Hi RN, Great post! I have it printed out for future reference. "....Keep your context simple â use just enough to tell you which way price is headed â if only for that moment......" "...if only for that moment....." - this is a profound statement for me. I often found that by using too complicated methods to determine the context, looking at too many charts, too many timeframes, analyzing it to the n-th degree will only make me more confused, hesitate to pull the trigger or make the wrong decision. Thank you. --po
Yâall are Most Welcome Now please, take my simple ass thoughts and make them your own â otherwise theyâre not worth the paper they're written on â for YOUâ¦. Know my intention is to clear up some stuff, so youâre exclusively focusing on the essentials⦠itâs not to get you trading like me⦠It is absolutely necessary each of us find our own way with that endeavorâ¦. Besides Iâll never be there to enjoy your lossesâ¦, or suffer your windfalls (not a Freudian slip either) ============================================================================================= Get this assimilated then possibly weâll speak about the other two groups â riding along with one of them is where the money is made ================================================================================================ Final thought; What separates tradersâ¦, from the rest â traders do⦠the rest can only talk⦠That is the chasm you must ultimately cross â if you want to be one⦠If it is to be â it is up to youâ¦.. Good Trading in the Days to Come (win or lose) RN
Appreciate your comments on my chart a lot! All these "read" is what I need to develop now and know to act fast on it. Just a question on entering this type of "trapped bull/fade failed B/O trade". when you enter the trade, do you enter it on smaller time frame or you enter when the large red bar prints? Or You had a stop order in right after the red bar started to print?
Because the large green bar failed to break out with any follow through, and because that bar's low dipped just below the MA, I'd place my sell stop 1 tick or two below the low of that bar as soon as it closed. (You could also have a buy stop above previous R in case it continues back up and breaks upside; you never know what will happen). If the stop above the high of that bar was too wide for my comfort, I'd treat the trade as a momentum trade, expecting a quick break of the support floor very nearby. If that didn't break through right out of the gate, I might exit b/e and re-evaluate the action.
I think today market offers a few good PA trades. I was punished by not taking profits and breaking rules. So I had a b/e day. Not too happy with my discipline. Trade 1: long pullback at the open. Market retraced then took off. The day looked like a nice trendy day at that point. I got a bit too confident on my assumption and forgot âanything can happenâ. So I didnât take profits nor did I tight my stop. I left my stop at an odd breakout point. 35Pts maxi profit turned to 7pts. Trade 2: reenter. The signal bar is an inside bar. Wasnât a great looking signal bar. But I thought itâs worth a try if the follow through could be good. I tighten stop. But the pattern failed, a H2 long turned to a L2 short. I was stopped out. The trend has reversed. I didnât know whether I should reverse. I got to do more practice and back testing on this type of failed patterns and be ready to reverse. -5pts Did not trade during Fed meeting. PnL: +$5, 2pts, 2 trades
Matcha, I think you should make a decision now whether you want to be a big trend trader who is willing to give back profits frequently (taking b/e trades and small losses) in order to capture a trend day (where you hold through retraces and possibly add on pullback entries), or a pure intraday price action trader who looks to catch trends in chunks and take advantage of wide range days where there's good money to be made both ways, which is what I do. I realized after a lot of heartache that I am much better at snaring many smaller profits each day, even in a strong trend. I had a day recently where I captured more out of a strong trending move than the range of the move itself, because I took profits off pushes in the trend and re-entered at better prices than my exits. This was psychologically easier on me than holding through retraces and possibly giving it all back (I have so "been there, done that" and it sucks). Once you make that firm decision, you can then focus on creating trade management rules to ensure you get the most out of your trading. What's happening now is you're seeing big trending days after the fact, where you get little or nothing (most likely a result of bias such as "too high" or "too low" keeping you from trading the trend, or from holding for reasonable profit targets), and you feel silly for not capturing something out of those days. You're then applying psychology from days like that to non-trending days where the price swings back and forth or chops in a smaller range. On your second trade, consider the fact that price broke the 20-bar EMA and did NOT find support at previous resistance. That's a double whammy for the bulls trading intraday in your time frame. Once that occurs, look for a short setup until bullish price action returns. You came into the day with a "this could be a real nice trend day" bias and were blinded to what was in front of you. Heck, I did the same thing in CL this morning. In pre-market I traded long, then short (wide range action). Then after NYMEX open I traded long for the breakout, long again on a pullback entry for the next breakout, then long yet again for a breakout that never transpired. Then I watched a complete reversal ensue, pretty much identical to the action you went long off of with your second trade, and sat on my hands through the whole thing. I let my bias cloud my view of price and I waited over half an hour for another long entry instead of trading a perfectly valid reversal setup to the short side.
Hi Matcha, Arrg! Remember to take profit next time! My trading today: 2 trades, -1.25 ES pts. Hesitated and missed the trade at your trade #1. We'll do better tomorrow! --po
Nodoji/Pshchologist/Doctor You pointed exactly what my struggle and sympton is everyday. My "try to catch trendy day" spirit clouded my eyes... I dreamed about holding through the bear/bull days to get a 100 pts profit every night ...And I thought it could be today.... I now made a firm decision to follow my orignal plan. I am just a catch avg 20Pts intrad day move type of trader. I really have no rich stomach to hold through big ups and downs. And I should not mix the 2 type of trading style together. I then work on my trade mangement plan on each type of context... Thank you!
Yep, learned something new everyday. Keep making errors, keep fix them. Then keep repeat errors, keep correcting them, on and on. I am still working on my trading plan as the problems revealing every trading day. Are you happy with yours now?