just an example of how i define my entries always use limit orders... wait for the market to come back to me first entry is critical.. i dont take more than 7 ticks against me 2nd entry not so critical.. little more room for error because well, im already in. stopped out by that big rally.. but thats just how it works
ok, i have a question about the trade i posted above... i broke even because i was holding for more profits. at what point should i have taken profits and why?
I don't think you could have prevented your short position from turning negative. I was short too and had my trailing stop picked. However, as soon as markets made a higher high, why didn't you use the same principle of your first entry to get long and catch some of that "stupid" rally? Markets had been accumulating off those lows for a long time, so I wasn't too surprised to see that "stupid" rally.
first off there was a triangle pattern with higher lows and lower highs and it was about to breakout, you were just unlucky it didnt breakdown and second off, nobody knows when to take profits you just take profits at a support or resistance or reversal candles etc you just take off contracts and let some run its prudent money management
"stopped out becuase of this stupid rally" ... nope, you're the one who's stupid. when you figure-out why you're going to be saying " caught the rally for impressive gains this afternoon ... boy aren't I smart"
boy people really taking offense to calling that rally 'stupid' i was just kidding and when im in a short position and i get taken out by a rally then yes... its stupid
At ET the better traders come out preaching price action. They're right. But that doesn't mean you can't overlay an average to get your bearings. Also if you're trading NYSE stocks the SP futures might add to your efforts. Taking stabs at single stock moves disturbs me a bit on market plays mostly because it's a pot shot and has limited scalability. Story stocks, and gapper/dumpers are a different story. Maybe consider sector baskets and market baskets as well as some spreads using the ES lead. It's not rocket science. Also I noticed you have a .20 cent grid overlay on SSO, is this on purpose? Your SSO .05 cent level correlates with the ES. Your reversal was 27.00, your initial entries were 27.05 and 27.10, stop 27.15 your rinse level 26.85. Next entries were 26.95 and 27.00, stop 27.05 and rinse level 26.75 and reversal exit 26.95. This was not a b/e trade. Also watch the 50% levels off the day's high/low, high/low to open, and high/low to pivots they're magnets and can setup powerful breaks and coils.
The low on your chart is just above 26.60, then the next higher low is a few pennies above that. If you draw a trend line connecting the bottoms of those two lows it should lead you to the next low that will be tested, which in this case is just below 26.80. So your target exit price would be 26.80. Trend line chart is attached. (If it broke down thru that trend line low, it would likely have tanked rather than rallied.)
The ES is notorious for going to past pivot highs/lows, matter of fact, that was your entry approach, so perhaps if you are taking more than one contract, a good first target can be the most recent pivot low. I always want to take something out of a trade that shows some profit, it reduces risk, pays for commissions, then I can trail the "runner" for big gains. I can never understand why there is so much sarcasm on this forum, guess many parents didn't teach their young to respect others.