Thanks for your input ND. As always, very interesting, studied observations which are always greatly appreciated. I have a lot more thoughts on this too to share, which Iâve started to write out, but Iâm still digesting different aspects of this and working at bringing more clarity to my own take. And I was thinking about Star's possible averaging down too and had my doubts but: 1. As you say, fortunately was never an issue. 2. Was maybe evidence that Star correctly saw the price action as merely a pullback buying opportunity and not the beginning of a counter trend. This, to my mind, comes with experience trading this contract and maybe just experience trading in general. 3. I do think though that averaging down into a losing position is a bad practice as you never know if the trend or counter-trend will continue. Better to exit, lose a few ticks and reenter when possible. ND, I know you can do better than the 20,000-tick challenge. Time will tell. But don't hold yourself back. I think of Ari Kiev working with Steve Cohen's SAC Capital traders at removing the psychological blocks limiting their potential. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...v+Steve+Cohen&aq=f&aqi=g-v1&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai= http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/30/business/30kiev.html
I was thinking about this this morning and wondering what app you have to trade on your phone. That was a great entry. Did you take any profits yet? At 92?
Something that helped my progress a lot this year is talking out loud about setups and trade management, and I plan on doing a lot more of this to keep me focused on patience in waiting for confirmation before entry and also on holding for appropriate profit targets. On days like Friday when the price action is about as clean and powerful as it gets, it's easy to stay focused, but on most days there are periods of chop and consolidation that lull you into missing a great move. Sometimes there's a lukewarm setup where you can enter a trade early, but there's a price at which you know the move is fully confirmed and the probability of a profitable trade goes up significantly at that price. That price might seem so far away and it's tempting to enter early and get a "better" price. Or maybe there's consolidation taking place within a narrow range and it's taking a long time and you're getting bored and distracted and want to position yourself based on what you THINK is going to happen instead of waiting for price confirmation that it's actually happening. Best thing to do is place your entry order(s) early at the confirmation price(s) and then you can just relax instead of staring at the screen. If you have a sound effect that signals an order fill, you can walk away while waiting. I had buy stop in place 20 minutes Friday before it was finally triggered, but it was worth the wait. Also, something I've been neglecting and it's rather unprofessional is to always know the initial profit target in advance, one that makes sense, to help avoid taking profits too soon. I'm rather lazy about this at times, figuring my minimum is always 20 ticks and I'll work around that. But having the sensible profit target in mind in advance makes it less likely you'll just take a minimum profit when price gets around that level and pauses. My first task of the day from now on will be to note every S/R level on the 5-min chart, 60-min chart and daily chart. This is really helpful with targeting profits.
Easiest part of the trading process. Each and every market = symbol tells you where it wants to go ever day... well ahead of time. Nothing beats listening to the chosen market tell you where it will eventually trade to inside any given day, far more often than not
Ah, seeing that 90.03 line on your chart gave me warm fuzzy memories This was a typical case where my laziness during the holiday week (not having S/R levels noted each day) cost me profits on that move. When my 90.03 sell stop was triggered, price moved over 45 ticks in a few seconds. I went to place a stop to lock in some profits but hit it too close and was ticked out for a decent gain, but left a lot on the table. Once that first push to a new LOD paused, my target at that point should've been just above 89.06 (a daily chart low once 89.85 was breached). I was basically taken by surprise when price fell off my DOM and by the time it re-centered I was disoriented and had no levels in front of me to serve as my road map.
What is CM-RoadMap? Is this a proprietary S/R filter? I tried to find out more about it. Does it come with TradeStation?
BTW I was also wondering what charting and trading software everyone uses. I'm using NinjaTrader through Mirus Futures. They've been good to me. I like NinjaTrader's trading module and the ZenFire data feed has been working well lately after a period of problems. But the charting is pretty basic. I used eSignal for years but I'm not using it now.
Good points. My mind's very active and demands action and I get bored and distracted too and sometimes just tired from constant analysis while I'm waiting. This is especially true in low volume choppy markets like last week. And I find myself going off to check my email or post here or whatever. And invariably the second I do, after waiting an hour of so for something, there's a break of some sort and I miss it. Isn't that the way it goes? I like the buy stop idea. And I especially like the idea of checking the S/R levels ahead of time. Very important. And to my mind something that contributes greatly to successful trading.
Open ECry has nice charts and doms as well. Free data to live accounts too which is nice. Depending on what you need, it may have what you need or if you need more also works with most EL indicators too now. They've done a great job in constantly upgrading the platform imo. http://www.openecry.com/