Volpri and Overnight, I have stated from the very beginning that my intention is to learn how to scale in and out like the big boys. But you are both stating (loudly) that my current method is working just fine and you are strongly recommending that I shouldn't mess with a good thing. Hmmmmm. It seems like you might be thinking that I have about 20 dials on my trading dashboard and I have magically found just the right combination of settings - and if anyone breathes, one of the knobs may be bumped and the perfect combination be lost forever. Or not. But I do understand the old adage "If it aint broke, don't fix it!" I really appreciate your interest and your votes of confidence and your trading experience and wisdom. And it has not fallen on deaf ears. THEREFORE, after lots of thought, I have made an executive decision: I will trade All-In/All-Out on this account. I may experiment with scaling on my other live and sim accounts, but on this account, this is what I will do going forward: I will not increase the # of trades, but I will increase my position size per trade As stated before, with each extra $500 earned I will add 1 contract up to 20 Micro E-mini contracts. Once I reach $10,000, I will switch to the full E-mini's and keep going, starting with 2 and adding 1 per $5000 in the account. Here are my current stats since I began on Aug 27: 16 trading days $234 net profit $15.60 per day 92 trades $2.54 avg net trade 87% winning ratio 5.75 avg trades/day Avg max open = 1.6 contracts $10.13 net profit per max open contract per day That last figure is quite telling. My average net profit per max open is currently about $10.00 So if I CHANGE NOTHING in the way I trade except increase the contract size, this is the obvious extrapolation: "Changing nothing" means Entering the full position at one time and not scaling in. Keeping my max stop at 20 ticks. Keeping my targets where I feel comfortable. Exiting all contracts in the position at one time and not scaling out. Making about 6 trades per day. Winning about 87% of the time. If I am able to improve my stats it will be due to improved entries and exits. Period. No scaling allowed. SIMPLE. All-In/All-Out. Let's see where I can take this. Thanks Volpri and Overnight for your great insights.
I don’t know what I was thinking..LOL. My sugar must have been high. I said you had an 87% based on trading days wins and losses not trades..LOL. So how many total trades? How many were wins and how many were losses?
You are smart to stick with what works. I learned and developed and backtested strategies from early 2014 onward. I started implementing them in CL in 2017. Then I noticed how the NQ was moving while my CL plan was implemented. I abandoned my CL plan and went to NQ, because CL started looking flaky, but NQ seemed to be moving quite well north, and seemed to be working well all through 2017. Then the bombshell hit in Feb 2018, and the equity indices have never been the same since. Just examine this chart. Study it tonight. You can see why I got tripped up. STICK WITH WHAT WORKS! DON'T BE A COWBOY! Notice the dates at the bottom, and think about the magnitudes of these moves post-2017. You are so lucky you are developing a new system with the micros. I got the shit beat out of me on minis. It sucked. Bad timing? Do NOT CHANGE WHAT IS WORKING! I think you will do well, so long as you keep on keeping on.
Obrigado pela musica. Sounds like you have paid your dues and speak from painful experience. Do you wish you had stayed with CL? Can you implement your same plan anew on BOTH QM (the mini CL) and the MNQ (micro NQ)?
Negative. On the QM front, at least back then, I found it to be illiquid and with a wide spread. I have not looked at it in many years. On the CL front? Bugger! It has been ranging real nice for like 6 months! 52ish to 58sih. Decent range! Mreh, missed it. CL and MNQ in my plan combined? Well, here's the thing on that. When I was growing up in learning trading, CL was not correlated with equities. Somewhere along the line, it now has become so. See Oct 2018. It seems to be stabilizing a bit in a range of about 7 bux, but I cannot trust that range now, because of new issues propping up in Iran. (Don't even ask me about when it was at 42 bux per BBL a few years ago, lol!)
The QM seems to have decent liquidity, but oil in general right now is simply nuts for obvious reasons. Aaron (in that other place) says that he prefers oil over stock indicies because it has purer price action and is less prone to tweet action. But clearly it's not immune to drone action! Aaron also says that he doesn't think there is an oil/stock correlation, but I have been watching it for about 10 years now. While not perfect it seems to be good enough to me so that, if CL is down, I may WAIT on an NQ or YM long.