Jack, I sent you a PM with my trades of ES yesterday. 16 trades are winners, zero losers, plus a few breakevens. Total profit is 10 pts, average profit per trade is only 0.625 (that's all I can do right now). Those trades have time (hour/minute/second) attached, you should be able see what strategy I am using, please comment.
lilduckling, I couldn't agree with you more. How is exiting for profit too early a mistake? When I enter a trade I do the same thing on each and every trade. In the morning I take profits like a fool. If the market offers me money I do the foolish thing and take it. In the afternoon I take a partial and move the stop to b/e. If it gets hit, it gets hit. So what. What happens after I take a profit is totally meaningless. Now, if I let winners run in the AM and take them quickly in the PM then I am trading against my trading plan, which is a big mistake. To the OP.....if your trading plan says take profits at +3 points, for example, and you do, and the market flys another 20 points giving you zero additional points you made a PERFECT trade. Plan the trade, trade the plan. Your job as a trader is as simple as this: Go out there and collect points. It is not your job to land a whale, just a few small fish. Good Fishing!
I like the idea of this thread and I hope it helps you out. Surely you are braver than many on ET if you keep it going. One thing to remember though, its something my grandfather used to always say to me on the farm. It would go something like this. Grandpa: "God damn it Brandon!" Brandon: "I'm sorry Gramps, it was a mistake" Granpa: "Youve done it three times now, if you do it once or twice its a mistake, past that its a fuck up. If you do it again I'm gonna paddle your ass" (and he would...so I did not fuck up much) Anyway..good luck.
4D, you are talking about a dilemma I faced many years ago. Do I sit there and wait days for a trade to setup and pass up all the decent ones in the meantime or do I take every opportunity the market offers? Here's how I solved this dilemma. By nature, I'm a fairly impatient person so I had to incorporate that into my trading plan. No way could I sit there for days and not trade. Heck, I was in cash for 2 hours today and I was getting the shakes LOL. Anyway, what I did was 1, position size and 2, trade two accounts. If I come across a setup that is good but not great I will hit it with a 1/4 position. If I stop out on that and it turns into a very good setup I will hit it with a 1/2 position. And, if it turns into a great setup, then you can probably imagine I will hit it with a full position. In addition to this I will average into a position if I think the market is just giving me noise. This way I don't get tagged. On top of all this I have a second account that stays in cash until I get that "Ah ha" moment. I'm sure you've been through a situation where you think you got a great trigger and it just needed "a little more time" when you get that, "Ah ha, this is it" feeling. When I get that feeling I trigger in the second account. The second account has a 99% win rate because it stays in cash for days at a time until I get that "can't miss" moment. I could never understand why a trader would put 5 contracts, for example, on each and ever trigger because all triggers are NOT created equal. Some have higher probabilities than others so they require more attention and more size. Put a 1 lot on the so-so ones if you have to and go with whatever you're comfortable with on the super setups. Money Management is the most neglected, yet the most powerful tool a trader has. Lose small, win big. So now the question is: Do you have the patience to wait and wait and wait for "that" setup you know you can knock out? If not then you have to position size.
Random entry is death. That's the conclusion I draw after a number of tests on random entry today. Random entry is brutal, it should never be considered as an entry strategy. Anyone saying random entry is ok should be shot! Today I lost patience, plus the usual mistake of failing to exit. Now I put the patience back into the plan. Like building a car from scratch, I am putting together all the important components, one at a time. I guess I installed the radiator today. Hopefully, I will stop posting on this thread in one week, not because I won't make any mistake, but because mistakes will be corrected and won't cause serious damage, and I will be on my way to make consistent money.
I don't have many mistakes to report, basically the same mistakes repeated every day. I realize those mistakes will be with me as long as I trade. Therefore, I am now closing this thread.
You may only need 2 points a day 4DTrader, but the greed will still be inside of you. FWIW - At the end of a session, I like to look at how many pips I took relative to the range; rather than worrying about some arbitrary number as my target. I am happy getting between 30-40% of the total range (high - low of the pair) for the time I was trading. Edit: Just read your last post - best of luck to you.