NoD, I've been lurking this thread for a while and have found it quite interesting. I will likely try to implement some of these principles into my trading as I have been struggling lately with a style that seems to work/not work for months at a time. Anyhow, given that you enter so many trades in a day (compared to me at least), what would you say is the average amount of ticks you take out of CL on a daily basis using your method? If you aren't comfortable answering, I understand, but I was just curious how much more I could realistically pull out of the market by doing more scalps as opposed to my more passive style. Thanks.
I have traded many different processes in the past few years including basic price action. I have never been able to consistently be profitable day trading any of my methods. I will not bore you on what I have tried, but it is a quite impressive list of losers..LOL I am frankly tired of having a fabulous week followed by a disaster. So it is time to go back to the drawing board because something is missing.. I went back and reread some of my many books including reading again the tough work of Al Books. I have come to the conclusion(yet once again) that it all has to be in the price action and identification of low risk/high reward setups that work on the instruments I am trading. I have decided to give one last disciplined hurrah to price action trading in SIM(Have been trading live). I am trading CL during the pit session using a 5 minute chart and trading a single contract and have identified all of my initial setups that from my experience should be most successful on this instrument( I looked at hundreds of CL charts). I journal all of my trades and setups with the goal of identifying my best setups while in SIM and becoming more specific on the criteria surrounding each(market trend, candle patten, channel, TL, target, stop, etc). I do not double down, move stops, etc. This has been one of my problems in the past and it has kept me away from SIM trading , but this time I really want to learn what is best and how to best approach it.... I cannot do that is I cheat my own system. I have been SIM trading about 3 weeks. I must say that I am quite surprised at my results so far. I have had only 1 losing day out of about 13 which is quite low for me(and that day I only lost $150). The setups seem to appear frequently , but I am having a few problems that I seem to need some coaching on how to overcome: 1. Win rate is low due to moving stop to BE and getting many BE trades. I am seeing that many of these would have been winners had I let them run. Still having a hard time not moving stop to BE. Any tricks here other than just stick with my plan and not move stops to BE except in a couple of unique situations? Looking at DOM here is one of my problems. 2. When to let a winner go beyond my initial target. I am seeing many of my winners run and run and run without me. I cannot seem to get my head around when to let them run and when not to. I think I know an approach or 2 but would like any advice any could give. 3. How to play a breakout when it has moved far and fast from my 20ema. I have tried going to a lower timeframe(1 minute) but seem to have problems when I have a quick mover and end up missing most of move past 1st thrust. Thanks to all of you who post on this thread.........especially Nodoji. Wolf
nodoji more power to you, who is to say that properly and correctly drawn tl are not productive, if and when at the end of the day, they do put money in the bank, as you mentioned. three cheers. may i pls ask you a pertinent question nodoji? you have so prolifically described the ease and effectiveness of proper trendline drawings which impresses me very much. would you be kind enough to demonstrate live tonight, whatever market that is most profitable for you to date; showing us how you draw your potentially profitable trendlines, say.... on a 5 min interval chart? i and the rest of the members who are interested in drawing trendlines to increase profitability would like to see you in action, so as to learn from you the ease and applicability of effective trendline drawings--would that be agreeable with you, pls? it is alright if you are to deem it inappropriate, ok. i can also accept that too. succinctly, there is no pressure for you to do it to demonstrate your effective trendline drawings or not to do it. there would not be any pressure at all. i for one would be grateful if you would have some time to demonstrate your gifts so we may see and learn from you in real time on sim, in addition to your description alone. looking forward to your live lesson, maam, only if you have the time to teach us, ok? warm regards and with all due respect, maam.
nodoji.... i just came across one of your most recent posts this morning in which you stated that.... < Also, since developing my trading plan, I've never had a losing day when I followed my rules. Never. All losing days I've had were a direct result of trading outside my plan.... > that really excites me exponentially now.... to be able to read, watch and learn when you demonstrate live for all of us who are following your achievement in this thread.... pls do make it happens.... and soon.... honestly now, i am really no match for you at all. my statement showed several losses last night and only very rarely that i could claim a no loss day. my utmost admiration to you and your trading, nodoji. another 3 more cheers, maam.
I believe several contributors to this thread have both shown, and described in detail, how to draw trend lines and parallel channels in a given time frame. What part of the process is confusing you? "never had a losing day when I followed my rules" and "a no loss day" are very different things. What makes you think I have no losing trades? Since the outcome of every individual trade is unknown, the only way you could have days with no losses is by cutting trades short. This cuts profits. In fact, this can destroy a great edge. I used to have many days with no losses, but that was the result of moving stops to break even quickly. Once I stopped doing that, I had more losses, but WAY more profit. Losing trades are meaningless to me UNLESS they're result of violating my trading plan. Losing trades that occur while following my rules simply tells me that I'm trading all my setups, not trying to pick and choose from among them. It looks like you're doing the same thing, but you have your own profitable strategy. If trend lines are difficult for you to draw and manage while trading, I certainly wouldn't worry about it with the decent profits you're generating. Why do you even care about the tactics discussed in this thread when you already have your own profitable strategy? And why do losing trades bother you when you appear to be making fine profits?
Naka, here's a price target I called today based on a parallel channel line drawn off the LTL of the 5-min CL chart: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=178741&perpage=10&pagenumber=2292 You can draw these lines on your CL chart and see what I was seeing in real time. The initial lower trend line was drawn across the 92.89 and 93.16 pivot lows between 12:45 and 1:20pm ET and a channel added across the pivot high around 1:00pm. Price overshot the upper channel and pulled back inside it, signaling a move to the LTL, where price overshot downside at 1:55pm, pivoting off 93.23 and pulling back inside the channel to the 20 EMA. I adjust the LTL across the 1:55 bar pivot low and adjusted the upper channel accordingly across the 1:35 high (which happened to be a pullback to the 20 EMA on the 60-min chart). I made the price target call about 20 minutes prior to price reaching that upper line. Price again overshot the upper channel and closed back inside it, and then commenced to drop all the way back to the LTL where it found brief support, allowing anyone buying there without confirmation to escape break even before it failed to progress. If you waited for confirmation to buy off the LTL, confirmation never came; no harm, no foul either way.
Finally an excellent thread on ET. Thanks to Xspurt and NoDoji (just to name a few) for the help! Good stuff .