That sounds good on paper, but you really never know where the swing highs and lows will occur. I'm trying to beat buy and hold, because I'm worried markets could trade sideways for years to come.
Yeah my strategy has been struggling lately, so I am trying to adapt by betting smaller initially, and waiting for bigger pull backs. I haven't been adding to account so even a 50% drop is loss of profits and not principle. But it still hurts (not filthy rich )
I am glad I allowed automation to exit during the recent dead cat bounce. Still within spitting distance of HWM. Up 3.22% for the year and SP500 down -5.80%. I just have to hang in there. My plan is to keep a core position in MES and MNQ and trade around that. When I see market tanking with recent support broken, I'm trying to scalp quick shorts.
It’s painful to write this, but yesterday I lost 10K while discretionary trading. I threw up to 10 to 20 Emini contracts at a time, thinking I could make huge gains. It all started out reasonably conservative while trading 1 Emini looking for trends and going long and short using bracket orders and taking my small losses. Then the typical occurred and I tried to make back losses by increasing size. I still like the bracket orders where you place targets and stops with your order, though. I just need to keep it under control. I could have been at new equity highs if I didn’t choke yesterday. I need to settle back down and get back into my groove. I’m still up 5.6% for the year, with the SP down 3.8%. I’m going to trade small (no leverage on account), and wait for the next swing low.
Sorry to hear but one word your wrote above stands out ... typical. Exchange that for another word and you will be going in the right direction .... patience.
Appreciate your honesty and sorry to hear about your loss. Relative to account size, it's no biggie, though, and you're still very much in the game. It's not clear to me unless you mentioned it earlier in the journal, but what is your market experience...? Why not just trade 1-2 micros for a while and keep learning? Give up the idea of making big $$$ for now? Grow some confidence first? It's a paradox in trading, but it seems like the more you want it the less likely you are to get it. Much like with women and other things in life.