On this last list, only one trade that was a profit had a MAE of 11.5... all the others that won had less than 10 points going against you at any one time. Luckily there aren't any trades that are major losers, but from this, there doesn't appear to be any reason to hold a trade once it goes over 10 points against you... none of those look like they turned into winners. Also, some that were losers actually had a MFE of 15 or 20 points, and yet they turned into losers of 15 or 20 points. Now its hard to take a winner at only 15 points if it in fact went to 30 points profit, but how do you go from being ahead 15 points to losing 15 points?? So I think a combination of cutting losers off after 10 points (or whatever the ideal number is after some careful analysis), along with moving the stop to BE after it goes in your favor by lets say 10 points or so, and you've eliminated your losses. I think your answer to your problems is really in the stats and not in your trading and setups.
What I have started to do, instead of giving out exact entries, stops and targets is try to force the reader to do back testing. By doing so, reader starts to look for reasons of Price chart reading, times of when you should not put on trades is as important to memorize as when to put on a trade. We would love to take completed target trades, but the market is pretty good most of the time to show price stalling so unless you plainly just get out, putting a trailing stop is pointless cause I am not going for long profits. The biggest reason I don't give out exact areas to get out is people who can't learn to help themselves design methods will never know when to adjust the system, it is never one system for every volatility. People buy systems all the time but unless you can identify how to adjust them, they will still continually lose even with the best systems. So KP, start going back one day at a time, I normally do breakouts of 2 ticks and hitting bid/ask as not wanting to project my trades sitting on the Dome, so targets if you trading retail, smaller size, always around $100, risk is always small tad beyond $100, I have mentioned this before. When price gets volatile, I don't trade. Most of my signals came elsewhere, I have found by great expense of redesigning "the wheel" seldom help, I just want to tail coat the general greatest volume, make a little and quickly get out so I don't take losses. Many charts are color coded for a reason as they mean they of one type of signal, Black has to do with Volume divergence, I expect volume to reduce when going to extremes but I require certain amount of points in a "swing" (I know most don't take the time to look at last 20 days checking "swing" distance, you want an idea of how far market will go on "mean" when it is most likely to reverse. Red means price patterns like Head & Shoulders and Triple tops/bottoms, both signals have tested out for me and have traded a number of years. There are breakout trades like retracement trades back to 18ma and volume signals. Oh, and price patterns work best near extremes of a 'swing", so I am trying to be patient line up "my ducks in a row" to give trade best chance of success. You should notice I put a black hash at top of a "swing" and bottom of a "Swing" and then thin black line to identify the swing. Most that have PMed me understand or ask my questions on how to read my charts, not hard since I don't do trendlines too much on method am doing now, trendlines are much more difficult to trade one minute bars. Cyan is retracement to 18ma, I generally only take first trade only unless I only made a tick profit. The Purple trades are entering on next whole point away and has to end in ".00" in ES and every 2 points that are even "2.00" , "4.00" not hard. Risk, if bars are too big, I will wait for breakout and then wait for retracement to enter to get risk down. I very seldom take trades when bars are over $150 cause I do want my stops to be minimum beyond the pattern and if bar is too small is why I keep stops at little more than $100. I been hammering for long period of time about "Time", I have found winning trades have a common factor of being so many ticks ahead by so much time, and it will vary between 3 minutes and 3 minutes & 20 seconds, so each weekend they are tested to see how long it takes to get to so many ticks, so there is homework every weekend to stay as sharp as I can. Now if you don't know how to read charts, ask, but be sure to have tried doing it yourself first, most people can not be taught how to trade, but they can be shown tools of how to learn and threw much practice can learn, but you really have to work hard at it, trying to copy exactly what I do will never work cause you are not me and by studying hours each day, you start memorizing what to but more importantly what not to do. If you are lost as to what I have on a chart, you can PM me, I don't follow any threads, so quoting me only way I know to check out threads. But I do expect people to do much of their own work, only way to learn how to "fish". You don't want to buy into coming resistance nor sell into coming support. Always look first to how not to take a trade before looking where to take a trade, I want to take the least trades to make 4-6 ES points. Stats comes before trading, if your stats are bad, so will your trading be bad. Starbucks time.
Lol, i've played blackjack in a casino, maybe 300 hands in a session, and made money. Doesn't mean i have an edge over the casino. Just was lucky. What's more likely is that your method of trading was in touch with market conditions. You should have stepped up your size of positions during this time.
Price charts are like an engine of a car, seldom an entire engine blows up, but pieces of an engine will break or wear out. Traders trade pieces of a Price chart and very very few traders take apart the price chart to know how to fix or trade it. Examining "Swings" is like using "Zig Zag" indicator, and swings are broken down looking for 3 trend waves and 2 counter-trend waves and these have to be added up to find the "mean" and can look at them as mini swings within a larger swing. Reason all this is of importance is finding the best targets and risk, is most waves are say four points and entries are in middle, need to risk a tad beyond the extreme of this mini wave. Back in the 1980s when many casinos still had one deck shoes, and you knew the odds and how to count face cards and Aces, playing just you against the dealer, you did have an edge of the casino, I use to fly to Vegas every chance I had, became very much as second job, but casinos don't like winners so you learned to play 20 minutes then off to next casino, longer you play same deck, the odds constantly change to player chances of beating them at the time. But not now.
my comment re blackjack involved no counting...i was just playing basic strategy, i KNOW the casino has a long term 0.5% edge over me...point was that i was just lucky that i won after playing 300 hands...eddie is thinking if he does 300 trades and makes money, he must have an edge, alternatively if he does not make money, then he does not have an edge...i'm pointing out you can't tell either way from such a small sample size.
could of course look at standard deviations when talking about returns in casino games...but would avoid doing such calculations with regard to market trading on account of non normal distributions.
Thanks so much for this Handle. I will need time to go over all this info because for me right now... its time to go to work, but I wanted to make sure to thank you for this post and I want to go over it in detail before I reply or ask more questions.
I now use 3,000 sample size as minimum and always use June contract going back at least five years. The last system I designed for ES had 26,000 trades I believe, going back 13 years of tick data, all four contract months, yep it took a while to code that one and several hours, but you come out with the mother of all stats, then you start breaking it down to do forward testing, then sim trade then finally manual trading, then automation. The hardest part is always the money management rules, but set it up as a unit you drop into all systems. Entries are always easiest, but the MM has first all the reasons of not taking a trade. Yeah, the money management rules change as you gain more experience, usually get longer, LOL. You want to back test longer than you want to plan your next vacation.