If you want to learn something simple and effective learn about forks. http://www.cmegroup.com/education/interactive/median_lines/index.html My chart here shows two forks. The green long term (was drawn on a 5min) and the red. Im trading mini gold here off a 50tick chart, and my entries are near perfect, however if this were real money I'd probably been stopped. But using the forks I took a short each time the upper fork line was hit, and my targer was the red median line (middle line) and made a nice $ 480.00 on trade. Usually you want to trade in the direction of trend, so here I was counter trading and was lucky enough to get my target. But watch the video and enjoy...I think you'll get hooked cm69
hey guys, im basically posting to keep the journal alive, don't worry, I haven't given up completely. In my last couple of posts I have already explained how I tweaked my strat and bla bla bla longer stops bla bla bla holding on to longer timeframes. Anyways, either tomorrow or after tomorrow I am coming back into the market and trading, and this time I am very confident I can recover my lost money and then some. For those who are not bothering to look back, my new strategy involves a 3.5 point stop with a 5-10 point profit target on each trade, and the profit target will change depending on the scenario. I am still using the basic testing/breaking of high/lows for all my trades, except now you will see me holding on for period of 5-30 minutes instead of 30 to 500 seconds.
just entered my first real $ trade in weeks, up 3pts so far, aiming for about 5-10 profit with the 3.5 stop
The best trades offer no heat: try moving your intial stop to BE+1 after the trade has runned 2-3 points in your favor... You get lots of scratches but only a few losers... My experience is, that the real runners won't come back after runnning 3 points! At least it is good for your mental health, having fewer losers... good trades, D.
Bleh... came back today to loose $45+ commish.... First trade went crappy as it hit my 3.5 stop, and the crappy thing about it is if i had just held for another -.5 pts, it would have rebounded completely and I would have been in the green. The second trade was all about pure psychology, where I couldn't stand the "suspense" of whether I would make $ or not, and I made a tiny point off that. As you can see, had I held I definitely could have made 5+ points.
I'm a newbie too so take this with a large grain of salt. Try not to hit your full stop. I'm sure you had expectations when you entered your trade, it probably didn't take 3.5 points for you to realize you were wrong. Cut your losses when the market is either not proving you right, or definitely when its proving you wrong.
Well, about the stop, I have had situations where price would actually go AGAINST me for 3 points, then reverse for a great trade. Today is turning out to be bittersweet, seeing as I haven't made any trades yet and lost $0, but the only two opportunities where my system told me BUY BUY BUY I had this stupid psychological nervousness shit and I never entered, missing out on about 13 points for those two trades. I really need to get a grip...