adjust strategy accordingly. Overnight shorts, not longs. Set long target realistically while short target more aggressively.
Bull to bear market The above is my current read of the market. For those who cares my draw done, I am 25% down from my 200k total. As some of you who followed this thread carefully, 200k is not my highest water mark, since I withdraw from these accounts when any one is more than 115k. This draw down is serious, because it is very hard to make them back, but if followed with revenge, it will certainly get even bigger. I do not want that to happen. Thus I am also at a inflection point to change my bias. Benefiting from reading other post thus a thermostat to the sentiments of traders, work it together with WSJ and Bloomberg to try to gauge whether the mood has decisively changed. In any event, midterm is here, and I hope, I emphasize "HOPE" to see a retractment to CHEN's zone, 68-76% from the top to bottom, i.e., assuming we have seen the bottom on Friday.
The problem is that you can blow out on noise before you get any sentiment reading that is exploitable. I don't for a second believe that headlines results in edge. Cognitive dissonance should be a paragraph inside every broker's DD. I know a guy who makes 8-figures a year trading futures and spreads. He's done so since at least 2008. His primary directional strategy is outside reversal bars. I don't know what else he uses for confirmation but I know that his stops are set five ticks below(above) the signal bar low(high). That's his inviolate SL. He's successful because he has an edge and he cuts his losses at 5 ticks. Sorry Bro, but you have no edge. Worse, you have no risk management.
well, destriero, thanks for being a loyal reader of this thread. You being the only one on ET saw evidence of the accounts I trade are real, not demo, I will respond with a few points. First, I had my 7 figure years, not 8 figure though, but that was a totally different story, since different people allocate their assets differently and choose to play a different percentage of their cash in different things. Knowing a trader who does sth. and sth., is different from knowing exactly his way of trading. Trading is an art, not a science, if using a reversal bar and 5 tics SL can make one a successful trader (let us do not go into the details how much his capital is, we all know that the percentage of returns is what counts, not the absolute value of income), you are describing the art of trading too simply. Making such a simple statement is not helpful for any newcomers, unless you want to shut them off or scare them away, I am assuming you are not selling his techniques, LOL. For me, this thread is my way to show my gratefulness to the market that has been footing my bills for the past decade or so. I am not a religious person, but I believe in some type of Karma, and giving back. I want to use this thread to not only show trading can be profitable, but much much more importantly, show to those who care to read that even though I have made money, I am not a saint. I have a lot of weaknesses and vulnerabilities. I am human. I get confused when the market turns too fast in one direction, I get scared when my capital allocated for trading get wiped out more than 20%. But I do have my SL, it is very big when it is my swing trading account. When I day trades ES, my stop loss is 4 ticks from my entry, I can make money very consistently. But trading with a 4 ticks of SL in the past 5 days' market, no matter how good you are, you are either lying or losing money with your stop hit way more often than your profit target. If you do not agree with me on this, you have not been trading at all, then why are you here? The same is with the 5 tic SL, what is the timeframe of the reversal bar? what is the instrument? what is the market condition? I believe you get my point. So, let us go back to my original intention of this thread, to show first, trading can make money, second, it is not easy, there will be up and downs, and there will be painful losses. What I can promise here is that I will not just tell the winning trades, also the losing ones, not only my so called edges, but also my agonies. Finally, these are the disciplines I follow in the several 100k accounts I am trading: during the 25% drawdown, I did not enter a trade that is not pre-planned. I did not add more capital to the accounts so that I can catch more falling knives. I stopped adding more longs not because I got scared, but that I have added all I planned to add, and that was my plan, I plan my trades and trade my plans. The RTY dropped way lower and much more than I expected, I plan to cut loss, but since these are swing trading accounts, I do not cut my loss mechanically, I wait till it is the right time. If you cared reading my screen captures everyday, you would have noticed that I have made multiple SL trades during last week. Happy trading all, if you want to make it in trading, do not admire anyone who claims that he can do better, and neither do you need to challenge them, instead, learn from them what you can understand, ask them when you need help, if they answer your questions, show gratefulness, if not, do not complain, because they do not owe you anything. And last but not least, learn from an honest person, who is not afraid of revealing their mistakes and weakness. There is no saint in the trading business, and there is no one edge fits all market, being adaptable is essential to survive and thrive in this business.