Here is the symmetric triangle I mentioned earlier. Lower Highs Higher Lows Price gets trapped, when it finds a direction and escapes, you got a breakout. Especially when close to LOD or HOD areas. In this case, it was below HOD and made a new one. Am I getting through with this ? Possibly the most aggressive play I did today. Anek
Anek, Just wanted to say a big thanks for this thread and your charts with trades. I am finding this information very helpful and I would appreciate if you could continue for a few more weeks so you can show us how you handle some lower volidity days and chop days. Thanks again
Razor, Glad you like it. Sure, I don't feel I have covered all trading scenarios yet but we are getting close. Practice the skill of recognizing trends, particularly where those HH, HL, LL and LHs are formed and in the long run you will develop a sixth sense for that kind of action. When price is ready to act it has a peculiar characteristic, sort of like fire in it ass. Learn to read its behavior. Polish the skills. If you can, record live trading days with Fraps or Camtasia, if you got Esignal then you got the play by tick feature built in, study live action once the day is over. Every bit helps. Study and practice, study and practice. Those that quit before the end of the road end up losing. Perseverance and patience is the key. I can't remember the last time I had a losing month trading this method. If I can do it, you can do it. It just took time to develop the skills Anek
Anek, I'm enjoying your thread very much; keep up the good work. Two questions: 1) Can you talk about your money/trade management? ie. setting initial stop losses, scaling out of trades after certain profit targets are hit, and trailing stops. Do you have hard and fast rules on managing the trade or is every trade discretionary? 2) Do you use limit or market orders? Thanks, Tyler
1) I'm not a fan of big stops. Big stops make lazy traders over-trade and start praying, when they should be trading and analyzing. However, this takes a lot of skill and patience which is precisely why many traders imho choose to ignore it. Let me put it this way, if the trade requires a big stop, I'm not interested. Big stops are for the insecure. In my experience when your trade premise is correct your stop should be big enough to handle noise but not much else. Trading is mostly about risk management. If you violate that rule you are toasted. This stop management technique lowers your accuracy rate but so what, i want to make money not be a magic 8 ball As far as scaling out, if I happen to choose that route I make sure my first target is AT THE VERY LEAST as big as my stop. Then I quickly move stop to BE and let it ride as much as I can until price loses momentum. Remember, to take profits BEFORE the next resistance when going long and BEFORE the next support when going short. I usually let a small portion of the trade ride for the home run. It's very important that you understand that support is meant to support and resistance is meant to resist. The break is the exception not the rule. There is also more congestion in those areas aka harder fills for your limit orders which brings me to your second question. 2) Limit orders exclusively unless on my emergency stop where I use market.
Cheers PS: As a note I am trading this with the NQ right now because the dollar stops are smaller than YM. Net -$76 Fri, Net -$28 today....almost breakeven if ya don't factor commish so not a bad start IMHO
Hey, Thanks Anek, I will post my chart with actual entries, exits and explanation of why after tomorrow's trading. For Friday and today I will admit I made some trades that were agains't the trend looking for a reversal.....yes, I know not smart Hopefully knowing I have to post my chart tomorrow will force me to only take the trend trades......we shall see..... Cheers
BTW..... You can enhance your trading by making an effort to recognize the three most powerful patterns in trading. 1) Symmetric Triangles 2) Double Bottoms 3) Double Tops Anek