I went to bed last night late, but before the announcement was made, read later it was after the asian markets were closed, it will be interesting how Asia , and China reacts to the news---bad reaction - crude gets hit sunday night, good reaction and crude and the other commodities rally. How many stops out today nd, and breakevens, and total ticks with 1 lot? The reason I ask is I am altering some things and going back to 1 lots til I have mastered my new strategy and trading plan.
Trading 1 lot is the best thing I ever did. Today I had six winners that hit minimum 20 ticks or better, three break evens and one loser, for 139 ticks gain on 1 lot.
Thanks, one of the struggles for me since I am reducing scalping trades from my new strategy going forward for now is the following: Your 6 winners for 20plus = 154 points for an average target of 25.6 The problem is in what my target should be and sticking to it for the trade to completion, so if I put in a bracket order 20, 25, 30 ,35 with a 15 tick stop. How many of your 6 trades in retrospect at the end of the day would have netted 35, 30 points if you just stayed with the trade? I know what you said about needing to take advantage of your opps while they are there. I guess what I am asking is what do you think the ideal starting point should be for a target, and then adapt from there as the trade develops? Divorce it from your self, but from a pure independent perspective, how many of your 20 pointers would have been scratches if you didn`t take the 20? The reason being that 6 x 35 would be 210 ticks, what I am trying to develop is if I can teach myself to stay with the trade longer, and if this makes sense from an overall profit standpoint. Just your take , that`s all. thanks
My first trade was pure counter-trend and my fixed 20-tick target was the pivot high to the tick. It was surreal, but sometimes you get lucky. I stepped away to grab breakfast and missed the proper entry on a with-trend trade, but got in quickly on the second invitation, and used a previous support level as a target zone, got 40 ticks. Next, pure counter-trend, took fixed 20 tick target only to watch it run another 24 ticks. Sometimes that happens but I've let 20 ticks turn into nothing so many times, I decided counter-trend fixed targets are for the best. Then counter-trend long off a first reversal signal, fixed 20 tick target lifted 2 ticks from the pivot high. Good luck again! Took a with-trend short, but the previous slightly higher low (first reversal signal) convinced me to move my stop to b/e after nearly 15 ticks profit, out b/e. (I later had a couple other b/e's that went 15 and 18 ticks before coming back.) So now I had a long bias, but price didn't trigger a long entry and I found myself short again, so I targeted a breakout of the low at that point. Here's where my bias made me a bit jumpy to the short side. Price broke out, but only by a few ticks then started to tick up. I assumed a failed breakout and took 20 ticks profit. It then immediately commenced to run nearly another 60 ticks without me. I didn't re-enter because I couldn't believe it could keep moving lower! I then took a solid counter-trend long setup and was stopped out for the loss. I decided to short again if price broke out that new low, but a long trade was triggered instead at the same price as the long I was just stopped out of and I took 31 ticks when price appeared to stall and pull back without reaching previous resistance. Well, had I waited patiently I would've gotten the break through previous resistance for another 34 ticks. You see, I'm targeting previous S/R levels when I'm with the trend, and taking 20 ticks fixed profit on most counter-trend trades. But I'm often impatient and untrusting and leave a lot of money on the table by not waiting for price to reach those larger profit target zones on the with-trend trades. I recommend if you're with the trend, target a new high or low somewhere near the next S/R level to be tested. Those targets get hit more often than not. If a trade has moved 30 ticks in my favor, I will then begin trailing my stop and tightening it as the target zone comes near. The interesting thing about pure price action trading is that you can have a bias, but end up in trades that are opposite of your bias! That happened to me twice today. When that happens, it's always best to trust price and patiently allow it to approach profit target zones before moving your stop.
ND, Lets say the high is 84.50, and you decide to set up your breakout trade when price is 83.85 early in the opening, so you put a buy stop at 84.51, I assume you do this in booktrader? But the question is do you have to wait til your order is hit, and then manually enter a 15 point sell stop in booktrader to have your trade protected, how do you enter your whole trade ahead of time, is there a way to do that with ib`s infrastructure?
In Booktrader, if you hold down the Alt key while left-clicking on a price in the Bid Size or Ask Size column, it will prepare a limit order to buy or sell at that price, and automatically place a protective stop order and profit target limit order, one cancels other (OCO), as soon as the initial limit order is filled. The default stop and target orders are 1 point, but you can change this default in the configuration area, for example make it a .15 stop and .40 target. I never use this feature, though, because most of my orders are stop orders. I'm pretty sure you can set up a hot-key combo to have this same OCO setup occur when a stop order is triggered, but I haven't yet checked into how to do that. I would definitely like to set that up because there are times when I have a stop order in a far away place for so long I forget it's there. Maybe Picaso, our holy IB guru, can help us?
