scratch this idea. cant figure out how i can convert cqg filled orders from one column into two buy/sell column to make it easy to calculate. this is turning into a pain in the ass to do manually.
It may be a feature in a 3rd party professional trade journal. You may want to call the tech departments of the many programs out there to find out if they have that feature and any other feature that automatically calculates the info for you as your trades occur. Also, talk to CQG too...they may have tips on how to do it or recommend a 3rd party professional trade journal program to you that works with their software. wrbtrader
so another big hit to my account from yesterday crazy ass move (got caught on the false breakout at 9am cst). account is little over 7k now So i'm giving up..on the US session. Sometimes you got to admit that you can't compete with these guys. I don't remember ever having a large losing asian session. It's ALWAYS the US session that takes profits then some.. Enough is enough, started trading just hte asian session starting today. Now that i looked at the price action for US, i just fee sick lol
Hi, Sorry to hear that. Yet, if the US session has always been that problematic for you...costing you that much money... Why the hell would you continue trading the US session...shouldn't your backtest results reveal that to you prior to any real money tradingt ? Maybe the winning trading days in the U.S. trading session gave the illusion you can do such consistently without getting a big losing trading day. The day you lost 1/2 of that 70k in one trading day...did that occur in the U.S. trading session ? Simple analogy, pretend strategy A works (makes you money) and strategy B does not work (it takes your money)...you have hard stats that show such is the fact about your trading. Why keep using strategy B ? There's another past trade journal here at ET that's similar like...the guy was making thousands of dollars trading the morning U.S. trading session but losing 2x as much in the afternoon trading session. He literally could not stop himself from trading the afternoon trading session until he went bust. It was an interesting view into the psychology of trading...greed and fear...whatever mumbo jumbo we can call it. I hope you can right this ship because most can not fight their own psychology (behavior finance). The brain is wired to sabotage when it comes to money. P.S. You do not show all of your live streams but the ones you do show...the trade losses...every one of those particular trading days occur in unusual volatility in the markets. Although its not enough data points because you're either not streaming all your trading days or deciding which streams to post...its something that you should be aware about and concern about when the markets are volatile out of the gate in comparison to high volatility showing up later in the afternoon trading session after a calm morning trading session...the latter you do well in. Simply, these (volatile trading days) are not trading days you should be increasing your position size. They are trading days you should not be trading or lowering your position size to no more thant 1 - 2 contracts. wrbtrader
yup it was the US session when i lost in that video. you can see the time below (in cst). so yea..maybe it was the illusion. you can make a KILLING in the US session..so that's what i've done from time to time..but i got burned way too much,and it's always this session. my backtest didn't really separate the two sessions..was just looking at net daily. Well now i know where the pain is coming from so like you said, the captain has made the decision not to sail this rough water, save the remaining crews and find pathway more suitable for us; even if it does take LONGER to get to the destination..
Do you really think this is the correct conclusion? Like I say, I've watched many of your videos, and I see patterns, but the patterns are sometimes a lack structure. There didn't seem to be a method to your scaling in, nor to your stops. (of course I don't know what your initial plan is, so who am I to say this) The thing with scaling into a loser, or averaging down, is that you get a higher win rate, hence your nice initial equity curve, but then you're hit hard, as you've experienced. The Asian session doesn't usually have the same level of volatility, so you perhaps have more time to think. Unless you can conclusively prove that you get the direction right more often in the Asian session, its perhaps too early to just blame the time of day. Perhaps you're also more likely to just cut your trade when wrong in the Asian session where as during the RTH session, you hold on longer and start this averaging down procedure? I also think that perhaps you do have a very good edge, but you need firm stops in place, and a way to walk away when you hit some threshold. The way you trade will clearly have a few disaster days, but if these days are just a few percent of other days, is that really so bad? (of course only if the bad days are like -5k while good days are +2k or +3k). If every 20 days you have a day where you lose 10k, but most other days you manage to make about 2k, you're still highly profitable. If these losing days of 10k come back to back, you think there is something wrong with the US session, but really, its just the distribution of when these bad days hit. Your psychology cannot handle this swing in PnL (many people couldn't of course), but your trading method has to allow for this because you're scaling into losers.
I was thinking exactly the same thing. Understanding this will also help to set a limit loss for the losing trading days. I personally don't like to adding contracts to losing trades but its hard to grab the actual impact of such because there's too many missing live streams and missing statements for those big losing trading days. It's the one thing about why I'm not a big fan of documentation of the trading unless it can consistently been done...too many missing trading days reveal there's a psychological issue involving not being able to handle (manage) the mental aspect of trading. Too many trading days like that will eventually resolve into closing the account...ending all goals. With that said, there needs to be a closer look at the big winning trading days to see how all the above impacted those results. It's weird but there's a story from those big profitable days that I'm too slow to catch on just yet. Regardless, this is a great thread because it explores the psychological impact even though there's not a lot of discussion here about the mental aspect of trading...its really between the lines...that gray. wrbtrader
I look at this a bit differently. Lets say you have a level at 2910 you are watching and price bounces off nicely. Now its at 2912. You enter long. When you do this, you don't know if it will test 2910 one more time, or even poke it perhaps. But going long at 2912 was your only option at that time. If you trade multiple contracts and start with just 1, then getting in for some more at 2910 or even 2908 is actually a good thing because your average price improves. Now of course if what you thought was a support level doesn't turn out to be so, then you're looking at a losing trade either way, but in many cases, this scaling technique can help things mathematically. Of course if it takes off at 2912 then you don't have a full position, but in many cases, price will go against you before it goes in your favor. You're big on stats I know, so this is a perfect case where its easy to just look and see how many trades you could spread out the entry on at a lower price, and how many instantly work and hence you can't scale into for a better price. Completely agree. Even how he stats streaming after already being up or down is a big issue. But what I like is that all trades are on the 5 minute chart so its easy to see what happened. I started to get familiar with his style after maybe seeing 10 days or so. Too many times prices goes hugely against him, and then he scales in, and then luckily it recovers and he banks a nice profit. But at this point, it could have easily gone the other way, which it now did, and so the results are what we see. There might be nothing wrong with this statistically, but he has to be aware that his strategy will have huge swings. He tries to "make it back", which once again works on some days, but then on others it just kills him. Granted, its seemed to only "kill" him twice so far, but I think the psychological damage is worse than the money hit. Completely agree. He is very generous to share and allow us to comment. Its a great learning experience. I do hope that he pulls it together because I see some really good trading qualities that he has, but this also leads to negative sides as well.
The way you trade, is a losing strategy. In your example, you buy at 2910,2908, you get lower prices, at the same time you get lower probability of winning.When you know the price goes from 2912 to 2910,2908, then next price move is more likely to go to 2906,2904,or 2910,2912?Of course price is more likely to go lower, because selling is ovewleming buying. In trading, probability of winning is much more important than lowering cost of your position. You get lower price, but lower probability of winning, you will still lose. You get higher price, and higher probability of winning, you will still win.
Sorry, I don't agree. You think that just because price goes back down again that it means it will head lower? No way! How often do a see a level you're watching get poked, and then it takes off, but then it breaks down again, maybe even breaks the previous low by a couple of ticks to catch some more stops there. Happens all the time. If you look at your entries, can you really tell me that more than 50% of the time you don't have price go against you by a few ticks? Its foolish to think that right when you get in its going to go in your desired direction.