Thought I'd post what I've been looking at to figure out why so many of my BE+1 get stopped out. Unless there is a fast moving trend, it seems like the signals I use to place a trade, which mean waiting for some confirmation that price has started moving in a direction, most of the times will have price come back to just the level I got in at. Very frustrating, but then, if it happens over and over, then it's somewhat predictable and maybe I can use that....with the 2nd BE+ on the chart I kind of expected it could happen and just figured I would re-enter. Well, when I re-entered, I waiting again for a little bit of confirmation, and so that one also got stopped out on a retracement a little below the BE+1, but still stayed 3 ticks above the retracement before it. Seems like this happens a lot, so I think I need to learn to recognize it better.
Thought I'd switch to a 5 min chart and leave the rectangles in the same place. Kind of gives a little different perspective.
Lost 29 ticks. 3 trades. I'm not reading the 6E well at all. I did think it could range trade after making the climb up to 6:15 CT, when I began trading. The reason I took each trade was because of the way price moved so rapidly to the area of the "break" of the 5 min candle and I just didn't think it would range with that type of "look" to it. I was wrong 3 times in a row. I think what is hard for me is that I think I can learn to read the 6E if I get to know it better and I really want to keep trading after losing 3 trades in a row. I know I have a really awful habit of overtrading, especially when I've lost. If I stop trading for the day it means I won't learn from the rest of the price action today. I guess the best thing is to find other ways of learning to read the 6E that won't involve breaking my goal of keeping to 3 losing trades a day....I may change this someday, but it's actually a really good rule, because it forces me to evaluate if the next trade is really worth losing one of my 3 trades. Learning to stop when I've lost is difficult, but it's better to learn to do it now, on demo, than develop the habit of breaking the rule and then doing the same thing when live. So, if I want to trade for a longer period each day, I need to space out my 3 losing trades. This journal has become my area for "self talk." I wasn't sure, when I began writing this, if I would break my rule and go back and trade some more, or do something else, but writing out my thoughts really helps to think through what the issues are and how to work through them. What I think I'll do, as an alternative to trading live, is go do a lot of sim replays of today's losing trades....and get it etched into my mind how the 6E looks when it ranges. If I had unlimited trades to lose, I'd keep my stop losses much tighter and probably take profits a lot quicker in range trading. This might be developing bad habits too, because I'm trying to overcome the desire to only take a few ticks on the 6E. I don't want to be a scalper, but I seem completely worthless as a trend trader. If I work on learning to scalp the 6E with sim replay it should help to recognize better how to get in to a trend when they come....I just risk getting into the habit of scalping and not trend trading.
I worked on trading this morning using sim replay and reworking every area I thought should be traded. The range around 6:30 am CT was a lot more difficult to trade than I thought it looked like it would be, and part of that is because the range of movement was so small. By the time you realize it's moving, it only goes another tick or 2 then reverses. Might be good for someone that can enter using limit orders, but I haven't figured out how to do that yet. I felt pretty discouraged after that, thinking scalping isn't going to work very well, and trend trading hasn't been working for me. Then I had the thought that I should get into the habit of finding where the ideal entries would have been, where the indicators all align and where price actually moves and posting those places on here every day. It would help me to start seeing what I'm missing when I'm trading and maybe someday I'll start to see them in real time. Well, as soon as I pulled up a 5 min chart, the entry places were very obvious, and when I looked at them on the 1 min, they were very clear as well. Sure, it's hindsight, and things are always clear in hindsight, but the thing is, the indicators lined up really well each time and would have helped to read the entries right. Oh, I know what I will do, I'll go back and find "ideal" trades on more days, just to see if they always happen.
studentofthemarkets, While you're trading...do you have up on your monitor both the 5min and 1min chart at the same time (next to each) ??? Simply, less time in changing charts and more time in just analyzing your charts. Yet, some say its information over-load to be looking at multiple charts when reality the mind has a way to focus on one chart while the other chart is somewhat not in the peripheral vision but it is in your cognitive decision making...ready to be used by you. Thus, no information over-load because your mind is sort'uv redacting out the information temporarily for one chart until you need to load it with the other chart for a decision making process. wrbtrader
Yes. Actually I keep a lot of charts up and use 3 monitors, because they all show something important, but I do try to have the 5 min and 1 min side by side and let them take up the largest screen and I focus on them the most. It's a little tricky to get used to watching several charts, but it does help avoid missing important things. With the 6E, price movement is so slow it leaves more time for watching more charts. Thanks for the suggestions!
Here are 3 more charts with "Ideal Trade Locations" according to my plan. This is really helping me a lot. I'm finding that my trades aren't lining up very often with my plan. One chart has my trades for that day on it. Even though I got 2 trades right, I didn't trust the analysis enough to hold onto them. If I had....a lot more money would have been made. Just wish I could trade my plan in real time as it looks on these charts. I think I'll start always posting my trades with the "Ideal" trades together and see how far off I am and if I can get my trades to start matching what I consider to be "Ideal." This is just a small thing that's easy to do that might prove to be really helpful.
Lost 25 ticks today. 3 losing trades and no other trades taken. This is getting to be discouraging....but I do have one thing that is giving me hope. And that is what is shown on the 1 minute chart. I have a trading plan that showed where to make good trades....now seeing them in real time is a little hard, but it's not impossible. So why aren't I taking trades according to my plan? I HONESTLY DON'T KNOW! I'm guessing it's because I don't trust my plan. I like my plan. I see it work a lot. But I always see exceptions to why it might not work. For some reason, I must be giving more weight to the exceptions than to my plan. Also, sometimes I think I'm imagining that price could do something that there's no basis for, and for whatever reason, I'm listening to myself. Here's the thing: if I would just trade my plan when it has clear signals, and skip the ones I'm not sure about, I should be able to make good trades, so I need to do that and only that and stop listening to any other thoughts. I think anybody looking at my trades might wonder what in the world was I thinking when I was taking them.....well, I do have reasons why I took them. They just weren't very good ones and they didn't work....but here's what they were: 1st losing trade....in the bigger picture...daily through hourly charts, it seemed like price could try to either break through to the lows or break the earlier morning highs and keep going and I favored a break to the upside. So, on the smaller timeframe charts, it looked like price was possibly reversing from a drop down, and I thought I had found a nice little retracement to the smaller uptrend for it to continue to go up. But the trade went against all my signals except one and would have been the perfect short trade instead of a long trade. 2nd losing trade: Actually, it wasn't so bad. The trade would have worked except I didn't wait long enough to time the 1 min candles perfectly to getting in, AND I didn't give it a good stoploss placement....only wanted to risk 8 ticks, not the 16 ticks it should have had. Well, I got stopped out by 1 tick. The trade would have had a maximum run up of 36 ticks although I'm sure I would have closed it earlier. The better and safer entry came 22 minutes later and would have give 30 ticks with one nice shot...no retracements. 3rd losing trade: Well, I thought I'd try timing this trade, so I pictured what I thought price would do....retrace then shoot for the highs, and I marked where I thought price would come down to based on how many times I get stopped out at BE+, well, I tried to find where other people's BE+1 would be and I tried to guess at the timing of when it would happen. Well, what do you know, price reached the mark I had placed for that price area AT that exact time I had marked and bounced up a few ticks...so I jumped in long....but it went against the plan I'm trying to follow with my indicators, so I watched as the indicators dictated to price to follow their leading and price obeyed and I got stopped out. Ok, I know indicators don't really lead price, they only can show what price is doing. The indicators are suppose to lead me, and I'm not following very well. Well, tomorrow I get 3 more tries.