OK, so after getting a PM from a wise NQ trader, who claims to have been trading for years, I have rethought my strategy on a small scale. Like I said, I trade breakouts and bounces off new highs and lows, and strong points of S/R. I realized I needed to do two major things in my strat. One, I need to expand my stop to 2-2.5 points instead of 1.5, as this market can and does get "bouncy". However, I think the biggest thing I needed to do was fine tune my entry points. Like I said, I trade bounce offs and break outs. I you look at my first day chart you will see (in my opinion) the S/R point was 48. You see that I would always short at about 46.5, because I always told myself that I need to wait for a bounce of at least 1.5 points. Now I'm thinking I should stick closer to home, and open up the trade at a bounce of .5 or 1 point. So had I gone short at 47, or 47.5, there would be much more money made. Also on the first trade I completely ignored the setup by shorting at 47.75, but that was psyche issues. So, what do you guys think of my strat? Also, I would like to note that my batting average is very high to begin with (usually %70 right every day)
If you are fading support and resistance you might want to wait for price to be rejected. If I am understanding you correctly that first trade you went short against the market, which was definitely against the current trend. More importantly, what are your proft targets?
Zdawg, As silly as it may sound to you, your loss yesterday may be the BEST thing that will ever happen to you in your future trading ambitions. Look at it this way , if you had succeeded profitably for all your trading yesterday, you may well have considered the "game licked" only to be put on your arse in the near future. Yesterday was a reality check and I have a feeling you are going gain from the experience and hopefully you will absorb the advice from some well meaning traders. Good luck and take it quietly....you WILL succeed.
Nice job, however that means you are targeting about 2 pts. That is about the same as your stop losses. You might be able to make that work with a very high win %, but if you can find some way to tweak that to 2x your risk, you will have better chances, especially with the high cost of spread and commission compared to your target.
I honestly regret ever putting up that post.... I see how greed got the best of me.... I put up another trade right after that that went against my rules slightly, NEVER EVER should have entered there.... then it went just rocketed against me at a loss of about 4 points, but great... I thought the system was stuck because my sell order wasn't processing instantly. Anyways, I somehow managed to press the market sell button like twice, and before it was all over I had made 3 trades, with two .75 pt losses and and one 3.5 pt loss. Honestly, I almost wanna cry because of such a stupid greedy idiot I was... one successful trade and BAM it's all thrown out of the fucking window!!!! anyways, I lost $95 + commisions so far, so I can't trade at all for the day, I'm too shook up about what just happened. I thought I had my emotions under control.... but great.... I was once again wrong, although on that first trade, great, 1.75 pt profit.... I feel like shit for now.... even more than yesterday because today I knew I could have easily prevented this from happening...
But once again, maybe this was a valuable lesson about what not to do... what do you guys think? I just need to get out of the house right now and control myself. I will trade tomorrow with a clear head, but I want to hear some opinions of what just happened.
zdawg, congrats on your interest/desire to trade these markets at such a young age. After briefly looking at the chart you posted post 1st trading day, you really need to stop live trading. You're chasing the market on most trades. Go back to the drawing board. If you decide to stay live consider trading 1-2 entire days/wk instead of 2 hrs/day. W/ such a small amount of $ and experience you really need to put yourself in the best possible light to succeed.
So far in total with commish i lost $230. I think that my limit where I'll stop for the summer will be $400. Hopefully, when I start again tomorrow with a fresh head it won't be a problem. I think my problem yesterday was fear, while today was greed. After winning (even though it was pretty small amount, it meant something to me) the $35 I got so excited that I went as far as ignoring my system, which resulted in today's unfortunate loss. I think when I get back on the computer tomorrow, I will be able to control the greedy side of my emotions, because for now at least, my FEAR of getting into a trade has been conquered. So, let's just hope that my tuition into trading has been these $230 dollars.