You guys trade ES so Im not familiar with possible experiences. What I notice from NYSE, is that during sideways low volume days, there is no letting winners ride. Take the money and keep ur profits. Learned this the very hard way over the last month. S&P has had a lot of chop-chop sessions lately as well. I would be very selective about which positions you want to let ride and try to sit past the shake outs. Percentage stops sound like a great idea for ES. A great suggestion I have used is partial profits. I take these during sharp moves since I know there will be pullbacks. Good way to secure good profits but to stay in the trade for the possible larger move.
I let winners ride by puttin in phaton stops (so the specialist won't see...) Also try using a program that automatically exits my positions when its dipped from the highest pnl etc... A program to exit will take away all the headaches and will let you stick to your discipline. Or setting an automated exit whenever a position goes from positive to flat, that way you can hold to see how far your winner will go...
each situation has a different strategy generally speaking from my experience you should take your p&l off your screen... and raise your stops as your stock rises... but do not actually implement a physical stop or youll get whiplashed out of it quicker than you got in...
SethArb--I've read it and re-read it. Blew through the pivot range, which being as narrow as it was, foretold the wide range today. After it "sliced" through I put in a sell with a stop at the top of the opening range plus a quarter, almost stopped myself out but waited 10 minutes and caught a nice move. Still only took that one for 2.5 points. I'm definitely gonna look to incorporate some of the methods I've read here into my exit strategy, which is my biggest psychological hurdle so far. It just seems that there is no reason to be short on a day like this and "only" get 5 points.
Good advice from the others so far. As someone earlier had hinted...if your exit strategy required you to get out at 1148.75 You did great today. However, if you had a trading plan and that exit strategy required you to get out much lower than that... you had a poor trading day regardless if the trade was profitable or not. It's good that you admitted you were trading without a plan on that particular trade...therefore your exit was mainly via intuition. Hints to riding winners...some traders use one or a few in combo: 1. Trade multiple contracts and scale out. Not advisable if your either new to the eminis, not a profitable trader or undercapitalized. 2. Develop a Trading the Gap strategy from entry to exit (start to finish). This strategy will be specific for trading days like today. Simply...I'm saying here is that you need to have a strategy specific for repeatable price patterns...today was a repeatable price pattern. Tomorrow may be a completely different repeatable price pattern exploitable by a different type of strategy. 3. Via the above...you should always map out your destination prior to entry. Simply, if you don't have specific profit targets, specific initial stop/loss, specific trailing stops and specific contingency plan (what to do if trade doesn't go your way)... all prior to entry. You increase the odds for losses, small profits (not riding winners for big points), trade discipline problems, emotional trading and everything else that sabotages a trade. As for your discipline problems (you mentioned that)... Its easier to develop a trading plan but much harder to follow it. Reason why even if a trader had a great trading plan...most will still fail because they don't have the discipline to follow it. This...as you develop your trading plan you'll be taking less intuition trades, trading via less emotions... Lets put it this way...if you don't develop a trading plan for each particular type of trading situation (repeatable price patterns)... You'll be back again in 6 months posting similar messages. Once again...devleop a trading plan (entry to exit) and it will allow you to start down that road to resolving your discipline problems that occurs after entry. That's my advice for getting yourself in the arena (up Good luck and you have a long ways to go expecially trading the Eminis without a trading plan. If your profitable...your lucky so far in my opinion. NihabaAshi
Good advice. Today was really the first time I just threw a trade on without thinking it through and for reasons outside my methodology. I'll be looking for this scenario again as it seems very low risk-high reward. Part of the reason for starting this thread was to look for some angles on exiting profitable positions, as the methodology I've studied doesn't explicitly deal with that. I generally use a trailing stop but, and this is where experience would help, I generally bring it up too much and get stopped out at a small profit And yes, I very well could be back here in six months asking the same questions. That won't bother me 'cause that'll mean I'm still around. I've heard, and I believe, that during your first year or two of trading, survival equals success. I'm not profitable and I'm not in a bad hole and I've learned a lot. If that's just luck, I'll take it. Seems that there is at least an element of luck in each trade on an individual level, and we're all looking too gain some statistical advantage. One part of that advantage has got to be knowing when to stay with a winner, which I've certainly gained some insight on in this thread. Thanks everyone!
MYDemaray--Finished trading for today, and figured I'd revisit this thread to thank you. This past Tuesday was a complete xerox of the previous Tuesday, but this time I followed your advice. Sold 2 at 1137.75 with a stop at 1138.75 at 7:40ish. One I had a profit set at 2 points and the other I let ride. Got 2 on the first contract and 17 on the other! SethArb----A-Up today way over the pivot range, which held like a champ! I've been trying to put some of Crabel's ideas and Fisher's ideas together and it looks promising.