Tums good thougths... Any line or indicator is just a tool and might be an inner beg for savety. If there is no statistical proof it is a belief system. On the other hand thoughful drawn lines make me thinking and I become more and more aware of the the studied market. Might be a way to sync in.
================ GG; Right on main trend, which kicked in long today. Its your call to put it simple; but unless you plan on holding a year, fine by me, you put on your longs ; on your chart , weekly trend was down, 50 day moving average was down/down past month. 50dma - up now; so yes i look at 1 year charts.cool And in a good downtrend or bear markets; trading/selling at lows many times [not all] is profitable.Trend =friend. Have to be more careful selling lows in uptrend as you painfully found out.
And all uptrends are NOT created equal; compare uptrends before 2-27-07 , and after that time/not near as good or strong
murray I agree with you trends on major indexes kicked long yesterday. I had the right feeling about it yesterday. But nevertheless I opened a short call and lost money. The biggest mistake was that I thought that the market will come back last friday. In addition I thougth that there is enough overhead resistance to stop and pause the market - and there will not be a big intraday trend. I had to much memory on last weeks charts which made me hoping instead of acting. As you said THE TREND = FRIEND. Once identified, I need to learn to go with it.
Today I my postions for sideways market. I will loose if the Dow will close 50 or more points higher than yesterday or if the Dow will close 75 or less points lower than yesterday. I have some emotional involvement, since I am risking a big part of my account on that single trade. I lost a lot the day before yesterday, when I didn't 'feel' that the market will break. In hindsight there have been nice signs for that but I just didn't realized them in realtime.
Yesterday I missed my target by 5 points. Today I reached my target. Only 3 points more. Is it luck? I have have the feeling that the market to me today was forgiving. Thats a very good feeling for me after I have lost 2/3 of my payroll the last days. But it is also a request to invest more into planning and developing new trading systems.
The direction of the trend is the most important thing. Thats followed by trend line breaks and 50% reactions. In addition I use just the closing line of previous day. No pivots! No tick or trin! But I look at RUT and NQ if I am trading the ES or the Dow. Market can't work against you or me, if trend is correctly detected. Please contribute to this thread. Im interested to get known to your opinion.
Livermore in "Reminiscences..." once said something like that: "admitting that I was wrong with my long automatically meant that I had a reason to short". Maybe not exactly that (don't remember exactly and lazy to search for an exact quote in a book ) but you got the idea. So from my experience I found out that most of the time when I am really wrong about initial direction it means good position in an opposite direction. So plan what you want to see to admit that the market changed it's direction (on fractals that are important for your positions) and do a S&R instead of just exiting. It seems to be the most profitable way to trade (for me at least). Though emotionally it is very hard when you get hit twice or more (and it happens), so switching to such style should be done when you gain enough confidence by looking at how things go in hindsight and then slowly testing the waters with such style. Good luck! Janis
Janis Thank you! I agree with you! We are in a long term uptrend (since 2003, montly, weekly, daily), but markets are not 100% predictable nor 100% random and can surprise. That forces a trader into a re-action mode (which might be a "counter"-mode to other professions and learned behavior). It the long is not correct - just go short. I daily live its causing confusion and loss of trust. In trading its a sign of flexiblity. Basically the market cant work against me. Only I can work against the market and that would be my fault.
If a strategy worked for me a long time and suddenly there is a big drawdown something is eventually going wrong. I experienced that in my trading over and over. Is it the special market conditions to be blamed? Is is just a normal (statistical expected) drawdown? Has something changed in my confidence or own behavior? What happens after a big DD, when a lot of consecutive trades go wrong? What would have been changed? Do I behave different after losses?