It didn't come easy. The tapes help a lot 'cause I couldn't stay on the forest, with a wide channel and watch it come all the way back. No comfort at all. Tapes get me close enough. The trouble with using the other tools before you get the channel trading down, is you can get signals on each end of each bar. So you can fine tune, but you only want to do that in certain areas or you get chopped up. Been there. . .
By the end of each Friday's session, I am totally ready to turn my back to thls screen and just do a 'brain dump' with regards to trading. I believe I've mentioned previously a feeling that I am just not 'with it' when Friday rolls around, which I attribute to the cumulative effect of not enough sleeping hours throughout the week. I either need to exercise more discipline towards my personal schedule, or I should restrict trading to four days a week. I think I would be better served to use Friday for a more detached observation period, and to practice with other techniques. In other words, doing so would give myself permission to step outside of my comfort zone - and who knows, I might even be able to learn how to 'hold'. Come to think of it, I believe that was Spy's first recommendation at the beginning of all this I mention this because of your comments, EZ, on the importance of tapes. I thought I would debrief yesterday's chart this morning, using Spy's chart for comparison. It became readily apparent of the half-baked effort I put toward annotating during the session, and very telling why I mainly felt clueless throughout the day. I also feel as you concerning forest trades, and how to manage. If I've entered near a clear FTT, I have no problem drawing a tight tape on this new direction, and using it's RTL as an exit point. Or, better yet, provided the mkt is offering the momentum, would be to capture more profit while waiting for another FTT within this tape for exiting, or reversal, if one has developed that confidence. If indeed the sentiment has changed and a new 1-2-3 channel is in progress, one can always reenter near Pt. 3 according to the coarse tools at our disposal. Naturally, this is all much easier said than done, while attempting to analyze everything in realtime (repetition and 'sports memory' now come to mind) Have a nice weekend, everyone ...
If you'll allow me to spout off a bit more maybe this might add something. I had a lot of trouble holding due to late entries after the FTT's. As you mentioned, the closer your entry to the FTT and #3, the easier it is to hold. If I had a great entry at an FTT it was easy to hold for the #3 point of the new channel. And if it came back to entry, wash. Here is kinda the sequence I went through, it's probably not the ideal way to go, but hopefully the example might be useful for a practice run. Try it on a chart and don't worry about late entries or missing gaussians or anything else. It's all about staying in the market all day. BTW, I was doing tons of laundry. Wash , wash , wash. First the mindset, forget about ever making a profit, try only to stay even, minus the spread. "Only" trade when 2 conditions happen. 1. Enter after a FTT (late in my case). Wait for a point 3 or FTT in the other direction to reverse. 2. If price ever comes back to the entry price, wash and reverse at the "entry price". (I had times where I washes 3 or 4 times on the same price) You might have a ton of washes, but won't get your tail kicked. As your entry improves so do the profits, but it's not about profits, it's about getting to entry- - reverse - reverse - reverse, and getting comfortable with that. If you get a ton of washes, say because your entry is in the middle of a lateral or CCC, so much the better as it teaches you to reverse quickly, which is a necessary, even critical skill here. The wash is always there for protection. Don't use tapes yet as you'll lose the value of doing the washes (less of them). After I got to that point Spyder had two suggestions that helped a lot. But they wouldn't have before I went though the prior process and had that down. They were to help fix two specific issues. The late entry mental fix, and reducing the number of washes. (Entering late takes care of itself with experience) 1. When you enter, act as if you entered on the perfect spot. Analyze from that view. The peak of the FTT for example. This keeps the focus off profit and on correct analysis, looking for the next change point. 2. Don't wash unless you see a signal for change first. If you get a chance, mark up a chart and see how it goes. I can remember going through a day some months back, making a ton of trades, mostly washes. I was tired and frustrated that after all that work there was no profit, but there was no loss either. When I review that particular chart now, (it was a narrow range choppy day) with my skill level at that time, it was pretty amazing. Coming out of it flat was actually very very good. Regards - EZ
