Thanks....I do look at those higher timeframes quite a bit, but I have decided to be a scalper....scalping the trend instead of staying in a trend. Chop still doesn't work well for me....meaning 5 min bars or so that don't move much, but it's the 1 minute time frame I'm focusing on. I do have a plan. It might work better on the YM than it did the NQ. The point of using it on the NQ was because NQ trends....but I don't think trend trading is what I am best at. The plan I use can be adjusted for scalping. Need to see how the next few days go on the YM.
Still trying to figure out what I'll be focusing on, but I'm leaning toward the NQ again. I do like the way the YM gives more opportunities to get in, because it retraces every couple 1 minute candles. But as I've said before, it's not as clean looking as the NQ. If I continue to trade the NQ then I need to work on the following: Do everything I can possibly think of to keep from revenge trading or losing self-control at anytime. I must follow my plan. I need to work on my plan. I have a method, and I have set ups. My method works, I'm not planning on changing anything there, but the set ups I'm using aren't getting me in where I need to be getting in at because I would need to take counter trend trades. So, I need to write up some additional ways to allow for getting in. Days like today, there weren't any set ups using my regular plan unless I make exceptions. Yet there were good opportunities. That happens a lot, and it leads to being frustrated at missing getting in and then chasing price. Not sure I can fiddle with my set ups to make them work better, but it's worth a try. With the NQ I will likely need a larger stop loss than I want to, but if I can get in and get the trades right more often than not, then it won't seem as big of an issue. Right now, I am still calling trades wrong too often to be comfortable with a larger stop loss....which means I need to stay on demo to develop confidence with it. Another reason for sticking with the NQ is that I am still profitable live, and did well in demo last month. Lots of room for improvement, and I'm not exactly sure I'm going to stay profitable, but there's no reason to jump ship just yet. When I have more demo time down and feel confident that my stats show profitability with consistently using the same method and set ups, then I should have more confidence to trade live with discipline and not be as easily tempted to revenge trade. Also, I can put a daily loss on my platform. I don't have that in place because somehow I felt like I had overcome revenge trading, but apparently not.
Your showing a loss, but difficult to see if your long or short, But your chart is a 5mn, I will say i use a 5 as well, but my entries and exits are on a 1mn. A little more detail will be helpful for you.
Thanks for the feedback! This is just the chart and time frame I use for posting trades in this journal. I actually had 6 timeframes up and 3 monitors......the monitor with the largest time frames I don't look at too often....get a little dizzy if I watch 3 monitors at once. I like entering on the 1 minute too! It was a profitable trade. What looks like a loss is just how far the open trade went against me. I got in, it went backwards 15 ticks, but my stop was set at 28 ticks and then turned around to get to the target of 60 ticks. It was a short trade. Usually I have that on the trade list, but forgot to put it on there.
Since you mentioned YM, I will be adding it to my index list, Its moves are more consistent, BUT? I need to have the ES one minute in place, The Dow seems to be playing follow the leader when its not sure of its direction.
Well, that was just one day I traded the YM. I won't be looking at it again. I only look at the NQ. The NQ trades differently than the ES and YM....at least it does when considering the scalping trades I take. It would be too confusing to try to learn the movements of both, so I just stick with NQ. I have tried the ES and YM multiple times in the past. Prefer the NQ. I tend to leave it after bad days, but then keep coming back to it.
The only thing I can say is we all see our own opportunity, but I've always ignored NZ and YM, call it tunnel vision, , those quarter points will soon be a thing of the past? I guess old dogs can learn new tricks.
This was a week full of lessons on how I'm making decisions that are negatively affecting my trading. I used to think poor trades were simply a lack of understanding of technical analysis, and I'm sure that does play a part, but for this week, it was all me. Today: Lost 71 demo ticks (I'm allowing 3 trades a day) 2 Full stop outs and 1 half stop out. I didn't trade the clear trend down. Why? Even though I found opportunities that followed my rules, I don't like shorting. It would have been better to trade the opportunities my plan allowed for, trading with the trend, than to take trades where I took them. But I didn't want to take nice, clear set ups, because I don't like shorting first thing after the Open. So, instead, I waited. For a while I thought about walking away from the charts because I didn't want to short and thought it would be a while before I could take a long trade that met my conditions. That is probably what I should have done. Then there was chop and I became impatient and traded in the chop. How many times have I done that and determined not to trade in 5 min bar ranges? I knew it was ranging. But somehow, thought price was slowing down so much, that if I didn't get a breakout, it would move so quickly I wouldn't be able to get in safely and have price continue far enough to get to my target. So, I chose to not get in safely, in hopes that what I was wishing for would happen. Better thing to do would be to not have taken any trades today. I need to learn to wait. And be OK with waiting even more. Even a whole day. Waiting is better than losing. I just keep repeating these same lessons over and over....and over....and over. Will I ever learn? There was really no excuse for taking the 2nd and 3rd trades. I think they were a flare up of the revenge trading that I'm very prone to. This week, my statistics and trades list are a little complicated because I tried a lot of mechanical entries in a second demo account on the NQ, not trading direction, but seeing how tight I could get a stop loss to break even and not get stopped out first. I'm not including those losses here. I'm also not including losses on the YM. I am including every other trade taken on the NQ, which is my regular trades, and the one premarket trade I took, and also one other trade I took to compare NQ with YM, which probably shouldn't be included, because it was experimental, but then, it did work, and it helps me feel like I had a winning week....even though I kind of didn't. Main NQ Demo Trading Account: Lost 12 ticks this week: NQ Demo for experiments and Premarket trades: Made 71 ticks, if you don't include the trades that weren't really trades (super tight stop loss and moving to BE quickly). Live Account: Lost 29 ticks ...that was posted ealier. Don't want to repost it again. So, if I manipulate all the stats, I actually ended up with a positive 59 ticks in demo for the NQ and negative 29 ticks for live. Not too bad for a roller coaster of a week. More than anything, I need to have the self-discipline to trade right. Never, ever, thought trading would be so much about self-control. Used to think it was about reading charts accurately...and it is, but I guess the difference is that I thought I should be able to read the charts at all times, and take trades anywhere that I liked and have them work, if I just knew how to read price action. Now it seems if this is going to work, I have to stick with only the places I know have a tendency to work. What is hard to accept is that I've realized this before and I'm still having a really hard time sticking with my rules that help to get those good trades.