Awesome trade! Nice work. That's the sort of setup and trading that is money in the bank. Keep demoing ES. It will make you a better trader. At least I think this is what happened to me when I moved to FESX from YM.
Only traded AM session. Only took one trade at the open today. Exited the trade prematurely. I did not give the trade any room to breathe. Out way too soon on the trade. I knew at that point I lost confidence on the trade and started to contradict my original long decision. I entered on a first pullback set up after a clear reversal signal @7:00. Then when bar started to retrace after I entered, I thought: âoh, maybe I was wrong, today is probably a huge bear day with a large gap. There might be some dramatic selling pressure come in here; I might need to get out.â So I messed up a good trade. Got to put all the thoughts in my trading log, analyze and keep track of them. Lately I have been making a lot of âshaked outâ trades. PnL: 0.25pt. 1 trade
Matcha, you are guilty of thinking while trading and friends don't let friends think and trade Thinking needs to take place BEFORE your order is placed, not after. Certain concepts have no place in trading and one of them is the belief that you are wrong or right. Trades are just parts of the entire day's/week's probability game. If you put on a trade based on the setups you've chosen to trade, you are never wrong! Price may end up hitting your stop before hitting your target, but that doesn't mean you're wrong, it just means price hit your stop and it's time to watch for the next setup. Read this out loud so you hear it. In fact, record this and play it back so you hear it from outside yourself: When I put on a long trade off a higher low, I look for price to make a higher high. When I put on a short trade off a lower high, I look for price to make a lower low. I wait patiently for price to approach the previous level. Price rarely moves in a straight line. Many traders wish they got in where I did! They're hoping price comes back and gives them a chance to get in where I did. If price comes back there, they'll get in, too. If price doesn't come back there, they'll chase price as it breaks out. That's how price makes higher highs or a lowers low in a trend. In my trade today, as long as that higher low holds, my trade is valid unless price fails to visit that previous high and then breaks back down through the higher low. ******* Matcha, unless you're trading an established range, your initial profit target is a higher high or a lower low in the direction of the trend (or the expected trend in the event you entered on an early reversal signal). The only reason to exit your trade early is if price gets very close to the previous high and fails to break it, or breaks it very weakly and retreats. At that point you may want to move your stop to b/e, then re-evaluate the action if stopped out.
Hi Matcha, I had a similar LONG trade at 7:02am p.t. at 1260.75 but a different outcome. I hanged on to the trade to try to reach my target but was stopped out at 1259.00. My stop was set at -1.75 points. Evidentally, the stop needed to be a bit wider. The market turned around immediately after hitting my stop by 1 tick to 1258.75 and reversed higher to pass my target plus more. I had another trade like this later. Overall, I overtraded today, 7 LONG trades, net +1.50 ES points. One thing I did do today, it wasn't easy, I took NoDoji's advice to hang on to most of my trades through my targets. I still need more work on my exits. Thanks to NoDoji, I would have done worse if I didn't do what she had recommended. Overall, it was a volatile market even I stayed with the up trend from the start of the RTH. Lessons learned today: stops in a strong momentum market might need to be adjusted wider (like Al said in his book) or pass up the trade and wait for a less risky setup. Best trading to you! --po
Hi NoDoji, Another excellent advice on how to handle trade exits. I definitely need to adhere to this! I am going to print this out to remind myself. Thank you very much. --po
Thanks, Nodoji. I will try my best working on it. Will keep repeating the above paragraph out loud. I will get out either the "money profit" is made or "trailing stop " is hit. I really shouldn't be "thinking too much" while trading. There was so "sign" to getting out. This is the major discipline issue now I have to work on. M
A wild day. Took 3 trades. Trade 1: 7:28 long. Break out pullback long. The entry bar and follow through bar are both dojis. I took the trade out when I saw no follow through. -0.5pt Trade 2: 10:00 long. Triangle breakout. Double bottom pullback long. This is the counter-trend trade that I will need to cut out completely. I might not be ready to take this type of trade after AM session. Even in the AM session the 1st PB I am looking for needs to be very clean trended, like the one we had yesterday. I knew at that point I got a bit greedy that thinking if this can go up, it will at least test the next resistance level. It could be a 6 pt swing trade. Since itâs in a trading range, I let the market take out my stop. -2pt. Trade 3: 11:06 short. BOPB. Short on the smaller time frame after price broke LOD. I took the 2pt money target. PnL: -0.5 Pt. 3 trades
Hi matcha hope all is well. I know you are sim trading the ES having traded the ES with real money i can attest that it is indeed a challenging product. Im sure you know this and im sure you can be successful trading it. Only thing is it requires more capital i feel to trade it rather than the capital to trade the YM. Anyways hope your trading is on the up & up i cant wait to get back in the TF when i finish my midterms. GL
Hi Matcha, Indeed it was a wild wild wild day. Traders were trading the "headline news". I took a Long trade at exactly the same spot as your #2 and got stopped out for -1.5pts. I thought the market was making a reversal at that point. In retrospect, it didn't look like there was any big momentum going for it like the very sharp reversal at 11:20 pst. I then took a Short trade after it broke down from the uptrend line from the previous trade and waited for a retracement to the MA to enter the short at 10:20pst. I closed that position after it broke the previous low and pulled back to my target of 2.5 pts. Net 1.00 pts. For the rest of the day, I found it hard to put in a trade with my default stop of 1.75 points. The setups/entries were mostly > 2.00pts from the previous swing hi/lo. I also dialed down to the 1 min chart to find my setup. And I know it's a more risky thing to do. I noticed you had a 2 pts stop for your 2nd trade. How did you determine the 2 pts? Did you set it according to a swing lo on a smaller time frame? Thanks. --po
Its just that lots of traders have been adviced me to demo ES. I thought it's not a bad idea to do so. By oberserving ES and YM these days. I found often ES gives 1pt move, good for scale out if trading mutiple contracts. I am not there yet. Plus I think ES often have a nicer signal bars. But to be honest, I didn't expect the risk is that large. These days are special though. I am not sure if I will trade real money with ES yet. But I am thinking of starting with SPY in live account if I really like the product. Good luck on midterm and back to market soon!