In a land not far from our own there was a family, in that family lived several members. The father was named ES now es had certain behavior patterns which could be often predicted by watching other members of the family. Only a few their names I ll mention..His wife YM and two eldest children NQ and TF. and his Brothers DX and GC. A neighbour QM with his wife HG would often tell of impending behavior. Now when their behavior was of one accord the family got along well and they new almost exactly what papa es might say next. Cousin VIX sometimes might shout as well that papa es was getting out of bed. Can t just watch es.
@dilbert003 To prove that theory would require more than just a story about family behaviors. If you can post some charts showing the relationship between the various instruments at different times throughout the trading day, the theory can easily be confirmed or refuted. If I want to watch a tennis match, surely I have no reason to switch over the channel to a golf open. When I switch back I could have missed the best parts of the tennis match, such as the Aces.
Starting account value: $13,112 Ending account value: $12,831 P&L: -281 23 trades today, 8 losing, 15 winning. -54: Fade the trend, forced trade, should be done after a quick rally. -129: Bet on opening time. No more. 8.5: Bet the top, rushed trade. 71: Trend following. 8.5: no good reason. 21: trade small range -104: trade small range, should use tight stop. 96: reversal, a little bit emotional. 8.5: no good reason. -29: Fade the trend while momentum is still there. -129: Same as above. 71: Fade the trend, emotional trade. -104: trend following, didn't wait for throw back. -104: No good reason -79: gambling - All following trades are pure gambling, happened in the last 20 minutes before closing. 46 21 8.5 8.5 8.5 8.5 21 46 It's an embarrassing day to post, I not only did many forced/rushed trades, I also broke my max loss rule, max loss was $448, I started gambling after that. I simply can't trade with hard stop orders, but to avoid the same mistakes, I must stick to these new rules: Only one contract. Never add to losers. Use stop orders for every trade. Cap max loss per day. On one hand, I'm afraid of trading, one losing trade is -104, that's a lot for my capital and profit target. On the other hand, I was over-trading so badly in the past three days. Winning or losing, it's all in my mind. Starting from tomorrow, every trade must be justified. I will limit my trades to the following patterns: Range or channel with tight stops. Reversals: double top or bottom. Trend following. I will post the details of every single trade. No more "stop trading" comment please.
I commend you for your willingness to put yourself out there. I'm curious, with all of those BE trades (the 8.5 profits ones), have you done any stats on what could have happened if you stayed in the trade (as per my previous post)? I can't get over the fact that your average win is so much smaller than your average loss. The only way for this stat to work is with a very high win rate, which you don't have. If you're going to hold for a 2 point loss, do you ever hold for a 2 point gain? I just don't think you are good enough yet to really gauge when a BE trade is appropriate, and hence lock in that 1 tick profit. I bet you're giving up more profits by taking one tick profits, versus what you're saving on not having that trade stop out at 2 points. If you're gonna gamble, at least gamble with stats on your side. Would you really buy one of those hospital lottery tickets that cost $100 if the prizes were $8? You're risking $100 in order to make peanuts.
When the price didn't move as I hoped, if it swung between my entry price and 3-4 ticks loss, I would lock one tick profit. I don't really take it as profit, just wanted to get out.
Ah, ok. Now I wonder if you know this. Some of the time, it might go against you right away, so there isn't even time to get that BE stop and you have to take a loss on it. Some of the time, it might go into your favor right away, but you aren't quick enough to take a profit and maybe it just goes right back to your entry. Or some of the time, it just takes a bit of time to get going, even though it does eventually go to some sort of nice profit target. Since you are putting the trade on, you are always taking the initial risk. Its true that some traders are good about knowing when the chance of profit diminishes and locking in BE is a good thing to do, but I know that at least for me, what I saw over and over again was that there was nothing that gave me a chance one way or another. All I saw was that taking tiny profits, trying to protect from having a big loss, only prevented me from having some nice gains, once I looked at enough trades. Since your trading is so emotional, getting out of a trade too soon, and seeing it go to a nice profit can be a bitch, and perhaps makes you even enter later, which then turns into a loss, as a result of the later entry. If only the original entry was kept, a profit could have been realized. Each trade, when initially entered with OCO orders can only hit stop or target. The BE trade I don't think works for most traders, unless you have the stats to back up that exiting as a result of some tangible reason does work better. So with this in mind, letting the trade hit either stop or target each and every time I think works better than figuring out which trade will hit stop or target and cutting sooner those trades that you think would have hit the stop first. Given the right R:R ratio, once the trade is entered, leaving it alone might really work better... but you would need stats to back this up of course. Anyway.. enough of that. Good luck.
Just read over my reply and this jumped out at me. I didn't in any way mean for this to be condescending because of course you know that the trade can go either way. What I meant by "I wonder if you know this" was if you had any stats for which occurrence usually happens, and if knowing this could change your profitability. For me, having the stats to lean on is a way to reduce the anxiety, and this helps to stay in the trade.
According to yourself, you're a gambler, yet you continue to "trade" (without methodology and signals). 1. Do you intend on blowing up completely or is there a point at which you will withdraw what's left and stop trading? 2. When you've lost all your money, do you plan to "give up" or will you make another attempt? If the former, I suspect that what you're doing is just trying to get this over with and being able to say, "Hey. At least I tried and gave it my best shot."