Ok Murray - good advice. You are aware of course of the sharp reversals in the Emini market....especially NQ ? Look, I am dealing with scalping and short term swing trading....forget the monthly charts. My charts are 200 ticks....and you would be amazed at how quickly those bars complete....sometimes fractions of a second in fast market conditions.
Side note: I've driven over 2 million miles in my lifetime (so far) and when you drive that much you learn to - back your car up your driveway and into your garage.
The origin of these moves can be spotted mostly before they happen. I never have losses above 3 points ES. If these reversals would be so sudden and fast I would have got caught many times over the years, which is not the case. All depends of the way your system works and how sensitive it is in spotting reversal moves, or rather diminishing strength of the actual trend, and built up of strength in the opposite direction. I don't say I always took the reversal, but I always got out of my position before the reversal happened. But I do intraday and continuously update my model every 250ms. If I am in doubt about my position, I close it, no matter where the price is. In past I analyzed, out of curiosity, every crash in the stock markets. And each time there were signals long before the crash happened. Same story in forex crashes. You should also keep in mind where you got in the open trade. If you have an open profit of $500, you will lose no money if you get out before that profit is gone and turns into a loss. In this chart you see the result. You never take the biggest part of the drop. Having a decent working trend system will avoid these aggressive reversals mostly.
We are on the same wavelength....with 2 ES contracts, my stop is usually around 3 pts...so $300. My stops are never fixed, but based on price action. For NQ ("the beast") stops are around 7 pts. NQ is great when it is trending, but when it consolidates and goes into that flat, chop-mode, it is brutal. I am sure it's great for scalpers, but I am more trend following....albeit short-term trends.
Terrible day today....same old, same old....trying to trade into a flat market...oh so choppy. Made it up in some stellar moves near the close....that was lucky.
%% %% NICE WORK on largeSt win trade/lose trade. BUT over time, because bull markets/uptrends tend to last much longer than bear markets; short trade$[+ SQQQ......] tend to never earn what longs do=unless one tends to favor short trades........................................................................................
is that trading with real money or sim..if sim trading then ok..if real..what is the % value of commissions to profit!
Watch his report. He made in total 80 roundturns and in total $390 profit. If the profit is after commission, then he made $4.875 profit per contract. If the profit is before commission, then he made more or less nothing. He also gave back $1,350 in losses on a gross profit of $1,740. That is -77.5%! He did on average 1 trade every 4 min and 45 seconds. Overtrading! If you delete the best and the worst trade, his result is a profit of $115. Just a matter of time before he will be wiped out.