You need to lose once in a while to keep things in balance. Otherwise, you might start increasing your risk and eventually get a huge damage done. -6 is not too bad at all anyway...
I'm continuing to test my intraday system on Eurusd. Initially, my entries were quite good however the trailing exits left too much on the table. Tradestation quantifies entry and exit efficiencies. I was getting about 60% entry and 25% exit efficiency. I started testing for profit targets (trail until the profit target is reached). It looks like I found the sweet spot and improved the exit efficiency to 45%. A profit target of around 18 ticks seems to be optimum for my system, producing the maximum (net profit)/(equity drawdown) ratio. A profit target of 18 ticks is quite intuitive because many times I saw profits in that range go down to breakeven and even to slight loss. The stops are adaptive and the average loss is at 11 ticks. The system has about 45% profitable trades and the win/loss ratio is 1.84. I think I can handle these numbers psychologically. Therefore, I need to leave my dreams of trying to catch these 50-80 pip trades and trade realistically for consistent profits.
I tested this for the US session only starting time set at 8:40 am EST to avoid the 8:30 am economic number madness. It also performs well on the Yen with only a few adjustments to the stop and target. I like its behavior during the large trending moves. It keeps on selling into the spikes and buys the pullbacks. So actually I'm not missing all of the big moves.
What a strange thing. Just fired up the apps, tossed in a small position just for luck, and wound up bagging +12 on that piker. Small size, but still funny. Kind of makes up for the stupid day - mentally if not all monetary. I was setting up a wide stop - wider than my target even - before going to sleep. I had the target set, and was getting them as OCAs and GTC - then I was thinking of how to adjust the stop but it had fell a good portion of my +35 target already - in less than a minute. Well, then I bagged it. I hadn't even had a chance to study the chart well, just looked at price levels for some pairs. The flip-a-coin or make-a-monkey-guess method sure can work if money management is held by a human ... It's now close to my original entry. Almost a little surreal. It's just midnight here, better turn off the lights and stop thinking (actively) about trading for some hours. I sure feel lucky sometimes, though. Not in the lottery sense of it - but more in the blackjack and trading sense of it. I've only lost 1 BlackJack session of all 20+ I have had (and I was very drunk to boot in dutch part of St. Martin - damn waitresses doubled and tripled our cognacs - and we had to play the $200 table - I think it was ... Otherwise I have always known when to stop - when sober - and many times got a bunch of chinese guys playing on back of me. I once had a 5-way split on Tenerife, Playa de las Americas, which seemed to be a magnet on those guys when I got over 17s and some 20s on it. I was actually trying to rid myself of the pesetas - but that didn't work out, although some punter stole my wallet when I was swaggering back to the hotel a few nights before ... but now I'm ranting.) edit: how lucky should I feel ? The damn thing just collapsed and hit that +35 target already .. a few heartbeats later - past +40 even. Oh, well. This has been the story of the week for me - great entries and no heart, stomach for the trades. I think I know how Ivanovich feels about his EURUSD trade too; not a little pissed - although I am too tired to care about the lost opportunity now. Or am I wrong ? Maybe he just was 5 pips away from being stopped and just got his target now ... hmmm, hope so.
Morning, fellas. Yep, luckily was not stopped out this time. Woke up about 10 minutes ago to see the TP hit. Summary of yesterday was that only one trade (in the morning) had a stop hit. Everything else came in right where it needed to (with the exception of 1 aussie trade in the morning I closed early with profit). Today, I'm shorting the Aussie again at 7545, heavily, with target open. I won't jump in on the Euro where it is. I'll either short at 1.328 (as I feel the ceiling is moving down again) or on break of 1.3230 (this latter one with a tight stop). 2-3AM EST is the key time to watch rejection for bullish/bearish behavior at start of Euro open. Good luck! -Ivan
Closed Aussie at 7710 at + 35 pips heavy. limit sell on Euro went off as expected and closed at TP 1.3203. Been a profitable week - very much so. I'm done for this week. Taking my money and running. Enjoy your weekend, folks. I'll be in the US on Monday for a month, visiting family. Wheee....