I don't give advice per se, but I do share what I would do personally, and if I were trading the NQ, as I believe you mentioned in a couple of your posts, my free YouTube video focus would be on keywords: themarketguys, Stock Market Timing Stephen Whiteside, and oldschoolchartist. The Market Guys is AJ Monte. I would use YouTube's filter to get his most up-to-date video clips. Stephen Whiteside is Canadian, so only certain videos he does focus on the US Index markets. Old School Chartist is Jim Roof, but it looks like he has not posted any new videos since 2017. Still, his old ones might be worth a look just to study the method to his madness. (I don't know if the guy is even alive still. His voice did not sound like that of a young whippersnapper.) I wouldn't bother with Scott Barkley, Nick McDonald, or Jarratt Davis unless I were trading Forex, in which case, I would also lookup keyword: traders4traders, and cristian moreno daily call. (Traders 4 Traders is Bradley Gilbert.)
It's helpful to learn from others what is working for them, so thanks for sharing. I looked each of the traders up and they all seem to have good methods, so I'll continue to take a look at some of their free stuff. Scott Barkley has a Pattern Recognition Trainer for free at his site that I used a little bit a couple years ago but now I see it's value even more, so I'm starting to use it again to get those patterns down.
Update: Yesterday I didn't trade but studied trading. Sometimes that is more important that practicing. After reviewing basic patterns, ABCD structures, support and resistance and a few other methods of technical analysis I finally had a better day today. 11 wins 6 losses. 64 percent win rate. (Demo only) I did OK as far as trying to maintain self-discipline: 1. After every losing trade I had a winner today, regardless of how long I waited after the losing trade. I'm not sure what the rule should be to avoid multiple losers in a row. Maybe the answer is in only trading the best set ups. If there is a clear set up after a losing trade, take it, if not, don't revenge trade. 2. I didn't jump into a fast moving market. 3. I didn't fudge the rules at all today. 4. I pretty much followed all the rules of my system. However, some of my losing trades are allowable with my system, but seem to have some characteristics that could be filtered out, so I'll need to study this out some more.
Thanks. I trade only NQ using a 10 tick SL and 10 tick TP. I need a higher than 50% winrate to start to pay for fees/commissions. I haven't decided yet if I will trade micro or full contract when I go live. Micro NQ doesn't form candlesticks as precisely as I need them for scalping. Also, the fees and commissions on the micros is between 8% and 12.5% per round trip, depending on which broker I use. For the regular contract they are just under 5%. That's a big difference when working with such tiny trades. My plan is to get consistently around 70% or better. If I can ever get there, then the plan is to increase the target to 20 ticks. So, to answer your question: If trading full contracts and subtracting 5% per round trip, profit would have been: $170.00 If trading micro contracts and substracting 12.5% (not adjusted for any slippage), profit would have been: $4.25
Sorry, my math was wrong in the post above. The percentage rates only work for 20 ticks (what I used to use as a TP)....basically 20 ticks, or $100 in the NQ is going to cost $5 for the full contract, which is 5% and 20 ticks, or $10 in the MNQ is going to be $1.25, or 12.5%. I use $5 as the setting for commissions for full contract in my demo account, and $1.25 for the micro. The PL, would still be the same. $170 regular contract or $4.25 micro contract (according to my platform's calculations). I didn't realize until now that for 10 ticks on the NQ I pay 10% in fees and commission for full contract and 25% for micro. That's a lot of money. I feel like I've complicated answering a simple question.
Today was horrible. And it wasn't due to lack of self discipline. My method isn't clear to me on when to enter trades. I'll spend this weekend giving it an overhaul and trying to find what is wrong, because right now, without having reviewed my trades, I have no idea what is wrong. 6 wins and 15 losses. 28% win rate (worst day ever trading this system). Using the regular NQ contract with fees/commissions subtracted my losses are $692.50 (demo). As far as my goals for maintaining self-discipline, I'm going from memory here because I'm too disappointed to do a review of my trades: 1. I jumped back in often after a losing trade. Yesterday that worked well. Today it didn't. 2. I did jump into a fast moving market a few times, and that accounted for at least 3 losers, and I think 1 winner (going from memory). 3. For the most part I stuck to my rules. 4. Re: carefully following all the rules: I misread one trade completely. Entered in based on a rule that I forgot was negated by another rule. The trade worked, after almost being stopped out.
Today was another losing day. I had a 42% win rate. 13 wins, 18 losses. Using $12.50 fees/commissions per round trip to mimic micros, I lost $562.50 (demo). I don't want to write about how I did with self-control. I'm disappointed in myself. I thought I'd try posting a 5 min chart with my trades on it. I can see how I traded poorly. I'm hoping that by showing the world I'll trade more carefully in the future.
Today's trades on a 5 min chart. Maybe I'll make comments on the trades in the future but for today, I'll just say, I was discouraged after my early trades and so didn't trade as carefully after that. And yes, I did take 6 losing trades in 6 minutes. It's very embarrassing. I know not to do that. When it's demo, it doesn't really hurt, but I've done it with real money, a long time ago, and that really hurts.
I think not only will I start posting my charts, but I'll make a commitment of only taking 10 trades maximum a day. If I know I made a commitment in my journal here to only take 10 trades a day, I'll be more likely to stick with it. Hope everyone reading this is trading better than me.