sounds to me like you may be overtrading. Personally, I may do 1-3 roundtrips per day .. i have learned to pick the pattern that you are most confident trading.. and wait for it to appear .. and when it does appear, execute with a pre determined exit strategy.. of course what works for me may not work for some people. looking forward to your trades.
That's affirmative, I see that now. Actually, my style of trading is very similar to yours, but I use Keltner Channels and 3 EMA. My problem was like you said, not waiting until I see a definite pattern. I would jump in anxiously and end up getting out with a tight stop loss, a lot of trades no money but my broker Cybertrader loves me though . I'll post my results next week and see how it goes, thanks.
I agree that this thread contains a lot of information that has piqued my interest. I have traded for about 6 years on a part time basis, but each year I increase the frequency ( I currently trade about 75 to 100 round trips a month). I use charts mostly to see how volatile a particular stock is in one given day. I trade most frequently in the pre and post market hours, based upon news and momentum. One of my favorite plays is following a particular group (i.e., internet or semis) and placing a short or long position on one particular stock that is gapping opposite of its peers. The amount of shares I trade is based upon my risk/probability level, if I catch a reversal on a big announcement I will usually go with 5,000 to 10,000 lots. If the market looks uncertain, I will trade between 200 and 2,000 lots. Each year I have a return of between 20 to 30 percent. My biggest weakness is stopping losses and not letting good trades run further. My winning trade average is around 70 to 80 percent. One area I hope to gain more knowledge concerns your trades based upon defined chart patterns. Thanks.
great batting average looking forward to the following week ... hopefully I will execute some nice trades to post.
this is based on the trading model i have devoloped and traded time and time again ... the 80% is the probability of the price snapping back into the channel which i use on a 3m chart ... i will be posting my future trades to this forum and i am open to questions...
In your actual trading results do you have a win rate? As in you say %80 I was wondering in actual excecution if you find it hard to ge that result with perhaps getting faked out or tricky market conditions. Also do you cease this type of trading during trending periods? Please if you can post screens of your charts I've been curious about an approach like this! Thank you.
As described in my first few paragraphs, my success rate seems to be about 80+%. Now i am very picky in which trades i do commit which brings me to your second question. I am mostly sidelined in times of trending issues ... The opening hour or two are the best times for me ... I will post screen shots to my availablitiy, and will be posting trades soon after they are closed. thanks for the comments
Thanks just one more question. Do you have specific rules in being picky or is it a matter of judgement based on your experience? Or both I suppose! Thanks so much.