here’s the problem with your story. The returns are fantastical. There are lots of ETers who claim fantastical returns but the rest of their story is mediocre. It’s like what a failed trader thinks a good trader is supposed to say and they say that. there are guys who have 100x’d their accounts on here. They didn’t do it with technical analysis and “studying the fundamentals.” You can’t be that right to succeed that way. And if you are, you are literally the only person in the world who is and yet you are not rich. trading is the only career in the world where you are either rich or you are poor. There’s really no in between. You have a good process or you get lucky: you are des is an honorary brown person.
You can ignore me, if you think I don't know what 30% per month means. Please look at commodities in the last 18 months from March 2022 to Sept 2023. Especially see what happened after Russia war etc. That is enough for one's life. These trades I started with small capital. But really became big. Compounding happens but I do give cushion for potential losses in between. You have to put aside that fund. I am a retired man and this is my only work. On paper, I am a practicing accountant. I still hold my practice license. But I stopped working. I generally don't post on ET. Only this thread interested me because of Al Brooks. I traded currencies, indices too. I also made some you tube videos on indices. But stopped all other activities after seeing my commodity account and focused on it. I am not interested in getting social media likes. I am fine if you don't believe in me. Most people here don't believe in Al Brooks too. What big deal? People try to evaluate him based on what his pin code is etc. People discuss his divorce etc. For a book buyer all these things don't matter. For a knowledge seeker they don't matter. Oh, BTW, my commodity instruments are different as I trade in the Indian market. But still commodity charts have to align with similar charts all over the world. Most commodity instruments that I trade in my country are traded the world over. Just that my quantities and margin requirements may be different. I don't care if some one is brown or yellow. I came here to discuss Al Books approach. If this is becoming a nuisance for me, I will go back to being a silent watcher.
Thank-you for the replies. If you don't mind, please update us next week. I think it would go a long way towards shutting up most of us critics if you took us through a few days. Is the stop loss simply based on price breaking the low of this bar? I know that some traders use the low of a major bull bar as a stop, but here, it almost seems like the rally really started the bar before. Or perhaps that overnight low from yesterday would be even better, no? I do love the idea of swing trading, so much less pressure, but much of this action happens not during ideal times, unless you are always at your computer and even have alerts set that you can respond to overnight if needed. I often see the best entries happen overnight, and by the time the market opens, price has already rallied substantially. Then if you try and buy at the open to get it, it of course flushed down first. So how do you deal with this?
"why not here?" - that was the original stop loss, a level which Brooks calls "initial risk" "stop loss here" = that was the lowest price traded after my long entry, a level which Brooks calls "actual risk" Initial risk is always at risk unless and until the market established an actual risk level for a particular trade My long entry was early. The standard Brooks entry is 4386.75. The lowest low traded after that entry was 4385.25. Had a five minute bar trader bought that breakout, then his actual risk would have been a tick below that 4385.25. His initial risk would have been down to 4367.75. Stop losses should be placed a tick or more below the risk levels. Very rarely a good swing opportunity does not offer an entry during East coast trading hours. The vertical lines on this chart are 6AM Eastern, at which time the marked candles close. The next candle aggregates 6AM to 10AM. The candles after that aggregates 10 AM to 2 PM. The third candle aggregates 2PM through the Globex close for that day. If you're interested in swing trading such as this, why not start a visual back test using that 6AM bar as your daily reference? Keep in mind that I am not looking for a trade every day. The range for each week is noted on the chart. My goal is to profit as much of that range each week as I am able. This is a completely different mindset from the day trader who gets up each day, sees a clear trend move during the overnight, and lets FOMO propel him to make a bet when the bell rings on CNBC and gets "flushed" as you say. Within each of those weekly candles are daily candles. Each of those has a high and low. Study when the tests, reversals, or breakouts occur at those daily highs and lows. the blue candles are daily candles with up closes, orange candles are daily candles with down closes My entries are usually buy or sell stops placed above or below highs and lows. Sometimes, if there is a rare case where a breakout occurred outside of waking hours AND I didn't have an order in the market, I will try to work an entry using limit orders.
Because one affords the space to be wrong more often and still be profitable. It's easier to increase the WR of a high R:R method than it is to increase the R:R of a high WinRate method. There are online calculators where you can verify for yourself:
Fully agree with you. In fact highly profitable traders are wrong most of the time. Even Al Brooks discussed this with along with reasons.
It's all the same to me. High reward to risk will have longer stagnation periods. I trade for income. Quick and frequent occurrences of profit potential. At the end of the day, it's all about EV and whether or not your risk of ruin event can still enable you to continue to recover.
A predictable response from a scalper; a perfectly valid approach but also limited from "extracting the market's full offer." iow, one can make a living but it's not the approach that will make you rich.
I never seen a journal of these so called high reward to risk traders. Maybe you can start one and we can compare % return after one year. Interested?