Lost 41 ticks. The first trade I clearly should not have entered. I watched the beginning of the move up from 6:34 and didn't take that trade because price had ranged for about an hour and this time of day sometimes a 5 min candle barely moves. I was wrong on both of those. Also, I wasn't sure the trend up would continue. It was pretty strong on the 1 hour charts, maybe the move was over. So I watched it break the high of the day and thought I should trust the momentum of the trend to keep going...so I bought it, right at the highs. I think that trade broke every rule I have. The 2nd trade I was really proud of....I went long again, but had waited until it made a nice low. It went into some profit, and I could have closed and made back most of the losses from the first trade. But no, I wanted to hold on and see if the trend up would continue. Price seemed to get stuck and started coming back down. I even waited patiently through that for a while, but after it kept getting rejected at every attempt to go higher it made a quick drop and I got out for 2 ticks. It was the spread that took me out....the candle didn't even drop to my exit. Then price turned around and headed back up. The 3rd trade was OK....it also went in my favor for 11 ticks before turning around. I only went short there because of the lower high made from my last trade....lower high should mean lower low....but I guess not when there's a strong trend up. The 4th trade....that was more of a reaction to price moving quickly, a bad habit I'm trying to break. There wasn't any analysis behind the trade. The 5th trade I gave up trading my regular plan and wanted to just trade a small timeframe for a few ticks. I got 3 ticks after risking 6 in a drawdown. Not really what I want to be doing either. The 6th trade I went back to my plan....only I kind of didn't....once again, saw something that looked like a trade set up, but because I hadn't been thinking through the "analysis" of the trade, but watching a smaller time frame, this trade went against the trend, something my plan says I'm not suppose to do. Lost 3 trades and so stopped for the day. At this point, it doesn't look like I've made any progress in the last month. HOWEVER, I have a clearer system of rules and only 1 trade today met those rules. If I'm gonna make this work, I can't keep making trades that aren't in my rules. Why didn't I follow my rules today? Because I felt very frustrated from watching price movement that I wasn't a part of and knowing that to take a retracement into a trend was going to mean I'd be staring at my screen for maybe another hour or 2 to find the right set up later in the day....and by that time price would probably have already reversed or be ranging. So, there's my problem in a nutshell. I don't like to miss out on price movement. I don't like to be patient for hours before getting a higher probability set up. And I guess if I were too add a 3rd problem, it's that I want to be at breakeven when a trade is in profit and that just doesn't work well with the 6E. I ALWAYS get stopped out of my good trades at BE. And, a 4th area I'll need to deal with, eventually, is that my stop losses are way too big. Well, I'm leaving them like they are for now, because I want to know in the future that all these struggles I'm having aren't due to stop losses placed too tightly, they are due to not patiently waiting for my setup. Starting tomorrow: I will try to only take trades that follow my basic setup. I will try to be OK with missing out of trending action if my set up wasn't clear enough to enter. I will try to remember that only a few well taken trades in a week are all that I really need. The losing trades that don't follow the rules are going to ruin everything.
Made 22 ticks and no losing trades!!! The first trade was not my set up....forgot I was going to only take my set up today, and grabbed 3 ticks. The rest were trying to follow my set up. I'm done trading for the day. I'll still watch the charts and "paper trade" my demo account by drawing arrows for pretend trades, but there's no way I'm risking giving up any of my profits for the first profitable day in a very long time. I spent a few hours yesterday studying a 30 second chart because the timing of my entries has been completely terrible. So, in addition to making better trades using my setup, I think the work on timing might be paying off. I didn't let any trades run. Only one would have gone a little ways more, I didn't pick any trades that trended. For now, I need to focus on not taking a losing trade and capturing small profits early are better than what I've been doing. For example, the last trade I completely expected to go higher, but closed early because I didn't want to risk any pullbacks and I had my stoploss set to 26 ticks....that's a horrible risk to reward. I knew if I moved the stoploss to breakeven it would very likely be taken, so I got out when I saw I had gone into a little profit....at that point I didn't really care how high it went, just wanted to capture profits and end the day well. Turns out it did come back down, so getting out was a good thing.
