I have been thinking for a long time about starting a journal on ET. For some reason I never did. I had been trading the system with pretty decent success but the last few times, I just got screwed. I gave up all I made and some more. I do not have any problem cutting my losses short. As soon as the price hits my pre-determined stop I get out. My problem is exiting when I have a profit. I do not want to get out too soon but most of the times my profits have turned into losses or no profits at all. I have been working on a moving average system to trader the YM. I use Ketlner channels and moving averages. For the moving average I use the high, low and close of the 5 dma. For the Ketlner channel I use 10 period. This is a trend following system. Rules to go long: Keltner channel (10) is in an uptrend and price is above the upper channel. Buy at/ around 5 dma (close) with an initial stop at 5 dma (low). As prices move up increase the stop. Rules to go short: Keltner channel (10) is in a downtrend and all the moving averages are below it. Sell at/ around 5 dma (close) with an initial stop at 5 dma (high). As prices move down increase the stop. Why this works? Because we will be buying retracements and selling rallies. We are not predicting anything but going with the flow. We are not trying to pick tops or bottoms. Most of the times that I 've been screwed is when I tried to pick tops or bottoms. If this methos works, why am I putting this on a public forumn? First, so that I can be more disciplined and not take premature signals. Second, we all can learn from each other and lastly, I use a larger keltner channel besides 10 period and trade in that direction only. I won't be giving the number of periods for that one but it is larger than 10. If some one can tell me how to post charts, I will post it here with the execution report from IB. I use CBOT advantage plus. Thanks again.
Check out www.snagit.com That's what I use in my journal. I'm 100% happy with it. They offer a 30 free trail. If you have any questions as to how to use Snagit. Start a different thread and post the question on Elite Trader. We'll all help. gotta_trade
gotta_trade : Thanks for the replies. I will look at www.snagit.com. I am unfamaliar with that website so it might take me a while but I will post my P&L on ET and if other members are interested I will post the charts and the execution report. I have spent most of my time designing systems and I've been day-trading futures recently ( although I've swing traded stocks for few years). Scaling out is impossible because I am trading 1 contract only. If I can't make money trading 1 contract overtime, there is no way I'm going to make money trading large. I welcome any other suggestions from ET members. Thanks again.
Cool, something along the same lines has been suggested to me by a friend of mine who is an accomplished trader. Not exactly the same, but his system also uses Kelts and moving averages, but not DMA. What time frame are you mainly interested in? Best, electron
What is CBOT advantage plus? You can use this http://www.mirekw.com/winfreeware/mwsnap.html Free and better than most shareware.
Last week was terrible, especially the first four days. I did not even have one winner. The method that I posted here did not work. On Thursday night I decided that I will not trade in that particular way. On Thursday night after 25+ consecutive losers in four days, I thought that there must be a better way. I decided not to use the MAs and KCs to enter the trade. I still use those but as to determine whether the market is trending or is in a trading range. But on Friday I had a huge day. I made four trades and all trades worked well. I am down just a little bit for the week. The method is pretty simple. Buying support and selling resistance. That's it. But I do not buy every support and sell every resistance. The price has to deviate by about 2 std. dev from the 13 dma. The key is to add to your initial position as the market moves in your favour. The good thing that I found about this method is that you are targeting about 60% of the daily range. This works great in a trading range but will not work in trending days. So once you get stopped out then, reverse your position. So for example if you are long 1 contract, and the price moves down to your stop point then short 2 contracts; one to cover your long and another to initiate a new short position. The stop-loss in such cases should be about 2 ATRs just so that you do not get stopped out due to random noise but the size of the profit should make up for the losses. I did good trading this method on Friday and will keep on trading this as long as this works. It may work or may not work but it's worth a shot. Wish me luck and any comments or suggestions are appreciated.
No shit!! That's a system i wouldn't be tinkering with one bit!! Worth it's weight in gold as a contrarian indicator.