Today I am not just disappointed. I am f... mad!!! It seems as though I am unable to correct the mistakes I have been making for weeks now. My stubbornness really made me pay today. Overtrading: especially when my daily balance shows a loss. I then desperately try to make gains to get back into the green. I jump on every trade I see even if the R/R ratio is not favorable. Cutting winners too early: as soon as a trade is slightly profitable but not continuing its move I begin to think about closing it. Therefore some of my profitable trades are for only 4 or 5 YM points. Because of this I manage to have losing days even when 70% of my trades are winners! I am not sure how to continue at this moment. I may stop trading for a couple of days or I may move down to 1 contract again. Commission: -185.18 Trading result: -345 Net result: -530.18 Week: -683.38
I'm relucant to offer anyone advice, however, you do not appear to have a max daily $ dd - where you stop trading for the day. I also feel your pain regarding the 70% profitable trades but still net negative, but it implies that your system doesn't generate exit signals, only entrys. Maybe you should think about automating your exits. Personally I think a large part of your difficulties are down to doubling-up your contracts (which is also a huge problem with me - which is why I don't feel qualified offering advice )
Hi omelette, thanks for your post. My max daily dd was 45 points when I was trading 1 contract. I doubled that to 90 points now. --> 450$ before commission. I may have to think about reducing that amount. You may be right about the fact that most of my difficulties come from doubling up. It is difficult for me to say because I also switched brokers and I think that influenced my trading as well. Lower commissions cause me to enter more trades. My system does generate exit signals. I am not patient enough to wait for my targets being hit. I probably need to walk away from the screen when in a trade. Good trading to you, LL
LL, it seems that your risk/reward is not favorable. You need to increase it to a least 1:1 (if not better) if you're scalping. I trade mainly ES but I do some YM trades as well. Just to give you an idea, I'm posting a breakdown of my YM activity today: No of trades: 15 Winning Trades: 11 Losing Trades: 4 %Winning Trades: 73.33% Largest Win: 21 pts Largest Loss: 10 pts Consecutive Wins: 6 Consecutive Losses: 2 Gross P/L: 49 pts Personally I think you should go back to 1 contract till you get your consistency back. Don't try to make up for your losses by increasing your size.
Hi blaster, thanks for posting. I was following your trades back when you posted them in the ES thread. It's a shame you're not posting anymore but I completely understand your reasons. You are right about my R/R ratio. I really need to improve in that area. The main problems is not that my losers are too big because my max S/L is 15 points and generally I get out at 10. But I am having problems staying in a winning trade. Especially when I am in a profitable trade and the trade turns back towards break-even. Usually I then close the trade manually with a small win of 2 or 3 points to avoid it from turning into a loser. I am aware that this is a stupid thing to do but so far I have not been able to correct this behavior. In the meantime I will continue trading 2 contracts for the rest of the week. I would hate to take a step back and go back to 1 contract. I also think the best way to feel comfortable trading 2 contracts is to simply do it and try to improve. However if my trading does not get back on track I will have to go back to 1 contract next week. Tanks again for your post and good trading to you, LL
From a financial point of view today's result may not seem special. More important than the result is the way I traded. I am very pleased that I managed to be patient in entering trades. I took only 6 trades today as compared to 20+ trades yesterday. The result was a 28 point gain vs a 69 point loss yesterday. My best trade was +34 (2x17) and my worst was -20 (2x10). It is probably difficult to see why I would be so pleased with a 90$ gain. But after yesterday's trading session I seriously doubted whether I should continue trading or stop straight away. I am trying to view yesterday's loss as a "lesson" and I am trying to learn from my mistakes. Commission: -47.28 Trading result: +140 Net result: +92.72 Week: -590.66 LL
Hello everyone, I hope you all enjoyed your week-end. I had to get away early on friday so that I did not have time to post my trades. I only traded during the morning and ended up with 20 points after 3 trades. Commission: -23.64 Trading result: +100 Net result: +76.36 Week: -514.30 Last week was marked by a terible trading session on wednesday. I think that it was a good lesson and I will try not to repeat the mistakes I made that day. I am pleased with the improvements I made on thursday and friday in being much more patient and waiting for the right trades. I hope to continue on that line this week. Good trading to all, LL
Quiet start to the week. I am pleased that I managed to continue in the same way that I finished last week. I am being patient and I'm starting to like it Today I ended up +24 points after 4 !!! trades (of 2 contracts each). Commission: -31.52 Trading result: +120 Net result: +88.48 Week: +88.48 Overall: -425.82 Obviously I'm making only very small gains at the moment but the financial result is currently not my main priority. I want to get my confidence and the feel for the market back. When I switched brokers and doubled contracts several weeks ago I unconsciously changed my trading style. Now I'm working on changing it back again. Currently I feel like I'm on the right track... LL
Had to stop early, f..... up completely. I had a miserable day all day which caused me in the end to delete my stop on the last trade. Needless to say I got screwed big time. Commission: -122.14 Trading result: -605 Net result: -727.14 Week: -638.66 Overall: -1152.96 So here we are again... Asking myself whether I should just quit. I may not have the discipline to make it. Today I overtraded, did not stick to my stop on one trade and did not stick to my max loss per day. Now I am down 1150 dollars since last Monday. I have until the end of the month to regain that amount. But personally I don't think that I'll be able to do it...
Dear friends, this is painful. I have realized that after almost 5 months of consistently improving my trading I am now in a serious slump. I have yet to discover the reasons for this setback. As I said numerous times in this thread I changed brokers and doubled contracts in mid-May. From that moment on I changed my trading style and my results became much worse. I set myself the goal to trade profitably in the period from May 26th to June 30th. I am now down 1200$ and I don't believe I will make it back. However I don't feel like giving up just yet. I will cancel the challenge I set for myself and fully concentrate on the actual trading. Also I will go back to trading 1 contract. This is painful because I see this as a serious step backwards. I will keep you guys updated on how I will continue and the new goals is set for myself, LL