This is going to be my last attempt at this madness! I started a journal in 2006 without success (http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=62958&perpage=6&pagenumber=1), I took a break of more than three years before coming back to the markets, but still not profitable. I lack discipline, and I don't seem to find a cure for that. At least this time I know I can read the markets very well, and I know the weaknesses I have to solve: - Not overtrading. Limit to 5 trades a day. - Get good sleep. - No trades between 12-1pm. - When profitable in the morning, no trading in the afternoon (if I respected this rule alone I would have been ahead big time). - Staying in the trade until a reversal or descent profit of at lest twice the risk. - The most serious of the most serious ones, stop for at least 30mns after a stop loss. This is my top one problem; I end red every time I have a loser. I don't wait for another setup, I invent them myself ;-). I'm not going to give specifics about my strategy. All I can say, is I buy/short pull backs. I use 2/5/15/hourly and 4 hours (the king of all time frames). I take my trades using 2 and 5 minutes charts. the 15/60/4 hours are for direction and resistance only. I don't use any indicators whatsoever, just price action. So help me god!
Hi, Could not help noticing you won't reveal details of your stategy, in my opinion this is a mistake, because then you can't be guided properly. It's not like you are making a killing with your strategy, you said so yourself, 5 years struggling. Anyway, wish you the best in your endeavor. Best advice I can give you is learn to enter with minimal heat and don't add to losers, if you get stopped, you can always re-enter lower or on a new HL/LH. Good luck bud.
'Madness' is accurate. Like some sort of masochism. Bank has 10 billion to play with and makes maybe 1 billion in profits. This is just 10%, and people come along with a few thousand and seek to make 30 grand a year regular income. Pie in the sky. FWIW after 6 years of staring at these markets I think scalping the US futures are virtually impossible. Forget it. High leverage, tiny profits and poor retail infastructure. A wet dream. So what could work? Well, taking a few grand to make 10-20% return might do it, sure. You've been studying these markets for 5 years. Just focus on something that trends well and stick with it. If you do this a few times a month you'll build your account. Low leverage and keep your job going meanwhile. Good luck.
see this one too. http://highprobability.blogspot.com...ed&utm_campaign=Feed:+HighProbabilityTrading+(High+Probability+Trading) the point is that you can't quit. So take your time, stay small stay consistent until you can scale up effortlessly.
Dude, You do realize that markets are a live auction process and ANYTHING can happen at any moment and they are mostly complete chaotic noise 98% of the time. The fact of the matter is REAL exploitable edges are VERY VERY rare. 5-6 Trades a day are insane UNLESS your trading for .05 moves and scalping extreme news events. I honestly believe your still overtrading for the style your talking about, maybe less then 1 trade a day is a real edge if you analysis all your results.
I agree with this. I think you should lower your trade total to 3 max, and even that should only be a buffer for you to try to catch a single move between 7-8:30 a.m. PST. At least for me, I suck at the afternoons compared to the mornings, so as I got better my trade window got smaller and smaller. Don't worry about missing moves and focus on nailing one proper pullback trade at one of the busiest times of the day. Just my .02!
Your trading sounds similar to what I do but I do use some indicators that are tied to vol/price and NYSE tick. I look at 5 and 15 min. for trend and S/R but trade off the 1 min. Let me tell you about the problems I have that are similar to yours and it might give you some ideas to correct your trading. - Not overtrading. Limit to 5 trades a day. I have a problem with getting bored and surf off to do something else on the computer and miss trades that develop when I'm not paying attention. I then see what I missed and force trades I shouldn't take. Or, the market gets in a range or choppy and I am not good at picking good trades in those markets but I take trades that don't work that I shouldn't take. - No trades between 12-1pm. In spite of my problems, I'm usually somewhat profitable by the time 11:30 CST rolls around and I should just quit for the day. But I have trouble getting away from watching the markets after that time and quite often turn a winning day into a loser. Rarely do I increase profits after that time. - When profitable in the morning, no trading in the afternoon (if I respected this rule alone I would have been ahead big time). Same problem as trading after 11:30 CST. - Staying in the trade until a reversal or descent profit of at lest twice the risk. Other than trading after 11:30 this and the opposite of this are my biggest problems. 1) Often I will take a trade and I will have a small profit and there is an intra-bar blip that I interpret as an invalidation of the trade and grab the small profit just before it takes off in my favor but sometimes I am correct to have gotten out, so it is a delima for me. 2) Sometimes the opposite will happen. I will see the data start to degrade for the trade but it is still not near my objective and I will watch a small winner turn into a loser or a BE. 3) I will have my stop to close or pull it up too close too soon and get stopped out on the noise and turn a good trade into a loser or a BE. These are the most annoying trades because it seems quite often I have placed my stop at or within a couple ticks of where the market turns back in my direction without me. 4) The second most annoying trades are the ones I get into too early. I see the market turning after a pullback and everything is green to go except that it is a fake turn and takes one more pullback swing stopping me out before taking off. 5) The last ones I have trouble with are the pullbacks that take off too fast and I'm not comfortable with chasing. It seems if I chase them I'm sorry because they pull back again but if I wait for a little pullback they don't and just keep on going without me. So, If you see some similarities with my problems maybe you can see some solutions for yourself in between my words.
REAL exploitable edges are VERY VERY common. The psychological ability to exploit them is VERY VERY rare.
Thats what most amateurs don't understand and they never will and they don't comprehend the mathematics behind gambling games. Why does a casino always make a profit and most players lose?