My win % is around 40% with losses and b/e all counted as losses. With b/e trades not counted at all, just wins/losses, it's around 85%. I've gotten much better at letting my winners run and the 20-tick minimum profit target has been very helpful with that. For example, over the past two full weeks of trading (10 days), only 4 out of 27 winning trades were closed at less than 20 ticks and the average winner was 27 ticks. I also implemented a 15-tick max loss (down from 25 ticks), which means my largest losing trade over that 2 week period was 15 ticks and the average loss was 10 ticks. Here's the best part of my "money management" edge: If ALL 32 of my break even trades over that period had hit my max 15-tick stop loss, I would still be significantly net profitable because of letting the winners run I've been working so hard on this for months now and feel very good about the way it's coming together.
it's pretty impressive to achieve this for the nature of pattern playing, as all pattern fails sometime. congrats!
My win % is around 40% with losses and b/e all counted as losses. With b/e trades not counted at all, just wins/losses, it's around 85%. What kind of account are you trading with, amount of capital.....that determines a lot with what kind of money management techniques that are even an option......the bigger account......the more techniques that will work.
Excellent stuff NoDoji.... Well done. I love reading your postings. So honest and hence so refreshing.Keep up the good work. All the best John
My trading account is around $50K from when I mainly traded stocks and you needed $25K minimum. Since I don't scale in or out when trading more than 1, I treat multi-contract trades as if they were 1 contract, so for example a 5-lot trade that captured 20 ticks profit I treat as a 20-tick gain when calculating my win/loss averages. I don't average into trades, though I'm considering adding to all with-trend pullback positions on the breakout. So if I go long on a pullback, I'd place a buy stop just above the previous high to add to the winner. I haven't done this yet, but it seems like a good way to get extra profit by riding on the back of an existing unrealized gain. I use a hard stop on my trades, which is 15 ticks or less with very few exceptions. When I sim traded CL for months on end, I tested a lot of average-down counter-trend strategies because at that time I didn't know half what I know now about trading. Because the sim account was so huge, I think I only lost money on 2 or 3 trades, proving that leverage itself can be quite an edge.
Patterns definitely fail and the patterns I trade can fail often. But the way I get into trades is in the direction of price momentum, so if there isn't the kind of follow through I'm looking for, I will exit very quickly and try again if the setup remains valid. I'm pretty sure that if I left my initial stops and targets in place, I'd have more losses but make more money. But I have trouble with that, mainly because there are enough moves each day that DO have strong follow through, that I'm willing to cut some good trades off in exchange for the comfort of having few and small losses.
agreed. whether the target can be reached or not is unpredictable by nature, so your approach is probably best if all those prediction is based on pattern. having better comfort is always good for health. i noticed my blood pressure goes higher than normal if i hold my position longer to exit at the next reversal pivot in favour of me for the maximum of profit. that seems not good for my health. hence i only take some quick profit for the sake of health, which is already sufficient for my living. if i wish to get more profit, i could either get more trades in all those safe area near major reversal spot or trade with bigger position(i can trade into 40 lot of CL if i like). basically my current strategy system (not based on pattern playing) could catch each of major reversal pivot and play as many times as i wish at nearby area which is safe enough for risk free play. that's why i prefer 100% rate play with small risk free profit from each trade: same reason--comfort.
Well, last few days I have been trading like crap. I have Word document with trade rules, but it is so big I no longer read it, and think my problem is not being able to identify a correct trade recently since I was playing break outs in CL, but getting stopped out on chop. Also, was trying to base CL on ES, but sometimes ES goes down, and CL stays the same or goes up, but it does seem if ES goes up a ton, then CL will go up too. So I just wrote a few simple rules partly based on some indicators on a piece of paper. So far not bad, last 2 trades were winners including shorting ES, and then going long CL in late afternoon. So just going to try to follow my rules going forward. Big problem has been over trading, so if I have a loss, I need to really stop trading since it means either I am not in a good mental state or the market is random, or I was not following my rules, and I should just examine it later during the night, see what I did wrong, and come back the next day instead of getting chopped to death.