EZ - I have read through the above post several times now, allowing some time in between to let it sink in, and to process it within my own framework. The first idea that really struck a chord was that of not worrying about profits. That's been a biggie for me since day one of these studies, and I will say again, I was going against the advice of our instructor(s) as I started sim trading almost from the onset. In fact, it was the sole purpose of this journal initially, as I figured the public postings would force me to exercise better trade selection, and to a large degree, they have. I feel I have whittled down the pure scalp trades, and that's a good thing. What is not so good is that I am now focused more than ever on the daily net results, and that fact has become a hindrance in and of itself. Without bothering to tally up, I believe I have been posting results for 6 or 7 weeks now, and think I have demonstrated that even a plugger utilizing just the basics of price/volume can churn out some decent numbers. Whether people care to believe it or not, I have done the same thing privately for several months prior to the journal's inception. I also feel I have proven to myself that I can still function under a bit more 'pressure'; and, there is also the possible benefit that the daily trade logs have piqued the curiosity of another person enough to have them take a closer look at what some folks are working diligently to learn. This is a long-winded way of stating that I now intend to take a hiatus from the daily results summaries, and to take to heart what you have so thoughtfully suggested. Anyone following these pages has no doubt seen how I keep skirting the important facets of this methodology, and I've had the uncomfortable sense of just repeating my same bad habits. Your post has given me the added incentive to make some changes, and to find out where I really stand in all of this. I know myself, and if I would try to continue posting the results at this juncture, I'm afraid I would just slip back to more of the same. The thought of staying in the mkt really appeals to me, as I feel it will necessitate dedicated annotation and constant data sweeping - areas in which I feel I have slowly relaxed somewhat. For example, over time I have gotten away from mentally calculating PRV bar by bar, and I think this is essential for staying in tune with the pace (pulse) of the mkt. No doubt I am about to start making every mistake imaginable. I hope you'll be able to hang around for awhile, EZ, as I will assuredly have a 'couple' questions for ya! Thank you for the reality check. I'm looking forward to both the pitfalls and the aha moments! Best regards ...
Now that was interesting. I just came from Spy's journal, after having read his post stressing the importance of PRV - I wasn't aware of it when hashing out the above late last night. Could it be this stuff might actually be filtering in amongst my normally convoluted thought processes? Now, all I gotta do is work on losing the excess baggage - heheh
And I thought you had a hand in Spy's post . Good luck on the new direction. If you have any questions I'll be around. Regards, - EZ
Well, schucks, I hate to throw away a good one - heheh. To compensate for my wishy-washy ways, at least I did not keep checking on the p/l throughout the day, so I guess that is a start. To be honest, tho, I quickly lost sight of what I was supposed to be doing as pertains to SCT. I did use the Rev button quite a few times today, but I had a very hard time holding, after seeing several instances of '+5 or 6 ticks' trades going negative. I prefer to take the profits, and then reenter on the retraces/corrections. I suppose small winners act as a confidence crutch here. By the way, I 'swear' I entered short on the first trade of the day - I never did figure that one out, but the DOM said otherwise. Once I got over the WTF, I at least hit the REV. So I guess my first impression is this: I don't see how this approach (always in) is very applicable to the forest level, using only the coarse tools. In other words, I don't understand the rationale of watching profits erode. I ended up drawing as many tapes as possible, and using those trend lines as my guide. I will definitely say, tho, that returning to PRV focus was a major help today. Let me ask this: should I plan to exit at ltl's and reverse at taped ftt's or channel FTT's, and FBO's? OK, Ezzy - now you know what you're up against - I'm all ears Cheers ...