Trend trading seems to be a bit beyond my trading abilities. Today had such a beautiful trend and I was unable to capture much of it. I'm considering going back to scalping to see if I can be profitable on the smaller timeframes, likely still taking trades similar to the trend trades I've been trying to get, but just working on getting in with little risk and getting a burst of the trend. Might work. Might not. But whether or not it works, it will be helpful to spend more time on the smaller timeframes to help with timing entries if I find the scalping doesn't work and I go back to trying to trade trends.
Been thinking about the nice trends the last 2 days that I have only taken a small portion of (demo only). One reason I have such a hard time is that I don't want to have much risk when trading because I don't want to lose money. Another reason is that my analyses are often wrong and holding on to losing trades just makes the losses worse. When I began using 2 contracts in the NQ I was amazed at how quickly I had so much more profit on a single day then over maybe even a whole month or so of single contract trading. There's something about taking one contract off early that lets the risk of the 2nd contract not much of a factor and it's much easier to let price go against the trade a little ways. The way the 6E moves needs this extra wiggle room. I've had many good trades stopped out right at BE+ and then turn around and trend without me. The drawback to using 2 contracts is simply that you lose twice as much when you are wrong. For tomorrow I plan to try adding a 2nd contract and I'll count both as one trade....so if there is a net gain or Zero, I won't count the 2nd contract as one of my 3 allowed losing trades. If there is a net loss with the 2 contracts, they are counted as one trade. This should also help with all the times I close a trade too early just because I finally have a little profit. Now I can close one early and let the other one run....well, that's the plan, anyhow. A runner still seems unattainable. But I think this is the solution to the psychological aspect of it. Really hoping I don't take 3 losses that are 2 contracts each tomorrow.
Made 13 ticks!! And I know you can't count wins that you didn't capture...but it does help I think to evaluate whether or not you got the direction right and just didn't take profits....well, I did have one contract that went as far as 18 ticks and I only took 4 ticks on it and that's so much better than if it had gone against me by 18 ticks and I only took 4 ticks. I think using 2 contracts may work out really well for me. The last trade was the only one where I took the first contract off for a little profit (8 ticks) and then felt much better about moving the stop loss to -5 ticks... so if it were to get hit I would not have a net losing outcome for both contracts, even after adjusting for fees. Price came back up and I was at a negative 2 ticks before it turned around and went in my favor again. It was MUCH less stressful holding onto it as it retraced, than if I hadn't had the profits from the first contract. Something else I liked about the last 2 contract trade was that the most price went against the trade was only 2 ticks...once right after entry and once 10 minutes later. And I could have moved to BE within a minute and wouldn't have been taken out before reaching the 18 ticks (if only I'd gotten out then, with BOTH contracts....oh well, you really can't think too much about the "what ifs" in trading). I wish I could get better at recognizing and taking this type of trade when they happen. 3 days in a row of small profits....very thankful to maybe have broken the long losing streak I've been on.
Something has come up that I need to take care of on Monday...it's a good thing...but will take up all of Monday and so I won't be spending anytime on trading....unless I sneak in a bit of studying Monday night. Kind of a bummer though, because I really wanted to to see how another day of 2 contract trading goes. Planning on studying a lot today to make up for not trading on Monday. Think what I'll do is use replay set at regular speed and spend a few hours sim trading a day from November or December and treat it as if it were a regular trading day.....hey, I'll post my results on here too....using 2 contracts, on a day on the 6E that I haven't looked at before. Now I feel better about losing a trading day.
Sim Traded Thursday, November 14, 2019 as a replacement for this coming Monday. I didn't look at the charts beforehand. Also, I kept it at normal speed so it would be just as good as trading in real time. Made 12 ticks. 4 on the first contract and 8 on the 2nd. Doesn't seem like much, but that's all it made in the 25 minutes I held the 2nd contract for. It was very slow moving. Most it went against me was 2 ticks, right after the entry...best type of trade!! I quit early....partly because I had some profit and really didn't want to risk giving any back and partly because price was slow moving and I kept thinking about other things I'd rather be doing. Now that I'm done and looked at how the rest of the day played out, there was nice movement after the NYO. I'll never know how I would have done, because I quit early.
