The market trends all the time: it moves up and trends along the way, then it moves down and trends along the way, too. If a market appears to be directionless, it is actually trending up and down within two profound barriers of support and resistance. Yet, it trends. If a trader focuses on the right time frame, he will experience less problems than someone who uses several time frames and repeatedly complains about "mixed signals".
Yes, but you only need be right 10% of the time to make serious $$$$$$! Being right is only a small part of the equation to success in this game! Part of my problem is I am still trying to catch tops and bottoms at night. What can I say, I've made 10k in a couple of nights trading like that. I still do it mostly out of bordom... regular life bores the hell out of me, unfortunately it tends to grind my account sometimes as I get stopped out really quickly with tight stops. Still + on the account though, just not anywhere near where I'd be if I were more disciplined, which I'm sure I'll find eventually. Trading is definitely one of the most difficult tasks I've had to master, as it's about self mastery, even though most people would agree I'm probably the most disciplined person they know. Night 'day' trading has likely accounted for more than 1/2 my losses recently. I'm logging my equity curve now and I plan on posting it every month from now on to track progress. Yea, yea, I broke some of the rules I've written for myself.... If I were as disciplined as bomb I'd easily be up 2x what he is right now I've been thinking about coming up with some sort of range trading system, as it would probably smooth the equity curve. It makes sense to me to have two systems: One when the market trades in a range and the other when the market moves in one directoin. I still dont feel comfortable trading a system as I don't have the confidence in trading a system I can't back test much. Jinxu, I'm sure you know, it's still very difficult to beat trend following. My losses will be easily be recovered when we pick a direction and I'm on the right side.
@ 14.7k Wish I kept my long on I did last night (2 x ES @ 1235) I was a greedy asshole and had to follow my rules, which call for waiting for more of a pullback before entering on an uptrend. We were at a safe entry point however..
Equity curve as of 31 Oct 11. Still trading. Going to try to create more of an edge for myself. This curve is basically trading based on discretion (I will admit to attempting to use the volume at price points to determine entry, and exit, but it was all based on my judgment, so it wasn't very mechanical) and without much of a method. It shows even with this approach, you can make money, but it's very difficult. By the way my commissions surpassed 5k for this period... going to cut way back on the sizing, and frequency. I'm giving my broker too much... Also commissions are subtracted at the end, so keep that in mind. I think I said before, I'll post these monthly, as I get my monthly statements. I am making progress, which is good. Typically I would have blown out by now. :eek: My first goal is to extract my 25k tuition....
I realized for my style [and I think most styles of trading], posting results of short time frames is really pointless, as in order for a method to be worth pursuing, you must be able to sustain it long term. Also, it's rare to 'get rich quick' in this game I think (quick & rich are both relative), unless you get lucky once or twice, and then stop all together (most don't do this). If you have a decent account size, you can make more money than you could most anywhere else though. I'm +25% on my original investment, as of today. Been trading 1 lots. These past few weeks have been rough for a typical trend trader.
Average daily $ swing in GCL over the past month has been 3.5k, while the indexes - ES,NQ,YM - are all around 1.5k. I really shouldn't be trading 1 contract of GCLH2, but I wanted to try using a partial proxy for trading the ES since GCL seems to trend a lot stronger. After I close this one out though I'll probably wait till I have a larger account. I'm short around 98 and placed my stop loss around 100.40 (pls MM don't gun for me ). In order to implement a logical stop loss, I have to risk 10-20% depending on volatility. I realized yesterday the reason so many noobies blow their accounts (myself is no exception) is because it's almost encouraged by the industry to do this, by allowing small accounts to trade easily on margin, and to have even lower day trading margin rules. With so much noise/random walk from day to day, it's easy to grind your account quickly, trying to catch large profits (what we are all after) intraday.