trade 12:51 and 13:19, I had the same, was thinking about short at 12:51 but only take one at 13:19. The reason for hesitation was the pace had slow down. And the down channel didn't matched well with gauss pattern. Eventually blk vol increase and you know it is time for break up from congestion pattern, time to reverse.
Yep - there's no denying that. Matter of fact, it always seems a preponderance of my trades are to the short side. I need rewired!! Both of those trades are examples of incorrectly interpreting the gaussians, and were entered in anticipation of a Pt 3 reversal (impulsive action). Funny how in hindsight they just vaporize! So we return tomorrow, and try again Thanks ... Edit: These comments directed to your 4:42 PM post.
A comment on your latest post, nkhoi - seems I rarely take the appropriate action once caught in congestion. I either become impatient and bail, normally about 2 seconds before price takes off in my direction, or I tell myself the move against me is just a head fake - lol. I still have a very tough time w/ confidence in my volume interpretation. And today, several of the 'next leg up' were made in thrusting action, leading to problematic trades.
meph: you have to stop these bad habbits -- averaging down and riding wrong entries are NOT trading. It is hoping, wishing, daydreaming... these are bankrupting habits. You are perpetuating a drug addition. It robs your precious time during the limited market hours and prevents you from learning to trading in a profitable manner. PLS STOP IT NOW. If you changed your mind after entry -- get out, sit out, take a walk if needed, regroup, and enter again at the next signal. p.s. for easier evaluation of your signal performance (compared to aggregate points performance), you should stay at single contract all the way. Do not add contracts just because you feel you have a "good" signal. By staying at 1 contract all the way, you can then gauge your performance by simply counting the points. If you are at variable contracts, then you would never know if your points total is due to good signal, or lucky double downs.
Tums - I very much appreciate both the intent, and the content, of your post. All my assinine quips and jocularity aside, I'm as serious as a heartattack when it comes down to my personal pursuit for successful trading. Your thoughts have raised some questions which I would like to bring up - this is not proferred behind any defensive posture, but rather, only in my penchant for such discussion. I totally agree on the point you make about using one contract to easily arrive at the day's point total. I do feel it's a metric we can all use to determine where we find ourselves on the curve, and mixing in some additional cts does muddle up the math. This brings us to the idea of averaging in, and I will no doubt fail miserably here while attempting to relate. I bring no credentials to the table, only a plugger's experiences to date while learning this method. Such trade management is not done in fear or hope mode, but as a means of allowing the mkt some room for random movement. I know that if we take entry from a FTT bar, the boundary for the trade is well marked - although, I even need to ask this question. Do you place your stop one tick above this bar? I've never found a one tick differential in price as the line in the sand to be very effective. Seems I have an excellent knack for stopping out on THE extreme, and then having to jostle the mental buggaboos that inherently follow (juvenile cursing and the like) Futher, the Pt 3 entry becomes even more perplexing for me, and this could simply be because my entries are very ill-timed. Once again, I understand where the hard stop needs to reside. But on a volatile day, if I misjudge the original entry, the high of Pt 1 may be 3 or 4 pts away. In this case, may I ask what you suggest? Is this a normal risk for this type of trading, or will you have already been stopped out earlier at some predefined level? What I have observed over and over is this - the es is actually a somewhat forgiving mkt, considering its ebb and flow. I normally add the second ct at 6 to 8 ticks away, and almost without fail I have a chance to scratch the trade b/e or with a 1 tick (X2) profit, even when I am wrong on mkt direction. It goes without saying, if volume is pegging the extremes, just get the heck out (or reverse, although I will leave that idea for another day). I should also submit, to add the second ct requires that I still see the gaussian that is leading me to the Pt 3 entry. It just seems that a lot can happen within a 5 min bar, and a day full of 4,5, or 6 tick losses can become quite punishing. Final note here - allowing myself the latitude to add the second actually provides a calming effect, and provides some extra time to gather more data and reanalyze. I've been employing this idea for the last 4 months or so, and without digging through all the logs, feel comfortable in stating that I have had less than five losing days, and none over 300 -400 hundred bucks, within the normal risk management for a 20K acct. It doesn't mean this is correct or prudent - but it does lead one to wonder, does it not? Perhaps I've followed too many position traders who 'build their positions', often at 2 or 300 pip intervals (currency mkts) and seemingly bank some very impressive wins. Of course, a much grander scale, but still allowing for the wiggle room. I hope you, or anyone else following along, can provide some further insight into all this. I apologize for the wordage. Best regards ...
I agree with Tums completely. In trading we can not "make stuff up" as we go along. By doing so we are lying to ourselves even when we find success in the short run. Stick to the plan. Do what bundlemaker suggested yesterday in the original thread. Take a position one bar after the FTT and make yourself believe your entry is at the most extreme point of that FTT. That gives you an average of almost 2 point for a margin for error "frame of mind". The idea for us is to be able to start "feeling" a change for "calm, peace and confidence" in our psyche and trading as time goes by, just as Jack talks about so often. Just food for thought.
As I have yet to reach consistent profitability, I feel rather unqualified to make these comments but it may help to offer my perspective. The point of exit, i.e. "stop" is when you see that the reason for entry was invalid. One tick above the FTT might be appropriate but not if it sneaks up there on lower volume. It is perhaps the difference between a "line in the sand" and being a little "flexible". I believe that context is the key. If pro rata volume is increasing against the trade then it might be appropriate to exit before the high of the "FTT" bar, simply because the likelihood of it being a true FTT is reduced. I put the question to Spyder recently regarding where to exit having misidentified a pt 3. He suggested that the point of exit should be beyond the new RTL. The closer your entry is to this, the sooner the exit will be if all goes pear-shaped.... I am trying to get out of the mindset of setups and stops and trying to focus my trading on what the market is saying. Clearly, if price retraces beyond the new "pt3" used to identify the entry then the identification was probably invalid. Having said that, I still feel that it is possible for conditions to change between the time of a valid pt 3 entry and its subsequent "failure" so it should not necessarily consistute a misidentifcation. In this case, the trade was valid. This is a very familiar feeling and currently erodes many otherwise profitable days. However, I suspect that as a "beginner" this is somewhat unavoidable. In fact, I am trying to take comfort in Spyder's assurance that mistakes are inevitable and I am hoping that, with practice, I can recognise an error of judgement or a change of condition sooner so that losses of this nature become less frequent. I hope that these ramblings are of some help.
mep - I just got caught up on your journal. Thanks for posting the link in Spyder's thread. Also, thanks for your honesty in posting your results and thought process. A lot of us bring certain baggage to our trading (myself included), so it is nice to hear what others are thinking and doing. Good luck with the journal.
Thanks for all the comments, fellas! And the consensus is: no add-ons So I will try to respect this approach, and just hang tough w/ singles. As iterated earlier, now w/ a bit more emphasis - this could become real ugly, real quick! But it's sure to serve as a good wake-up call, and definitive indicator of where I'm currently at in the process. Trade well, gents ...
It is already apparent my work is now cut out for me, to see if I can remain profitable after discarding everything that is most familiar to me Should get interesting - we'll see where it all leads. As long as each week remains positive, hopefully progress will continue. Have a nice weekend ...