To Corallus. I think that you are forcing yourself to be shooting for a bigger profits( which carries bigger risk ), which is basically against your "genetic make-up " . And that is IMO why you are not doing too good. I have a feeling that you would be happier if you were shooting for ( and making ) 2points per day consistently. Then , of course, you should develop better suited method. Walter
Perhaps if you used the 5's for your timing on the entry only AND then went up to a higher TF you would be less likely to get wiggled so easily...
short, sweet, to the point, GOOD POST!!! and don't forget that this isn't exactly the easiest market. keep it simple.....
It's worse then . 5 trades / day for a swing trader it is too much. There is about 2 big legs of swing per day, you should try only perharps twice and stop if you are stopped out. In fact you shoudn't even trade every day. You should try to enter the market at the best moment with the objective to wait until the close so that you are obliged to hold your gain. Multiplying the number of trades is equivalent to adding to leverage !
You definitely need to stop playing with real money for a bit, while you try to figure out what will work and what won't work. If you keep losing $300 a day, you'll be wiped out pretty soon. If you'd rather trade stocks than e-minis, you can do Single Stock Futures without the PDT hassle. But basically stop feeding coins into this machine until you've managed to figure out what really will work. You can do it sooner or later, if you're bright enough. But don't expect to be able to do it today just because you have an online account and can hit that Buy or Sell button at any moment. If you keep losing $300 a day, by the time you may get a winning method figured out, you won't have any money left to play it with. Keep in mind that each day you don't make any trades, you're actually up $300 over where you would be if you traded and lost $300. Your first step toward profitability at this moment is probably to refrain from trading, while you work out a winning approach.
you're welcome... as C-Rob's said this is not the easiest market. I think slapshot's signature says a lot... Just curious... was today not a good day to be short from about 10:00 forward. If I was day trading futures today (which I will start at IB next month) would have shorted at about 10:00 and not covered until close (I was short otm NDX calls (backspread now) from overnight.. still holding b.t.w.). Meaning that... was there any point after that when one would have taken enough heat to be stopped out? Looked like the negative tone was there most of the day once the market committed itself. Don't see how one could not let a profit run on a day like today... Am I missing something. I'm talking about one trade all day.
Actually, I made two, the first to the upside in the morning. But you're correct; there was no reason to exit during the day, even though the market went nowhere for two hours before resuming the downtrend (speaking, as I did elsewhere, of patience!). --Db
What if you were to change this (I admit that I do not follow the system as I should, my psychology is ruled by fear of loss, but I am not greedy) would it change your results?
What if you reprogrammed your trading platform so that when you pressed the buy button you would be selling and if you hit the sell button you would be buying?
that doesn't work. i've tried it. it doesn't work because you KNOW you switched the buttons, so you still think about the real position you have. plus, that's no way to be a trader anyway!