This is a great post, I am a begining day trader with e mini Russell and I feel fortunate to be able to learn from this website and good posts like this. I makes sense to me.
hey duck.. did you find that a simple or complex approach work best for you in your system. the more i trade...the simpler i try to make things. did you find the same to be true?
the simpler the better..... when you find yourself in a stressful situation or in panic mode.... complex works against you... clouds judgement. I should also point out that im no longer trading stocks.... just YM. Also, my r/r ratios have gotten smaller and my batting ave has improved... I use bigger stops on YM than i normally would on stocks.
if u r trying to really help...truly help.......give a difinitive system ....entry and exit signals with stops.....rules and all....please.........thanks
great post lilducking , you say you are a swing trader ( in stocks I suppose) not risking more than 0.5% of your capital per trade. This is very low, do you then have many positions on ? How many ? I try to risk less than 1-1.5 % at most, usually have a tighter mental stop . Not accounting for disaster gap downs. I don't want to risk more than 5% of the account on those, so each stock position is usually no more than 10% of the account.
Your positive enquiry is a good one. Personally I don't do this kind of stuff or think this way. I do observe, however. At best it is difficult to follow what others are advocating and this thread is a normal example. I am having a little trouble looking at how you can get any significant input from the trading examples (2) in this thread. From a positive viewpoint I see that a person spent two years dealing with your questions and then stopped trading in that venue. Now in a new venue he has changed his approach vis a vis your questions. I am guessing that you want to learn from his experience and find the basis of why he did not continue. I hope we all find out.
if the market is in a strong move, how can you tell that the move has stalled and a reversal is possible? what precise technical indicators tell you that? what levels on those indicators? what time frame? if you don't have an exact well-thought out answer to that question, then you need to find one.....savy?
I agree, its next to impossible to make any money following someone elses plan... regardless how good they are. Porgie... asking to list all the details of stops, entries etc... would really serve no point. 1. That would be trying to make it into a "system" and i believe no one can just carbon copy what someone is doing and have the same success rate. Everyone, at best, may take a little off this person.. that person.. and come up with something that fits them... their style... personality etc. Even if i tryed to use someone else's entries.... exits.. or anything else as simple as that.... the mere fact that i may not have the same platform or data feed.. or computer speed.. etc., will alter the results. 2. Im no longer trading stocks. Grob... the reason why i left stocks is twofold... 1. It takes a tremendous amount of time to do proper research ... you have to be up on sectors... industries.... news.... earnings dates and alot more. I just wasn't having any time for anything else. I don't mean just scaning this stuff... you really must analyze all this in detail if you want a shot at making money with stocks. 2. Often times, i would be right on the market, but my stock wouldn't move with the market. Or it would be battered around out of nowhere because of upgrades/down grades..... earnings ..company news... etc. Sometimes on a swing trade i would have a huge gap against me the next day because of just such situations. Trading YM solves all these problems for me. Gaps on YM are completely different from Gaps on stocks. I am also keeping track of all the gaps in YM with unusual data that you wont find elsewhere.... as time goes by... that data will become more useful to me. I still have to spend time everyday reviewing and researching.... but the benefits per time spent is much better. I survived in stocks because of my tight money management control.... that enabled me to get the "hang" of the mkts somewhat over the last 2.3 years. But trading YM is different... i have different rules.... same rules with stocks will not work with YM. As an example... R/R ratios are smaller in YM for me. Also have no trouble taking inverted R/R ratios in specific certain situations.... different from stocks. Im new to YM... still learning... but i love it and will never go back to stocks. (even though i got my feathers plucked this week)