Highly Selective Entry Point dictates the trade & keeps one in a trade until it develops properly.... That and proper RR/ Risk Reward will skew the odds in your favor greatly. Learning how to lose properly is just as, if not more important, than learning how to win big as Capital Preservation always the name of he game & the common denominator .. Stops are a friend not an enemy that protects working capital. Don`t want to get stopped?... Then perfect entry points with extreme discipline & patience.
Well first of all you have to play and analyze your time frame chart, or game clock. Know your general profit potential points and loose expectations and vice versa with the loss, or down bear market side. You, and most people like you, sounds like you have no game plan skill for trading and wisdom and tactics -- but rather, just Completely gambling and guessing. and leaving your fate to random chance of the market wind. You have to consider all the fixed and dynamic variables within that time frame game chart. That may or may not influence the way the chart will move or dance to your expectations. Trading the market is kind of like flirting with a woman, or hunting for a certain animal. You have to do your preliminary homework. Study the prey. and consider all the fixed and dynamic variables within that fixed field or time frame chart. And position yourself for the expectations, or kill. 2018 ET. Trading is war. You have to plan and position and strategize for it. -- You don't treat trading like planning on wasting $200 on the blackjack table at Vegas for a good time during your Birthday or for your wife's anniversary. I hate Vegas buffets...I lose my appetite when I see so much food. I prefer to eat at a steakhouse or normal restaurant. and I'm a virgin, so is my beagle.
53 % of the time the market goes up , positive drift. going against that is no bueno, id probably also only trade from like 9:30 to 11 AM .
Good Grief...I recommend you disregard this post... one of the worst suggestions ever read here.. just terrible rookie suggestion.
You can use money stops or price action stops. The first is of course a set amount you are willing to risk on a trade in terms of money. For instance, a trader might say I never want to lose more than $100.00. In such a case this trader will probably do best to cherry pick his trades to be those that appear to have a high probability of rendering at least $100.00 (preferably $200.00 or more) before they would lose 100.00. And I would focus on those trades that give me a high win rate. When you have high probability and low risk ($100.00) you cannot expect big reward, as a rule. The market is simply not gonna give you high probability, high reward, low risk, as a rule. There are tradeoffs. That is not to say a low win rate won’t work as it can but the question is; can the trader psychologically handle several losses in a row? There are low risk, high reward trades out there but they are going to be low probability. That means much of the time the trader will get stopped out with a small loss. So alot depends upon a traders mindset, psychological state, and the ability to do the rght thing under duress. If I were trading with such a tight money SL and i were trading say the ES i would opt for a high win rate trades with low reward, high probability, low risk. I would grab the 100 or 200 everytime the market gives it to me and enter again if it continues in my original direction. Generally, high probability trades are NOT going to give big reward. That is why most traders see a profit quickly after entry then suddenly it disappears and before they can say (boy i’m good) they see their 2 point profit go down the drain and their 2 point SL get wacked. Then they are confused about what just happened. What happened was they hit high high probabilty trade (by design or by luck) didn’t take what the market gave them, (most likely because of the “let your profits run theory has been drilled into their brain”) quickly so the market just took it right back in typical market fashion. The other option like I said is also to cherry pick only those trades that render low risk, low probability, big reward. If you are of the mindset to handle 7 or 8 losers out of 10 trades then this might work for you. However, either way you have to forward test on a live sim to identify and learn what trades to cherry pick in either senario. I don’t do back testing at all. Some traders do. I simply do not care for it nor need to do it as see it as a waste of my time. I will comment on price action stops losses in another post.
Conundrum... To do that you need to understand and use "Price TA". But "TA doesn't work", right? (I mean Geez... everybody says so.)
Bugsy...I can say that I will never be profitable if I calculate the lifetime of time I have invested. really sad...but I am comitted. ES
%% Here is something, Bugsy that helped me a lot; NO such thing as a business without business expenses-if you think about it. Frankly i hate losses, but it's part of it. Any business has expenses..... Also helpful,leverage is not your friend; trend can be a friend Also, even better ; something that pays dividends can help a lot.Trading/investing is a lot like medical school, as IBD noted.Even some have gotten free medical training ; but still takes years.