The small winners are a crutch, but there's a way around that. And I'll tie it all in to Forest and coarse trading. Remember, this is my interpretation, and probably oversimplified, FWIW. When Jack started teaching this he seemed to be focusing on making sure you were in only high probability trades. This was so beginners had the best chance for success, and also trying to break scalpers or hyper traders from trading too much. The 5 minute was the sweet spot as far as efficiency. So that's where the Rockets and Icebergs came from. (small winners) He used the Stochastic indicator to get people to hold longer and not exit too soon. Basically you were entering after point #3 when momentum kicked in. Icebergs adding more trades and keeping you in the market longer. Then slaloming. Add a few more tools. Eventually keeping you in all day long except during dry up. This worked for some and wasn't a bad approach IMO. There was more of an emphasis on indicators and their sequences. Spydertrader has tried a different approach, but a similar goal. Here you are on the Forest trading/reversing on major FTT's. Exiting on the FBO, holding on the BO (holding for the FTT which is a new point 3 to reverse). Trying to keep you in most of the time going from FTT to FTT in the opposite direction. There were some modifications along the way. Some were only trading from point 3 to FTT - similar to the rocket trades, only in during the right to left dominant (small winners). Hopefully as more experience in the market is had, gradually adding tools would eventually allow you to stay in longer, go to finer resolutions and take more of what's available. More of the daily range. Before I go on I want to say that no one has to continue to SCT. You could be content to trade the dominants and stay there. So find what works and move on if or when you desire. Picture a day as 1 bar. Your trying to capture as much of the high to low as you can. Maybe buy close to the bottom and sell near the top. So say we have an idealized "W" or "M" day. Roughly 4 trades, 4 swings. You might miss a certain amount near the peak and troughs but try to gain enough of the middle to make it worth while, though maybe not the daily range. So to catch more, you trade the swings within each of the 4 legs. Here's where you get your 7 - 10 trades per day. Now go a few step finer and you're trading within those swings and now getting to the 20 - 40 trades a day on the finest resolution. So how far do you want to go? The forest is the first step in the evolution of going to always in, then all the way down to the 20 - 40 trades a day that make it possible to get the multiple of the daily range. You can't get there by scalping. But you don't need to go there either. So at the forest, you aren't even looking at tapes yet. Just trying to go with the flow, FTT to FTT. I'm not sure if that answered your questions. Trying to put it all in perspective. Regards - EZ
EZ - thanks very much for such a thoughtful response! I have many thoughts currently flooding the ole' cerebrum - hopefully I can express some of them here so as to appear at least partially coherent. I'm a blue-collar guy - neither ashamed nor proud of - just the path I ended up on, having awkwardly stepped forward, away from the party-hardy college days. I never enjoyed workin' for the man, and although I gave small business a chance, circumstances beyond my control prevented those avenues from flourishing. Heard about something called commodities trading many years ago, and never could shake the idea, even after getting thumped a few times. I believe my life-long love of numbers was at the root of my fascinations. Fast forward to a few years ago, when during an apparent mid-life crisis, I just said "to hell with it all" - I'm pursuing my own dreams and goals, and I will reach them, or die trying. Walked away from the best paying industrial job in our area (bye-bye big blue meatball) and have been in front of the screen ever since. Sorry for the personal garbage, but this is now my 'job' (sans paycheck - haha) and I believe it is the reason I've allowed sim trading to take on such an overweighted importance. Unfortunately, it is hindering the very things over which I must prevail, in order to prevent the dreaded crash and burn (this is a'kin to being a WalMart greeter someday ) Seeing positive numbers day by day provides some type of 'false' proof that I'm on the right track, but the truth of the matter remains - it will mean nil, starting with Day One when I return to the live trenches. And this is the last go-round, so I danged well better be prepared! I know I am well ahead of where I was 6 months ago, but I need many more assurances than that alone. Thanks to people like yourself, EZ, the guys in the Paltalk room, folks who have provided guidance, assistance and encouragement both publicly and privately,and of course, Spyder, whom we all greatly rely on, am I able to retain a positive attitude towards this most difficult endeavor. So, it's back to the basics for this guy - today was the last day of sim trading for awhile, as I am returning to pencil and paper, and more thorough/ precise chart annotating. Hopefully I will begin to assemble the bits and pieces gathered to date, and be able to relay some aha moments within these pages. Or else it could get kinda boring around here - heheh. All the best, folks ...
Had a good day today - very interesting how things slow down once the DOM is hidden from view. I've always been drawn to the tick by tick movement (guess it's the Siren's call to the gambler within) and often would get sucked into the action without good cause. At least the PV work helped to keep me on the correct side of the scalps. But I experienced today how there is more for the taking. Gonna do a little testing below w/ chart images and such.