keep your head up bud. I'd also only trade one GC until you have about 50 or so man, but thats just me
If scalping is your "thing", more power to you...the only scary aspect of your trading/scalping is that you seem to average down/up at times....that could a recipe for burnt fingers. But if you have a firm stop on ALL these trades then you must know your risk tolerence... Good luck to you. BTW, did you go back and review your great 1k profit trade and see if you can you those parameters as a permanent feature of your GC trades?
50K?! I'm not going to trade 2 lots everytime until I probably have like 25K or more, but I'll be careful about it. Edit: Another thing, I need results pretty fast, my mom is bugging me about getting a job now instead of being a bum at home I won't average up unless I'm going for a trend-trade I think. I average down now because sometimes I get in and it moves against me a little bit, but I have a feeling it's going to reverse anyways, so I get in another contract at a better price. I know this is dangerous, but so far it has been working for me. Also, there are no hard stops on these trades, only mental stops. That's because of how fast I need to get into these trades I don't have time to set up a stop. Also, sometimes gold will "overextend" itself on any given wave before bouncing back, like a rubber band. Maybe if I knew how to do an auto-stop with everytrade, but I haven't found that in IB yet. I'll try putting in a disaster stop though, cause gold dipped $18 within 30mins yesterday, a very scary thought if I had a 2 lot and no stops. I was using stops on every trade when I tried trend following though. Also, about the 1K trade I made last week: I know for sure the only reason I was able to make that was because I was asleep. If i had been awake I probably would've taken profit way before the 1K mark. So far, this environment in gold is for scalping, fading support and resistance. I try to set up a longer trend-trade once in a while by setting a stop and just riding it, but so far they've come back every time. Another thing, the $10+ moves in gold have happened very, very quickly. I still don't know how to detect them early enough.
On the "auto stop" issue, simply pick up the phone and call IB...I would have thought, not that I know their set up, that there was an option to set an automatic function that covers both profit goal and a fixed stop on the initial entry.... Hopefully other IB customers in this forum may also be able to assist you. BTW, afriend of mind went to sleep with an exposure and woke up $30000 lighter, simply because he did not put in a stop!!!!
Do yourself a favor and download bracket-trader, its free. One click in the dom and your initial order is sent to IB together with your stop and target order. http://bracket-trader.com/
Thanks ranger ill look into it. Thursday: It was a trendy day in gold today. There was double top formation, one at 10 o'clock and another at 12:30. I got nearly killed trying to scalp and averaging down. I was able to reduce my losses, but overall I overcomplicated things today. On my first trade, I longed gold at a pretty low point but early in the session. I was about to just set my stop and take a nap, but instead I cut my profit at around 400 and tried scalping the trend, which turned out pretty bad. I had a loss of about 500 at one point. I finally did manage to get a few wins, one by shorting the double top at around noon. I need to learn to identify these sort of days much quicker, and adapt faster. IB reset my trade history from yesterday at like 1:40PM today so as consolation ill include a chart of gold.
Week 17 Friday Gonna call it a day I think unless something comes up. Gold moved steadily higher today on oil's unexpected surge. The euro is also on a tear. Gold moved much like it did yesterday and picked a direction to move. I think gold is going to drift lower into the day but I want to call it a week and take my wins today. Also, I can't believe how much I made this week!