You should interview her and write a book on it. She sounds like a nice enough person, I am sure she will let you watch her trade live if you make the effort to travel to her. Think on it. You could be the one that uncovers one of the legends in trading.
DB, I know you didn't take any entries this morning in real time, but this is what I've come up with in hindsight, following your rules. Could you also explain, why your student took the short at 51, and you also, wanted to go short at 52.75 during the breakout bar at 9:58 am Eastern. Schaefer
I wasn't paying attention to chat so I don't know why anyone took the trades they did. The risk parameters vary depending on the trader. But I'm sure he'd be happy to explain if you asked him. As for your question for me, I don't know that this is the place for it, so I'll answer it in the Ghost thread.
You don't know. That was the point of post. Platitudes do not help you trade. Statements, blotters, trade calls, whatever...you can't take them to the bank. The last trade on that blotter by the way was entirely simulated. I rarely if ever initiate new positions at the close of the CL pit session. If price runs 20 ticks in my favor and comes back to my entry price, I'm stopped out break even. Plus, the trade made no sense whatsoever as a technical price action trade. Why would I short the upside break of two trend lines (indicating a possible trend reversal)? No, in fact I was having a bite to eat and opened a demo account to play with a trade idea I had and I simply pasted that trade over my last live trade of the day, which had taken place an hour earlier. That's how useful statements and blotters are. And what good is "let your winners run" and "the trend is your friend" when you have no idea what that means? On the other hand, if you look at the step-by-step hard right edge demonstrations I provided last week of how to trade a breakout pullback, you have something of immense value to work with. You can study the examples. You can apply them to any day's price action on any liquid instrument. You can conduct statistical analyses of every appearance of the setup to track the MFE/MAE and to determine how best to enter these setups (anticipatory limit order entry or confirmed stop order entry) for the instruments you want to trade. Notice the key word here is "You". You have to work hard to become a profitable trader. It's not about how much money I make, or how many winners and losers I have, or whether I worked at hedge funds, or how big an account I have. It's about how much you are willing to work to develop a high reward/low risk trading methodology. 'Nuff said, carry on.
http://elitetrader.com/vb/showpost.php?p=3958725&postcount=397 I never have days like that now. My trading plan includes strict risk management. Period. If you apply my price action scalping methods to any intraday chart of CL or NQ or ES during regular trading hours, it should be clear that it would be extremely difficult to have losing days unless I a) had hardware/software/platform/internet issues, b) I was only able to trade part of the session, or c) I violated my rules. I've had all of these things happen and it resulted in losing days. I don't care to divulge any information about my ROI. Suffice it to say that trading provides a good living. So your blowouts are due to rule-violation. Otherwise you're perfect. Nish!
I plotted your trades last night. I hope you don't mind me sharing it here. And yes, that last one threw me off http://www.sierrachart.com/image.php?l=1396463083452.png In general, I notice that your trades are more anticipatory than the ones we SLA folk take. Example: 5th short. I like your metaphor of stepping on the gas and not letting up during a strong trend, while accepting the loss on the last continuation trade as a tip to market.