I day trade the YM using 5 mins chart, and have initial stop at 20 ticks. Once I have 20 ticks in the money, my trailing stop will activate by trailing 15 ticks. My question is, is 15 ticks too much to give back on a 5 min chart? Or it's too little because it will get hit very soon and miss the big move?
Depends: What is your average size of a winning trade? What is the percentage winners? When you have a winner, how big is the average retracement? Answer to those questions will tell you whether you are giving away too much profit with your trailing stop. Good luck Steve
I would say when to exit is the hardest part of trading. Some trades you will love your trail stop because it saved you, other times you will hate because it kept you out of the big move. Only you know your style and what your comfortable with. Im more comfortable with a bigger stop in order to not get ticked out and miss the big move. Sometimes it works in my favor, other times it kills me. I would just examine how your signals work and does it usually move alot in your favor or not. Also, if you a mult-contract trader have designated levels to exit some of your contracts. That way you guarantee some profits on the trades that move in your favor. This is just my opinion, im sure there will be 100 different ones. -Nick
The way I see it, you have a couple of different options here: 1) Take profit after 20 pts YM 2) Trail your stop the way you are doing now, and catch the stronger moves (40 pts YM or greater) 3) Do a combination of both ( take 1/2 off after 20 pts profit, move your stop to breakeven and trail the rest, this way you at least have something in the till) regardless of what the market does 4) In addition to the above, use an indicator (20SMA, 25 LSMA, etc.) to determine when to take profits on the 2nd 1/2 of your contracts Any combination of the above listed criteria should give you pretty consistent profits, provided everything else in your system works. Best, Jimmy
I use this method for exits and works well: Take 1/3 profits when your position = your initial risk/stoploss i.e. when R=1. Then move stop to b/e. take 2nd 1/3 when R=2 move stop to R=1 & trail by 30% take last 1/3 when R=3 move stop to R=2 and trail by 30% Example: Entry (long): 11000 Stoploss (Risk R): 10975 R1 11025 R2 11050 R3 11075 Hope this helps. After 10 years of trading, I find the systematic exits are best vs. discretionary. You need to approach trade drawdown pretty much the same way you analyze the account drawdown. If you get it right on the trade level you should come out ok. Best of luck. Cariocas
How can we use the LSMA indicator if strategy runner does not offer LSMA indicator. Do they offer it on the new version 3.0? I am still on 2.3
You have a couple'a options: 1) use the 20 sma. it's what I've decided on and a lot of backtesting, it will keep you in the good trends for a decent profit, and if the move takes place in the last hour or so of the market's open you can usually "ride it" to the close (I use MOC @ 4:10pm ET). 2) switch to charting provider who has the 25 LSMA (I use Medved Quotetracker, and pretty much have everything I need). 3) call or write Strategy Runner and have them implement it. Best, Jimmy
============= TheC; Depends, want to make sure i get a hunk of a good trend day [shallow pullbacks nice % gains. ] Could be to close for that; especially with 5 minute candle ranges of 20 ticks like last week If you are consistantly stopped out of a trend day , especially in mourning session, yes it too close. And to take money out of a smaller sideways trend; 20 tick stop sounds high.If i get chopped slopped , may stop trading that day because chop slop usually means more chop slop that day. Like profit target$ on ES similiar to YM; pay attention to hi-lo-close of candles also & may increase -change profit targets if real sure of move or reduce it if it stalls. Lot of helpful answers here, see what fits you.
=========== JJ; Did you on [1] mean to say last hour of market to close[you wrote open, which would make it a full trend day ],,,ride it to close?????