LOL....I just realized my plans are for Monday in a week...June 8....so I get to trade this coming Monday after all!!! Yay!!
I feel like I'm understanding the 6E price movement better. Although I did end in losses today, that came from one trade I entered too late and didn't wait for a pullback....a problem I often have. The 2nd long trade would have made a really nice profit but I got out at BE only because after entering I realized that there was some news at 9:00 CT and I have a rule to stay out around news. However, my analysis turned out to be correct. I might need to adjust that rule to staying out only before major news events....and I'll need to find out which ones those are.....because the news didn't seem to have much effect.
My losing trades were trading against the trend today. Why did I do that?? Well, yesterday I decided to allow for countertrend trading...but only carefully, and it had to meet a certain rule. So, what do I do? Take the countertrend trades that DIDN'T meet that rule.... I guess my thinking was since I know countertrend trades can work, I should just take them....but I hadn't studied my charts for countertrend entries to time them....I'm still not sure I can time the trend trades yet, but most definitely, my timing is not right for the countertrends that go against my plan. It wasn't until after I took 3 losing trades and tried to find out what went wrong that it dawned on me what I had been doing. I guess the emotions of trying to catch the beginning of a trend led to taking the pullbacks as though they were a trend direction change and the usual rules I use to keep me from taking those trades I ignored, thinking countertrend trades are OK for me to take now....when trading, sometimes I think all my common sense goes out the window. My emotions blind me to trading carefully. That's really a scary thought. Stopping after 3 losing trades was also very hard to do today. Sometimes I hate that rule more than anything else about trading....but I always come back to the thought that that rule is the best rule I have and I should love it, because it's the ONLY thing that will stop me from blowing my account.....sure it would be nice to take unlimited trades all day long and trade as though it's monopoly money, and I'd be sure to catch at least one trend....but I can't do that will real money. The problem isn't that 3 losing trades is keeping me from being profitable (which is somehow what my emotions are telling me). The problem is that I'm not taking profitable trades consistently. And that's because, for today, anyhow, I didn't follow clear rules in my plan, not only by countertrend trading, but also because there was uncertainty around some of the trades, and I have a rule to wait until there is clarity and I didn't wait. Really hate it when it all boils down to me not making good trading decisions. But then, is that really so bad? It would be worse if the problem was that the 6E is impossible to read. Then it would be impossible to find an "edge." With the problem being me there's some hope that I can change. I need to get to the place where I am better at recognizing what is going on in the charts and where my set ups are. As I get better at this, I should be able to reject the thoughts that tell me that the 6E will follow what my plans for it are. I'm kind of alarmed at how easily I get away from sticking mechanically to a very precise trading plan....for today, that was part of the problem. By not clearly defining the only conditions I would allow for changes to my plan, I did what I wanted, not what I should have done. Maybe I should try a grading system. For each trade here are the grades: 1. C 2. B 3. C 4. F 5. D 6. D Even "grading" the trades is subjective. What I'll do is write out a checklist for each condition met and then tally up the points.... Now that I'm thinking about this I can easily use it to review all the other trades I've ever taken and see if grading them works....if it does, then I'll start posting the grades on here....and that might help when entering a trade too, because I'll start thinking ahead about what grade the trade is going to have according to the checklist, and I might actually stay out of bad trades and take good trades. I recently wrote a trading plan and it has the rules for my trades, but they aren't as specific as they need to be. I do regularly go through my trades and try to evaluate what works and what doesn't, but I haven't been very good at writing things down in a very technical manner. I'll work on this today, and revise the rules of my trading plan and make them specific enough to have a checklist I can use for grading my trades. I guess bad days aren't that bad if it means you can find a way to fix what went wrong. I hope this plan will be the final solution. It makes sense that it might....if I have clearly defined rules and follow those rules I will make money IF the rules have a true "edge." If my rules don't provide and edge, or I don't follow them, I will lose money. That's how I see it right now.