Thank you Matcha for your reply. Yeah! Someday you will trade only the early morning hours and be consistently profitable and life would be wonderful. I actually heard some people do trade only a couple of hours profitably in the morning and then they are done for the day. I feel a bit more relaxed now taking a lunch break and only focused in the morning and afternoon sessions. I spent some time watching Al's trading videos on youtube. You are correct that they are for more advanced traders. I think he is a very good scalper. He probably makes most of his profits scalping more than swing trading. He often said that making one point a day trading 100 ES contracts can make 7 figures a year. It make sense to work towards increasing the size rather than to increase the number of trades. Marcel Link also mentioned that [page 33] "The best day traders try to hit a lot of singles in their trading and keep booking modest profits. When you swing for the fences, you tend to strike out a lot more; it's better to hit 3 or 4 singles in a day than to go for homers. Going for the smaller waves is safer and usually more profitable.".... I have been re-reading this paragraph and think it suits me quite well even though I love to have those home runs. It is not just letting profits run but knowing when to take the profits is just as important. --po
Matcha, I saw you worked very hard with e-mini, and still struggling. In my opinion, e-mini 1-5 minutes chart looks very profitable when doing analysis after market close, but it is very hard to catch. A new trader may better to trade longer time frame, less frustration and more success. I will attach some daily charts for you, and you can find hundreds of the stocks like these easily, stocks just have better trend than e-mini. After several years of trading with stocks successfully, you may come back with e-minis. Good luck! PT
Today is the day that nothing seems working for me. It is the first I felt a bit emotional. Discouraged, disappointed and beat. 6:45 short, 10966. Breakout pullback setup on Day session chart. Globex session it was a leg 2 pullback on EMA. And it was also a short on resistance level. But when price formed a bottom tail at the S1 level, I was too afraid of the price is coming back. Besides on Globex session it was a 4th push. So I was out just for a quick scalp. The RR is not great. 9Pts After price made the last climatic move, then spiked up. Bulls are trying t push price higher. 7:30am long, 10987. Entered on a bear trap bar. But bear trap turned to a bull trp. I was trapped⦠7:58 re enter long 10984. Entered on a leg 2 pullback. Stopped out, market had more leg down. -11Pts 8:30 when market sets up a perfect wedge bull flag at S1 level, now I had no confidence to get back in long⦠10:20 long , pirce made 3 leg down and final flag. And itâs the bottom of the channel from 6:30, 8:30. stopped out. I was so hesitated to reverse even though it was a clear channel break out then pullback⦠Then market started to sell off. 12:00 short on wedge bull flag. Since market has exceeded the average range. So I treated it as a small profit scalp. It finally worked. -12Pts 12:21, tried a reversal trade. Didnât work. 2 problems with this trade. 1) I entered too soon. I should leave my entry at one tick above the 12:20 bar. If the reversal trend is strong, my order wouldnât be filled. The 12:20 bar was just a bull trap. 2) the 4 bear bars in a row indicates the bear is very strong. The safe entry would be a higher lowâ¦. PnL: -$124. 6 trades, 33% winrate If I canât adjust tomorrow, I might take a few days off. It will be a bad idea to trade with despair emotions, even in SIM. Then I am just going to disappoint and doubt myself even more. But I will still be watching market and learn.
IB has them. They are from GLOBEX, less liquid than their counter futures part. M6E has fair liquidity.
Matcha, don't despair, it was a crazy day. You should consider it a success that you only had a small loss - many people got hurt badly today. Tomorrow is another day, just make sure to start with a clean slate.
I sometime look at some stocks intra-days. I think stock tends to breakout. but emini just offers lots of pullbacks. I think I want to stick with YM for a little while. IMO, it's not how difficult the instrument it is to trade. Patterns are patterns. chart is chart. liquidity is liquidity. Its how I trade... Of course the emini we probably face more pros than we did in stocks... Thanks for chart! Please send me more ideas if you had with large time frames!! For stocks, I would really like to look into swing stocks with longer time frame chart. Sim first!
Do you have a rule about trin? Would you have done better with your short entries if you knew you would not take any long entries because of the high trin value?
Matcha, Im getting ready to start a pity party...want to join? From my newbie/struggling like crazy point of view...it looks like you are trying to do too much... you have bull/bear traps, wedges, triangles, vwaps, Market profiles, s/r lines, fibs all sorts of stuff written in this journal. From my experience with the emotional up and downs, try and keep them under control or walk away...Im still trying to heed to my own advice :eek: I find myself getting more confused and frustrated and doing too much or analyzing too much when my emotions are running wild.