carry on. let see how this old timer will turn out. i give it 50/50 for now based on looking at your entry and exit prices
Good luck.. thanks for sharing your methodology. What is moderate success? Can you quantify in that terms of net % return on capital and CALAMR (net return/max drawdown)?
Wow...seriously? Is that the sort of constructive criticism people get here these days? I don't remember asking you what my chances are of making it. I am just jotting down my thoughts here, and the only reason I think an online journal is better than a paper journal is that everyone can see it and you try your best not to take too many sub-par trades. I told you my story, now please tell us yours too. What do you trade? What is your starting capital and how have you done so far?
When I said moderate success I meant that I never blew up, and was net postive. As a return on capital it had been as high as 100% but that is misleading because I was trading 2 ES with $3500 in margin....this was years ago.
+106...Calling it a day. I was busy this morning so did not get to trade, but there were 2 great short opportunities. Got a long signal after 9.30 but did 1 only instead of 2 because the market was still down over 1%. The week has been good so far. There were 7 total trades where 6 were for 2 contracts and 1 was for 1 contract. 3 wins and 4 losses. The best part is that I followed my plan except for 1 instance where it cost me 14 ticks on 2 contracts. Total $303 for the week in 3 trading days and $546 for the month in 4 trading days since I did not trade on Tuesday.
No trade today... There were few short signals but did not take any. On the first short signal, I had an order to sell at 69.75, with a stop at 73 and buy-limit at 64.5. I entered the order when the market was bid 70-ask 70.25, but my order didnot go through because when I attached a bracket order, IB defaults to Stop-limit and not stop. By the time I fixed the order, it was down 2 pts and never came to 69.75. In the future, I will just attach a stop, than a bracket order and manually exit the trade if my target is met.
+145 today. Made a mistake on the third trade. The trailing stop should have been at 48 instead of 49.25. Everything was pointing towards a reversal and would have been good for 10 points, so instead of making another 400, lost 20+ commish. No more trades for the day if I do not follow my plan.
Even though it is too early to give suggestions. Here are the few things that I have learnt. 1) Trend is your friend: We do not know when it ends but it is a good idea to buy pulllbacks and exit preferably with a profit rather than waiting to ride it all the way. 2) How do one know if the trend is ending or not?: This is hard to tell but if the indexes are divergening once they reach resistance/support, it is a good idea to look for reversals. I always look for confirmation before I place a trade though. 3) It is necessary to write down your entire methods/set-ups and look at those every morning. When you are first starting it is a good idea to have NO more than 4 set-ups and only take the trade if that set-up occurs.
Please don't let the trolls trouble. They are decent folks here, but many were driven out by the trolls. Good luck to you ..