Friday, I set up some hotbuttons on booktrader to click on pre-configured stops, and then another button for pre-configured brackets---haven`t fully tested as the market was closed but it appears promising, you just go to config, booktrader, hot buttons, and create new hot button, and then scroll down to the function you want to add, and make sure your preconfig matches your needs. That alt method, can you do that not with a limit order but with a buy stop, this is my next test, can i click on the stop button at the top of booktrader (bt) and then create a buy stop or sell stop, then click on my bracket button, and it creates a bracket oco order around my buy/sell stop order, and is triggered when hit by the market---will be testing during waiting time sunday night and monday. But are you just doing your stop manually right now on these type of orders? the next trick is in separating the two types of breakouts, especially up: 1) breaks previous high by 4 ticks, and then goes down, then breaks by another 4 points, or 2 points, and then goes back down, and sometimes it is like (that`s all you got to the upside) and your stop could possibly get hit -will have to pay more attention to the tick retracements on thiese moves. 2) The explosive bustouts where even if it only breaks out by 5 points it only takes 12-15 seconds for it to start taking 5, 8, 12, 15 point chunks of ticks-obviously your stop is safe---and your profit target is usually a good 50 ticks on the safe side---especially if it breaks out near the middle of a whole number---it is almost gauranteed to move up to the higher whole number, and test slightly above to see if it can hold. This is more of a feel, than anything else----maybe watch the euro and equities to gauge vibrancy of the move, and market sentiment for the day.
Yes, right now I'm placing stops manually as soon as my order is filled, which is no problem, but can be a bit dicey on a breakout trade the first 30 seconds after the inventory report :eek: What I've found is that a 10-tick stop on breakouts keeps you in almost all the good ones and limits your loss nicely on the failures. Thanks for that tip on the middle numbers. I'll keep an eye on that. I broke out in a sweat just reading this. The thread has been fairly clean and now you're posting pure unadulterated trading porn. All right, I need to either find my husband now or take a cold shower
well I have never really used stops in my trading so this will be quite a research project. In how to apply 5 and 7 point stops in places to find out I am wrong on various setups and save money. For eaxmple, the market sells off to 81.50 and then retraces to 81.88, and then slowly works it way down for a retest, I get a feeling that it might hold so I put in a buy order right at 81.53, well technically, in most cases if it breaks 81.50, you don`t need 15 point stop here, a 81.49 stop will probably get the job done. (there will be probably 3 points slippage). are all your stops market stops? And when you move it up to b/e do you move it up plus 3 cents, so when it retraces, you factor in slippage, and truly get a b/e or plus 1? Also, if you trail.....do you do this manually? Numbers play a big role in CL trading in relation to range, for example if it a bullish day and your around 83.77...it usually is no problem and with break above 84, or go up to the higher whole numbers.....it has an entire different feeling about whole numbers, and then if for example we sold off to 83.38 on a move from 84.60....slowly at first....and then when we broke 84...it sold off hard...well then expect a number like 83.77 to serve as resistance on a retrace in a bearish day....they have real trouble getting close to the whole number....its like its fighting or swimming upstream. On bearish days numbers like 81.09, 81.13 etc are often support 81.05 numbers whereas on bullish days 83.12, 83.29, 83.17 are often retrace numbers for counter trade scalps where the first bust through of a whole number hits 83.12, often retraces to atleast 83, and either goes back to 82.89, or moves up again to a number like 83.32 where you might have another scalp retracement to the 83.19 area depending on where the whole number is in relation to the overall trading range 75-85.
Behold, mortals, and repent from your losses for Doomsday is coming!* This shows how to configure an entry stop (in this case stop-limit, as insurance against crazy slippage) with an attached target and a "trailing" stop (move to BE+1 after 20 ticks in profit). I know it's a tad more complicated than what you asked for, but simplifying it is way easier than the other way around (I'm anticipating somebody would later ask: "Yeah, that's great, but how do I get the stop-loss to move to..."). *** IMPORTANT: Markets are closed as I post this and I haven't been able to test it in real-time, so it goes without saying that you should test it in your demo account first :eek: *** Note: if you're going to be trading different instruments with different tick sizes it gets a bit more complicated, you need to create orders for "Buy or sell specific product". Yes, you can change the defaults per instrument in Global configuration, but that applies to orders from the TWS window, not the BookTrader --> It's a pity that TWS is sometimes so little user-friendly, considering it's such a powerful platform They should just fucking add a "Ticks" field to booktrader (in addition to "Amount" and "%"). I recommend using: - [Alt + Left-click] on size (bid size for buying, ask size for selling) for limit orders (at/below current price for buys); and - [Ctrl + Left-click] on size (idem) for stop orders (above current price for buys) *At least, according to EMG - I decline all responsibility, blah, blah, blah