Honestly Ammo if you believe all the mind game stuff and mastery of discipline then you been watching or reading to many fanstasy novels. Sure trading is great pursuit and mental challenge but the money is all that matters. If you are not making money then it simply means your strategy is working. I have been a member here for long time and i know you are a very nice guy who hates any disputes on this board and you are all for learning from others. However, in all the posts i have read i have never once seen you apply anything you learnt. I hate to be blunt but did your strategy not simply involve having only a short bias (this during one of the strongest bull markets ever). Also, it seemed to me you was fading nearly every strong move with a different form of martingales - you stated many times mean reversion but truth is many of us with mean reversion strategies will tell you what you was doing was not mean reversion in the slightest. Truth is Ammo, everyone is open to learning but whether you are applying anything you learnt is a different story. You seem to be trying to learn day trading - i can tell you over the years and say this to any new trader - allot of what i have read regarding day trading the ES has mostly been banter and entertainment. If you want to learn then re-read posts by some of these guys: - Apex - a lot of new guys never seen this guys posts but he was master of fib retracements / extensions and price action. - Volente - always proven to be great price action trader, does not just talk but posts his trades and reasons why. This is one poster i have never lost any respect for over the years. - Anekdoten - dont know where he has gone, started a movement of some sort on price action and trading the NQ. Seemed like a top guy and taught many people here how to day trade. - Buy1Sell2 - even though he thinks his method is only method he has been game and consistent for long time. Some of his longer trend following ES trades were awesome despite the constant berating the guy gets from other here. So there you go Ammo - if you want to day-trade and you are always up for learning from this site then sift through these guys posts. You will learn quite a lot. This is just my list however and too me a lot of what is posted here is just noise (like this post of mine). Any new trader could learn by reading these guys old posts. I think major problem here Ammo is that no-one on ET can teach you how to trade you will gain from a lot of these guy but ultimately the trading is up-to. Maybe one of the reason you are sim trading after being in trading business for a number of years is because you play to much importance to what is being said on this journal. All the best.
Actually, I'm usually the jokester at every party. Sorry to have missed your humor, it's tough to catch sarcasm on the web As for successful trading or not, it's very simple when boiled down. Losses must be smaller than wins. A lot of ways to accomplish that, but it is a resolute fact. No one ever has or ever will succeed over time with bigger losses than wins. Any market only offers a true inefficient edge to traders briefly and infrequently relative to vast majority of "efficient" time. Those trying to churn 20 - 50 turns in the ES ala flip-flip-flip mode are losing traders. Successful trading is based on doing that which is most difficult for basic human nature to comply with. If you study human nature and emotional tendencies, you will eventually figure out why you are doing what's wrong. Hopefully that self-study will let one trust to do three unnatural things, i.e.... cutting losses short and accepting it with grace. letting profits run while risking give-back of small unrealized gains missing market moves that don't conform to system approach Trading is extremely simple, and it's hard as hell in equal measures. Simple and hard are not opposites, they are unrelated. At some point all of these posts will get deleted, this thread will return to an endless stream of new alias posting time delayed trade calls, market calls that may / may not be traded, after fact trades claimed, etc. Been that way for five years now, so it obviously serves a purpose and a need for some. I think deep down inside, most every person realizes trading is a complex machine with many moving parts that must all mesh together. It takes a lot longer to master and is harder to master than anyone getting started first realizes. But the proverbial pot of gold exists at rainbow's end in this profession. It really does. Learning to do what comes most unnatural for human emotion will get you there.
Nice post Austin P. A lot of truth has been spoken in these posts and its a shame they will all be deleted. I used to post some calls on this site with attached blotter when i was a green trader and new to futures. After a while i realised it was simply chest thumping and ego just to simply post trades. It is actually quite ironic that one of the reasons i don't enjoy this thread is due to traders just like what i was doing in posting meaningless trades with no real methodology or reasons why.
Sunday episode features "energy saver" Mins buying mumbo-jumbo from "coiled snake oil vendor" austinP... Them both following me around to pick "trading crumbs" and/or waiting/asking for my statements of trades of the last 3 years...hahahahaha All the while, a few are taking notes... Mins: if I had four units, I would marry 4 times and put a wife in charge of each unit!...hehe If you are gonna make "unit" jokes, make them short, all that crap you wrote worsened my hangover... Funny bunch averagers...errr "traders" are...
Yo ammo. Start by keeping a daily chart by hand, it takes a few minutes to update everyday. No more than 1 moving average allowed in there!. Also start keeping an intraday chart by hand. This is much harder, but only update by hand. The "hand" will learn to know what to do faster than the "mind". If you like MP so much, then keep the 30' chart of MP too, but for scalping, that chart is too slow. After a few months of "hand charting" throwaway the SIM, and fund a real account to trade 100 SPY at a time. Your maximum position long or short is 100 SPY. After that, earnings accumulate by increasing position size and or extending timeframe or options, etc, etc. No need to worry about that for now. Tell me if you are still doing it after 6 months and how it is going. Oh yeah. Don't buy austinP's $4,995 trading course, or any other, even if it is free they are just distractions and entertainment.
I have what i hope is a question with a simple answer why do you trade ES over YM or the Russel? Is too large tick size with the Russel scares you?
I have yet to find a [mechanical] way to trail stops that doesn't also give back too much after target is reached which inevitably happens far too often. I've resigned myself to simply eyeballing it. When the move feels like it's over I'm out.
When I am in a few pts. I like to trail to Zero. But, it does come back an tag me out a bit. That is also why I am not good at letting them run. If I have 4-5pts I get happy and just leave the position and then it goes another 5pts in my direction. Oh well...