Brother man, let me tell you something... It's the only charts I have been using since I started trading in 2014. It's all I stare at day after day after day. And since most everyone else uses and posts time-based charts, it has been a hell of a time for me to try to translate in my head what I see on their charts. Defined patterns are different. Hell, I would not even know how to recognize the chart I posted on a time-based chart through the 1M, 5M, 10M, 1H, 3H series, or however it goes. P.S. For what it's worth, that chart I posted above is a 20,10 chart. Huge, not meant for scalping a few ticks here and there, for sure! hehe.
Made 39 demo ticks. Stayed on the 5 min chart for trading and watched the 15 min and hour charts closely. That seemed to help, but it was still difficult to read. As far as trading according to my rules go, I'm still a little confused as to what my exact rules should be...seems like to get in where I want to get in, I need to anticipate what price and the indicators will do, not wait for it to happen, because waiting means I'm too late. But I'm not really sure. It could be that because it changed from trending up overnight to more of a downtrend (so far this morning), it was somewhat confusing. My plan to trail is great for trending conditions, but when price is ranging like it did where I traded, I would have been better taking profits faster. I think I'll add that to my rules. For the premarket I worked on not getting delayed entries by going for 6 ticks (10 at first). Took 10 trades. First 5 trades had 4 losers and 1 winner. Last 5 trades had 4 winners and 1 loser. So, I'm hoping that improvement was because I learned to read it better and not due to chance.
Today ended in losses (not in the mood to share them) but I think it was helpful for seeing things I should change. [Edit - this is a little lengthy because I was trying to think through everything - not sure it would be of value to anyone else to read] First of all, trading the 5 minute candles without looking at lower timeframes has helped me to pay a lot more attention to what is going on with the 1 hr and 15 minute charts and that has been helpful for understanding better what the 5 minute chart was doing. However, my timing for entering has been way off. Why? Well, I've been noticing that I'm usually trading the 2nd hour after the open because the first hour is so volatile that I'm hesitant to trade it and my indicators aren't perfectly aligned for the right entry places either. The second hour has a lot more ranging behavior and I'm trading it like it was the first hour. What I need to do is simply be more aware that I keep doing this and stop taking entries that only work in high volatility. Basically, to trade this time of day, I need to expect more retracements, and get into them, in the direction of the expectation I have for the trend. There aren't as many clues on the 5 minute chart as there are on the 1 minute chart for the short term movements, so if I drop down to the 1 minute chart, it should be easier to time those retracement entries. It felt kind of nice to think that if I stuck with 5 min candles I could have a large stop loss and not have to time a retracement entry, because I'd expect the 5 minute candles to travel far, but that was faulty thinking. It's the same price movement whether I'm looking at 5 min or 1 min candles and to not plan for a retracement to happen simply leaves me open to more loss potential. What I think I'm a little better at is seeing how using 2 indicators on the 5 min chart helps to determine what price is doing. I think I still want to use that for confirmation of a trade/trend direction. I had a plan a while ago that was good for scalping and I used it for taking 30 tick sl and 60 tick target trades. I want to go back to that for entries, while keeping in mind the overall direction. Although I don't want it to turn into only scalping, I might trade a combination of some scalping and some trades will be held onto longer. Forgot to add that I didn't look at charts until 9:37 CT today, so no premarket trades.
Edit: After writing what was written below the chart, saw price was dropping and I was very sure it would make a good trade to the short side, so I tried to trade it. But my trading chart was closed and it was a couple minutes before I could get it open and be able to trade. So, I got in super late, but I was so confident it was right, I took it anyway....but it was too late and it turned. I had given it a large stop loss....and so, was down for the day...but just as I got out, I noticed all the signs were what I look for to go long....so I got in long....but that trade wasn't right either, and I took another loss....but then, when that loss was hit, it was perfect for a trade to the short side....and that trade worked, but didn't make up my losses, so now I only made 8 ticks for the day. Not really sure what to do about overtrading. I am trying to select trades carefully, but sticking to 3 trades a day and 30 ticks stop loss and 60 ticks target was very difficult emotionally because I had to be so precise. It made me not even want to trade it was so stressful, so I need to find a balance where I'm not stressed out trading and yet still trading carefully. I wasn't stressed out today. Going into losses doesn't cause the same kind of stress as needing to be perfect. There's got to be something psychological going on for my behavior and I'll need to think how to find a good solution, but for now I don't have a solution for it. WRITTEN BEFORE THE LAST 3 TRADES: Premarket: 4 ticks from 1 trade....target 6 ticks, but minus 2 ticks fees RTH Demo: 13 ticks. All from breakeven trades. No losses. I wasn't intending to move to BE so much. It just kind of happened because I was using larger stop losses and looking at the price action, didn't think I could get a 1:1 risk to reward out of each of the trades, so after they went into profit a little, I moved immediately to BE. For example, one trade had about 50 ticks for the stop loss, and I wanted the target to be 40 ticks away and so I moved to BE quickly on that one and of course got stopped out. There's two things to consider about moving to BE quickly.....if price does move fast and far, moving to BE soon isn't as likely to get taken out. However, if I can't get the trade to BE and it takes out my stop loss first, then that's a huge amount of risk for not taking profits very often. So, it's not my plan to trade like this often, but it for times like when it's this choppy, or around the open, when price can spike really fast against the trade, yet the trade does have potential to make a lot of profit, I will still use it. I nearly took smaller profits on a few of the trades, but then price turned against it so quickly that the hesitation meant I lost the opportunity.
HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!!! I've been thinking about making some changes, and the beginning of 2021 seems like a good time to start them. First of all, I think I've kind of butchered the system I'm wanting to trade. Nobody could ever guess what my trades are supposed to look like by looking at my trades. So, I plan to focus on fixing that. To do that, I should be journaling specific details about what I'm doing right and wrong with detailed screenshots of each trade and I'd rather keep those kinds of details to myself. This journal has become an overall summary of how the day went. So, I likely will only briefly post charts and a list of goals to mark off in order to save time for writing in a new lengthier, personal journal. There's another benefit to not writing my thoughts out on here as much. And that is that I will need to maintain personal discipline by myself, without letting the world know what's going on. When I've stepped away from this thread in the past my trading has become sloppy. That shouldn't happen, and it really shows that I struggle in this area. I plan to spend time weekly, if not daily, on reading material or videos to help with this. Another change will be to post in here late at night, rather than immediately after ending trading for the day. This way I can keep track of things I did through the entire day, like writing in my personal journal and time spent developing myself as a disciplined trader.
Here is a screenshot of the spreadsheet I plan to use to evaluate how I'm doing. It's filled in for yesterday's last 3 trades. The trades before that weren't allowed in my trading plan and I'm not including them.
Here are some things that helped me. 1) Automate your stops and targets. Especially when trading real money you don't need to keep watching price move. However, you can check back every so often if stop or target has not been hit. 2) Set an an overall stop loss for the day, so you don't blow up. 3) Instead of having a big stop loss or averaging down, look to reverse direction when the market proves you were trading in the wrong direction. 4) Figure out how to determine overall trend, and current trend. Also, determine if trend has reversed. Don't trade during news reports unless you have a hedge. 5) Once report is in wait a bit still since you could have false movements. However, if PA is confirming the news say it was good, you would go long. 6) Use trade setups that have edge. 7) If price is in middle of range, or in barb wire pattern, or randomly going up and down through moving averages, don't trade. 8) Have a reason to get into a trade. Make sure PA confirms your bias. Have a reasonable stop and target.