hello everyone, I've been reading this forum for a long time but i've never been an active reader. I came here because i've got a problem with getting back on my normal track record. I am an active trader outside US, i've been an constant but something changed few weeks ago. I've caught few really bad trades. How do you deal with such situations? I plan to take a week outside the market and make some paper trading to recover self-confidence. what do you do in bad periods? thanks, Mequity
It's better to reduce your position size, not paper trade. Then again............if you're a 1-lot trader..................I guess you'd have to paper trade in order to reduce your position size to "zero".
Shorten up your timeframes... Smaller stops on multiple positions, the market always moves and follows through on the shortest timeframe with confirmation from the larger time frame. Loosing big on big entries from longer timeframes suck. Trading the smaller, allows you to reverse constantly...
when trading price action, you need to be able to exit and enter, and exit and enter, when focused on one position, it disables u to some extent from flowing with the price action. Try this paper trade with unlimited quantities and keep escalating the quantities as the session progresses, the early lack of sentiment and trend in the market and early chop trade is made up by the shear numbers and profit as the session progresses. You become very fluid in your trading and not concerned about the trade u placed early in the day. Predictability factors become more apparent as the session progresses. Especially on a news day.
If you approach this as a business you should of never had a really bad situation. You would have had your stop in place. If the market gapped big time through your stop thats different. If that happened i feel for you. Thats why I don't like holding shares. When you are dealing in shares your risk is unlimited. Thats why you should deal in indexes or currencies you don't have to worry about major gaps. If you really want to deal in shares you are lucky. You mentioned your not in the U.S. you can trade CFD's or spread bet. They offer guaranteed stops but the flip side is you must pay for this insurance in the form of double the b/a spread usually.
I am on indexes on one of the Central European markets, yes i've gone through 3 gaps against me. i am not a day trader, i usually hold position for 2 to 3 days.
Thats very interesting both your approach and the markets you trade. See my thread its called the YM journal. I usually hold up to three days. I live in one of those central european countries. I live in Prague the Czech Rep. I tried for a long time to build a system to trade to PX (the Prague bluechip index) I couldn't do it with any consistency. Then I tried to build one on the Wig 20 (Polish Index). I couldn't do it either but came close. The system did make a little money (on paper never live) but it wasn't consistent enough for me. however, i have a Czech friend that knows very little about trading and he does very well just buying the leading companies (individual shares) and holding a week or two at the right time. If you really want to trade the WIG all the spread betters offer a market on it and they offer guaranteed stops.
actually, i live in Poland and trade on the Wig20 (twenty biggest companies). i do belive that both polish and czech markets are "easy markets" we have got pretty stable trends without many fakes. how can trade indexes in czech rep? all the best, Mequity
If you want to trade the Czech market here are some useful websites. The first one will tell you some details about the actual future contract (PX). Its the offical exchange website. The second one is a brokers portal for non customers. www.pse.cz/dokument.aspx?k=Futures-en www.patria.cz/default.asp?l=e
Now that this thread took on a Central European direction. I have a very serious question to ask. I don't speculate in leveraged currency but I do swap at my bank my savings account from one currency to another when something looks real good and has a long term perspective. I'm short the dollar long the czk in my bank account from 24.10. I simply did this when Beranke came in last year when my chart setup said it was a good idea. I based this on him being dovishand rates staying steady not increasing. A pure fundamental move done with a little charting. The problem is should I swap back into the dollar. This chart is screaming to me anyway bearish on the dollar long the crown on this retest to the major breakout point. My concern is the dollar bears my be stalling here and if they stall here on this chart setup in my eyes its pretty serious failure. I view 22.40 as a big bear failure thats where I will swap. I would love to have some opinions on this because this is not just a trade but this is my bank account.