All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. Pablo Picasso :eek:
thanks for the detail... btw, good move on your "stop & reverse" trade at 5:06 am. What propelled you to enter the buy stop orders before being down 15 ticks? What do you think of the following trade mgmt strategy: "allowing your winners to run by moving your stop from b/e to your target price and trailing the stop by 5 ticks everytime the price moves 5 or 10 ticks." I believe this would have benefited your trades that were otherwise closed out at 6:20 am and 6:37 am Hopefully I not being bothersome... Walter
Of course you are (Depending on your TWS version, you should be able to display your trades in charts. ChartTrader --> Display all trades + Chart Settings/Options --> Highlight --> "My trades". It won't be a work or art, but should do).
I did a special kind of analysis after yesterday's close because I'm tired of myself not taking every valid trade setup and I wanted some kind of proof that if I took not only every valid trade setup, but also EVERY potential price action setup without regard for trend or bar size or news or anything else, I would end up net profitable. So my analysis resulted in 30 trades, including stop-and-reverse when the price action indicated. 40% win rate with average winner $278 and average loser $86 and despite a significant drawdown early on, the end result was stellar. This gave me confidence and I was fired up and ready to follow my rules. I shorted the first valid short signal I saw upon turning on my system, then trailed a double buy stop because there was no reason for a strong short signal like that to reverse without a decent follow through. So there was almost no follow through (I basically sold 1 tick from the pivot low of that "non-move", ha ha) and even though I cringed at reversing long, I knew in my heart that bear traps result in some of the best moves in CL. I would've held the position for another 20 or more ticks, but didn't want to hold through the news and 30 ticks is nothing to sneeze at. The trade at 6:20 was an opening trade, not a closing trade. What happened was after my early trades, I still had to feed dog, grab breakfast, make tea, etc, so I missed the NYMEX open and the excellent small bar counter-trend short opportunity. By the time I got back to my desk, I realized that a price action long opportunity was in play and I went long at 6:20am PST looking for a breakout, and covered near b/e when it never materialized after showing 15 ticks gain. I then had my sell stop in place like a good little trading machine and that one ran 14 ticks, stopped me out near b/e and hit the falling 20 EMA on the 1-min chart and I jumped right back in again. That was the one closed out at 6:37, which I could've remained in by trailing my stop (and ended up out at 82.26 using that method, or taken profits near the round number a common pivot point). The real runner I got out of a very nice second chance setup because I missed the initial confirmed short entry at 82.29, not sure why. I had an initial target of 81.91 and when I saw price coming in at a good clip I dragged it to 81.55 for a breakout run. The breakout was initially weak and that's why I took it off @ 81.75, but that little sucker went to my hard target after all without me and again trailing a stop would've kept in that one as well. Now, trailing a 5- or 10-tick stop is useless in CL. I trail either a bar back or leave it at b/e depending on my target zone and the price volatility at the time. If I'm in a move where my target has been exceeded and I'm letting it run, I watch for signs of stalling at or near the next major S/R level, then tighten my stop to 5-10 ticks from the stalled area. As you can see, though, I'm a work-in-progress
"work-in-progress" with a day's gain of almost $1.oo... surely you jest. Most traders would send a note to Jack Schwager asking to be included in his next book if they could sustain the type of performance you had today If you're not careful, performances like this will soon get you branded as a "guru". just kidding... Congrats!
Thanks, but the way I see it is, price action trading works and the only magic to it all is learning to trust profit targets, allowing the market to give you more if it's willing and being able to shift gears quickly when a setup is invalidated and a new signal appears. I have many trading books and they all recommend trading this way. Trade with the trend, wait for confirmation, let winners run, etc. After doing it long enough and making the same mistakes so many times you're ready to see a shrink, you finally start to understand what it all means. This year I entered the "Ahhhh, I get it" phase of my trading. One of the best things I ever did was start buying new highs, selling new lows. It's SO counter-intuitive, yet it eventually conditions you to truly believe in trend-following and price action trading.
ND, For your breakout trades, what front end do you use (Ninjatrader) and do you just put buystops for long breakouts, and sellstops for short breakouts? So for example you put a buystop 1 point ahead of previous high, and have your 15 point stop, with a 20 point target....you must be highly selective of which type of breakouts you take, as these up 3 point new highs, revert back 10 points breakouts, go up another 3 points, etc...so this strategy needs breakouts with a lot of force, speed and power behind them....that is the real key picking the setups that will explode out versus the "failed breakouts". do you always use basic buystops or advanced buystops a la NT functionality? And on those powerful breakouts your buystop if not limit, what kind of average slippage do you get on a powerful breakout, how do you factor this in to placement?
I use buy/sell stops as you described. I place them far in advance to avoid major slippage. By placing them far in advance even the most powerful breakout results in little or no slippage. I made the mistake of placing a sell stop at the last minute once because I wasn't focused on my trading and saw price coming in just before it hit the level and got 8 ticks slippage on 1 lot. My stop is 10 ticks, moved to b/e rather quickly and I rarely have a hard target because sometimes price can just keep running.