If you're trading one, paper-trade the other. If you're trading neither, paper-trade both. Your results will tell you what's working at the time. From October thru January, trading breakouts was like driving up to an ATM. Since then, retracements have been the way to go. At some point, breakouts will be the strategy, and you'll be sitting there waiting for your retracement while price leaves you far behind. The only way you'll know when to buy breakouts again will be when your records tell you to. Of course, there's nothing wrong with using both strategies simulataneously, but you have to know exactly what you're looking for. Otherwise, you're going to think every whipsaw is a pullback.
It's my browser, switched to IE and got the png. I'm using the enthios RS template on 1 min - parameters quite similar. The problem with retracements is when it overshoots the retracement to hit your stop before moving in your trend again (chop) - any way to filter this out ? Will the MACD >25, <-25 do the job? pretzel
Here's the chart with the signals. Some good signals are filtered out by the MACD filter. For the 11:24 retrace, your stop should be more than 4 ticks so that you will not get stopped out if got filled at the low of the signal bar. If you jumped in at market, the 0.25 slippage would have stopped you out. If you hesitated, you would have gotten a better price and rode it to at least +3.50 pts. The 13:23 long would be a good signal but filtered out by the MACD. pretzel
I am able to read your postings of charts. I see you are a scalper and that the graph has a time line on the bottom expressed in minutes. The right side is showing price. This is a gee whiz graph. I would suggest a five min bar and 10 points for price labelling at the interval between labels. The entry to make money was in the bottom corner of your graph and the exit was about an hour later. This is not scalping. It is just a mechanical trend following slow grind to make the vertical range of your graph hour by hour. It is my opinion that only trends should be traded until you have made some money. I recommend stages of money making. As a beginner a person could run that hour with 20 contracts and get a beginning cash flow coming in. Also I do not think using 20 contracts is something that is done during the first quarter when one is starting up. Use minimum money until you can capture trends easily with trend lines and simple indicators. I think that scalping has many limitations compared to making money. You see that you trade for 5 to 10 min and pull down a net profit. If you miss the exit, you just make more money instead if you catch the next one. If you entered and missed 6 to 12 exits and finally got out on the trend change exteme, you might do quite well.
I know what you're saying, partner. I wish I could hand you the Holy Grail. I'm constantly tweaking my trend indicators and my entry techniques to reduce my losers. All I'm saying is, this is where I'm at right now. And, I've had some pretty good days lately. And I've had my share of losing days, too. But, I'm trading better than I was a year ago. And hopefully a year from now, I'll be trading better than I am today.