The action since last friday has been somewhat whippy. Daily trends are clear by the end of the day but the way there twists and turns. It's hard to stay in sync. RoughTrader
I'm always flat at close and found it works quite well to just take the opening print at 8:30 CST based on what side your system says you should be in. The first hour of day is usually my best.
Yeah, I'm still trading, but I'm having to readjust what I'm doing. It seems to be pretty breakeven right now. Up a couple points one day, down a couple the next. Right now, I am trying to settle on a R40 with VS 2.5. I am working with a 1/1 bracket. I think I just don't have the patience or stomach to be trading off longer term charts. For January, I ended up about exactly where I started. Not too much encouragement for calling it a full-time living. Kind of embarassing to be posting my trading difficulties in public, but there you go.
jasper - I understand the frustration, but I would at least look at the bright side - you are still in the game and not down a ton. That actually says a lot. Some people would be gone after 1 month of trading. While I do not trade like you do, I think it comes down to consistency - develop and follow one way of trading after you have proven to yourself it works. The constant tweeking and changing may be a result of you not being fully convinced this is the way for you to trade.
Jasper Kudos to you for pressing on - trading is definitely an emotional rollercoaster. But I feel that I should re-emphasise my earlier advice from the start of the thread. Please back-test what you are doing before you trade it for real money. Eye-balling different indicator setings, which it sounds like you are doing, often leads to a skewed perception of what will work and the reality is very different. I know this from personal experience. Backtesting will help give you more confidence in what you are doing. it will guide you with respect to likely losing streaks to prepare you mentally. It will tell you which settings are optimal (no more guessing - at least based on past performance). It will also show that taking profits early is a losing strategy (or at least a lower winning) when employing vol breakout systems (again, i know this from personal experience). At the very least it might show you that this system is breakeven or even a net loser which would save you money in the long run. This can be hard to accept when you have been working on something for a long time but it is better than losing money. Also, a final point to others who are congratulating / supporting you when you scalp profits whilst trading these vol-breakout systems. Be careful!! Whilst it can be tempting to scalp open profits, it tends to worsen long-term performance in this type of trading. Often it can turn performance negative. Commenting that we can't "argue with profits" makes everyone feel good but is only hurting performance. If backtesting proves otherwise then I will humbly apologise. Good luck
Thanks for the thoughts. I took four trades today. One loser for -.9 pts and three winners for +1 pts each. Net 2.1 pts on the day worth $420 less commissions for 2 contracts. All of the trades were taken in the first hour. As the day progressed, you could have made more of these trades, but the smaller swings make taking even a single point iffy. Here's a chart with the entries and exits marked.
Jasper, I asked this question before but it might've been overlooked. Are those white arrows on your chart generated in real-time? If so, why not use those as your entries/exits and have everything run mechanically? They seem to be highly accurate..
Hi Trader KGB, Yes the white arrows are generated in real-time. Just another visual for when the VS has flipped. I haven't looked into automatic execution and am not sure it is possible within Ensign. The software has a lot of capabilities I haven't explored and the ESPL programming and DYO features are still over my head.
Choppy day. Took five trades and ended up down 1.3 points. Not much throw on a lot of the signals. Didn't even go 1 pt before reversing. Currently using the R40 with a VS 2 for the immediate movement and VS 5 for the trends