============== That should help; maybe not make it easy , but may help. Planty of hand work with data/charts may help; i dont like to draw my own trendlines, 50 period moving average may help.Wisdom is profitable to direct.
In a way I guess it works a bit like peer review does. When you post calls in a forum youâre inviting criticism and questions about your strategy and if you actually have serious followers, youâre inviting questions if you deviate from that strategy. It helps you not make those âhunchâ trades.
We can improve by doing practice on trading . Demo and real both practice make us sharp , improves learning and give us experience. We can be more skilled with experience. I find demo practice valuable , it not involves our actual money .
There's a lot of good advice on this forum, but I can tell you what the Best and most successful futures traders at my Prop firm are doing to improve: Before I start, just remember that trading is a marathon and not a sprint, and it involves dynamic toggling of your best traits and putting out fires over time. It's not about swinging-big and trying to slam dunk it once a month to cover your career. Oh and obviously the biggest/best guys in the room are all spreaders. But they can trade one leg purely outright when they need to. * Planning -The most successful and best guys always have a plan. Of course it's natural by this point so they wouldn't be able to tell you what they're doing and what you're not. This is the #1 reason why they succeed. They're always thinking AHEAD for the next session. -As you trade and go through some rough experiences, you MUST log this in your journal and then build a PLAN around for when it happens next time. This is an absolute MUST, or you will never progress. -What kind of scenarios am I referring to? Here's one; ==> If you enter a position and your Profit/Loss gets negative to about two-days worth of profits, then its time to work your plan towards exiting the whole position for break-even. Here's another scenario: ==> If you are in a spread with the t-notes during the Euro session and the Bund just broke its major level downwards, sell extra T-notes and keep this extra amount on for the next 15 to 30 minutes until the Bund stops crashing, this will help your position out in the mean-time instead of you sitting there like a deer in the headlights. -If you trade Equities, open up the S&P500 Day chart, if you trade Bonds then open up the U.S. T-note day chart. They're always thinking "where are they heading? where could they cap out? obvious ranges? obvious trends?" -They have a plan for all their possible products. "I wanna buy point A, B, C in the first spread, I wanna sell point A in the second spread if it gets there, and I don't wanna touch the third spread because too many fundamental changes have been going on in the past few days and I'm unsure of committing too much." * Dynamically adapting to market conditions -They are super quick to identify the conditions in front of them. This only comes from experience. Some people learn it quick, some don't, but they are doing things such as running smaller positions for longer when it's uncertain, or averaging into bigger positions at certain times of the session (because there's a high chance something will go back the other way a little bit after its been a few hours) -I could go on if anyone has more questions Conclusion: - So basically I just listed the two most important things that the best guys in my firm are doing. The ultimate, of all, is planning. In an uncertain world, the guy with the plan wins. And then they execute it. If you're caught in something and scenario A or B happens then its okay, but they are always willing to execute something for scenario C (which may adding extra outright positions when one market has broken a big level) -In order to improve every day you would probably follow the steps listed in this thread. > Keep a journal > Talk to better traders They're the two biggest ones. You'll learn from your mistakes in the journal, and you'll learn new things from better/bigger traders. Good luck friend
How do the traders select the spreads they will trade and do they specialize on a small number of spreads or "see" opportunity anywhere in the macro space and trade that spread As long as they see opportunity? My other question related to above is....do these traders have a solid fundamental "Soros" type understanding of markets or is it much more technical analysis of the ratio along the lines of "trading what they see" and managing the trade. Finally, if I may, do they/ have they thoroughly tested their method on a lot of past data? I guess this could apply to either the technical or fundamental style. Thanks. My spread choice tomorrow would be a continuation of QQQ/SMH. Any thoughts on this?
> You're asking some magic questions here. It all comes down to experience. "How do they select the trades they do?" --> Well what you do is for 3 to 6 months you watch one product. I recommend a spread, because it's two outrights. Just trade the spread, nothing else. Every day, trade the spread. Just fade everything for the first few weeks, eventually you will learn not to fade at certain times (like during fundamental news announcement sessions or important level breaks for the first hour) They see opportunity just like anybody else. It requires time, and effort, and hard work. You need to give it time and focus. You need to make a plan off an idea. "I think bonds will rally tonight." so how do you execute? You might say "Okay I want to put 20% of my size on at every 'dip' I see the bonds do. It's up to you how you execute. There's no real answer to this. Everyone has their own style. But the biggest and the best obviously DO average and they are dynamic about their stops/how long they hold. Ultimately, it all comes down to experience. Also, you dont need a solid fundamental analysis or idea at the start. It will naturally develop if you start reading bloomberg news etc. and highlights of the business day. You NEED to know whats going on. The news, the data, etc. For example, what is going right now with all world 10-year bonds? The U.S. fed is considering tapering off the QE. Open up a day chart of Tnotes. You need to form micro views as a trader all the time. This helps you establish where you gonna be (long or short) on certain given nights etc.
have a plan, I agree. but talk to traders, I do not. when you have a plan, you do not need talk to them.otherwise other people's view/opinion may impact your plan. I remeber last weekend I talked to one of my church friends,I said I am going to buy WFC calls and SPY calls. I said "the market will continue to go up". but my friend said: "not sure". this "not sure" easily makes me hesistate when it dips (the chance to buy) in a bull run. another thing I do not agree is: keep a journal. that is a waste of time. if you have a plan, why you need a journal. I understand the purpose of the journal: learn from past mistakes. but trading needs consistentcy: have the plan, execute it correctly each time. there is nothing you can learn in trading. all needed is flawlessly execute plan. if this time, you did not ride the move because you bail out too early, then you seem learned something, you be more patient next time, but this time the market tells you: you need be quick, your patience ends up with sharp market upsidedown. you learned something again? and on and on, you will never get out of this bad cyclyes. to me, a journal is a bookkeeping record. writedown the plan, then after a trade is done, eveluate whether you execute the trade correctly whether loss or profit.some people use journal to serach the holy grail, that is the wrong way, I know they will be washed out from the market. performance is not measured by profit/loss. it is measured by each steps in a trade, whether you did are right or wrong according to the orginal trading plan. no one can judge the market situation correctly each time. and there is no trading system which can produce profit each time. it is meaningless to judge performance based on how you judge the market(you will always get wrong sometime). but one thing you do it right is your plan. each step you can write out on the paper, then after a trade is done, you can check against the plan to see how you did. for example, you want to buy when itdips to 50days EMA, then you need wait, when it happens, you enter. if it conitunes todrop 10%, you close out, you execute it, even a loss. you follow your plan. so you perform well. but if it falls 10% after you enter, you second guess: "maybe it will come around,last time the market did that, maybe this time too", you did not cut loss, you failed.