If you're successful at it, that's all that matters! My comments were more directed at someone who is focused on the micro but is not having success. Best wishes to you!
I think it depends on what your aim is. If you're scalping for ticks - who cares about higher time frames? If you want to capture a larger move - you definitely need context and a big picture view as the 1-minute or even 5-minute will frequently give false signals. Thanks and likewise!
I think you both make good points. I usually focus on the smaller than 5 min timeframes with the 5 min as my base reference chart. I find that if I ignore the 15 min, 1 hr or even daily so that I don't get the bigger picture, I get surprised by the action that plays out on the lower time frames. It's the higher timeframes that dictate the moves that I look to get into on the smaller timeframes. At the same time, I'm not actually attempting to trade the full potential of the larger moves, so I am still scalping--but with the goal to trend trade eventually. I should try marking on my chart how I would trade the move, if I was in it for the full move. I think I'll try that starting Monday. Thanks to both of you.
Best wishes to you. Whatever works for you. One concept that I have to remind myself sometimes is to let the market do the heavy lifting. Friday was a perfect example where once I knew the low was in, I just let it go -- took the dog for a walk and then went down to the basement and worked out. I'm not saying every day is like that for me but when I can catch them like that, it's a beautiful thing not, to be, or feel like I need to be, glued to the screens.
"The biggest error short-term traders make is thinking they can trade every day the same way; essentially, that all trading days are the same. That’s not correct." -- Larry Williams
Changed my rules to 20 ticks stop loss and 80 ticks for a target. Ended positively (barely). I figure if I can learn to only take the trades that are more likely to get to 80 ticks then I can add one or 2 contracts that should easily get to 20 and 40 ticks with a high win rate on those, and the 3rd leave at BE and then trail and trade according to what price action says it could do, not some randomly placed 80 tick goal. High accuracy is what I'm striving for and after I reach that goal, I will limit daily drawdowns by limiting the number of losing trades. That's my plan. For now, I trade with the frustration of seeing my trades going partway to the 80 tick target, then turning around and getting stopped out for 20 ticks and that frustration gives me the incentive I need to be more selective in my entries.
I think I'll start posting in this journal again, but change some things. Instead of focusing on charts and ticks gained or lost, I'll write about what needs to be improved and my plan to improve it. For today, I took several trades against the trend. What was really wrong about them was that they were against a very strong trend, and I know not to do that. Seeing this made me realize I've had less self-discipline since stopping this journal. I've also neglected following my former plan. Goals before posting tomorrow: Review my most recent trading plan tonight. Follow my plan tomorrow.
Today I was careful not to trade against the trend. I also tried hard to enter a trade with potential and I did find one. I set the target to 200 ticks, and got the target. That sounds great, but I was only barely profitable today because I haven't been limiting my losing trades and took too many in the chop before the good trade was made. The right stop loss size for those losing trades would have been 50 to 60 ticks, and since there was a final pop up at 8:55 CT even a larger stop loss would have been hit. So that would have been 100 to 120 ticks lost if using 2 contracts. I took 8 two contract trades. All stopped out at 20 ticks each except for one 19 tick winner and the final winner, which made 19 and 199 ticks. For those 8 trades, losses came to 254 ticks, twice as much as what 1 rightly placed stop loss would have been. Gains were 237. My profits for the day came before these 8 trades. All that to say, I either need to go with a larger stop loss and limit my number of trades to prevent more losses, or I need to find better rules for entry that would keep me from entering to early and still limit my number of trades. Losing too much over a short amount of time is something I've struggled with for years. The only thing that helped was having a rule to limit the losing trades to 3. But that meant I was finishing too early to actually trade the day through and the trading experience is also really important. I don't think I'll limit the number of losing trades per day yet....I will after I get to the place of learning to get the good trades and trail them. But I think I will limit my trades to 1 losing trade per 5 minute candle. There were good entries all along that drop, and it would be much more likely that one of those would have been good, than to take 7 ridiculous trades in the space of about 5 minutes. By limiting my trades to 1 loss per 5 minute candle, I need to have a larger than 20 tick stop loss, and for now, I think I'll try to stick with a 1 minute candle size, or around that amount. I'll leave it flexible. If anyone has read my journal through, I think I'll come across like a broken record, always struggling with this same issue, working on it for a while, then relapsing. If I didn't really want to overcome this, I wouldn't post in on here for all to see. I'm hoping that by writing it all out it will help me to remember to have the self-discipline to follow through and do better. “Tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it... yet.” ― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables.