I don't even understand half the stuff Ripley says.... lots of non-sequiturs. guess you need to learn the style....
Quite frankly, these last 2 days f'ed me up in the wallet but more importantly in the head. I was feeling quite confident just before too...no stops in place...shame on me. All of last months profits gone in 2 days *poof*! I'm gonna have to regroup...
i havent been trading much, doing work and going to the beach.... most of my past drawdowns, have been after march. i have a buddy who is a stud trader, he pyramids positions, and he is getting stopped out constantly.
You have known the weapon, scalping. Just follow it. it is better not to hold anything overnight in most cases.
Hey Marketwhizz, I am a beginner and not profitable ... yet ... but I have been pretty much on the sidelines lately since a lot of people here agree that this time of the year will be choppy with no real trend up or down. Maybe some profitable traders would agree that this is a difficult time to make money. Lately, I have been trading the qqqqs only and very little of it. Maybe you have a winning strategy for trending markets and you need to adapt your strategy to this choppyness. Just my two cents.
Knowing that markets only trend something like 15% of the time, I focused on learning how to trade sideways markets well first and then worked on adjusting to trending days. My thinking was, why focus primarily on market conditions that happen much less frequently but rather focus on what happens most of the time.
I think you need to have a system and stay with it instead of constantly jumping from one method to another. When things aren't really materializing I adapt by trading smaller sizes and taking profits more quickly than I normally would (for ex instead of a 2-3 day hold, a 3-4 hour hold). I've been trading for over 10 yrs now and always seem to have a short-term memory when summer comes -- most of my colleagues also hate July-August trading. Every August I think, man this sucks, was it really this bad last summer? And I don't need a trending market really just not a crazy one like the one we have had this week.
Remember the summer months are always a difficult trade. Charts make the summer months look active, but in reality the summer has thin volume. This is when the big boys will take a vacation and thus the market personality will change a bit. I trade the index futures. The summer is a good time to trade the opening and take the rest of the day off. Keep your head up! I also did not make any money in July. The good thing is I did not give back any of my June profits!
I just replied to an earlier post of yours in this thread, and said basically the same thing you stated above. I trade ER2. I primarily scalp. One thing I am adding to my arsenal is spreading. I am noticing that the spread between ER2 and ES is more volatile than the outright moves this summer. Also when I pay attention to the spread I seem to trade better.