Ofcourse my issue will be.......... I'm more likely to sustain a break out against me then for me, as I'm not looking to exit at a loss as it nears the lower range ( if long ). That's what I need to offsett tricky!! Really starting to feel like there is no way to beat this game!
I love chop, best days of my life are when ES is choppy as hell, I check what is range of one minute bars, whatever the average is of 4 of 6 bars, I know what I can scalp. But unlike many others, I always have a trend in chop, and trend trading the rules are different than counter trend, I give twice as much time to trend trading and half as much time for counter-trend, and love doing reversals, half my day is doing reversals. But I have read your journal from time to time and know exactly why you lose, you ever throw your hands into the air and not change system for 6 months? You can't train your eyes to the system if it gets changed all the time. You learn to adapt around indicators. Case in point, let's take any oscillator, swings up to down to up, you have some horizontal line capturing 80% of the highs/lows, have a very long sma say 120, so lets say the trend is down, and we waiting for oscillator goes above 80, but we going to wait till one bar it has gone down, now we going to wait some more but put in limit order to sell 3 ticks above the close, your backtesting will show how tight you can make the stops/exits as large and cause you selling so high, reward to risk will be much higher, your losses will be lower, if after 4-6 bars price not gone 5 ticks, your new target is breakeven plus one tick.
Method is only tweaks on a theme generally always MAE sometimes BB, so not that much of a change. Chop and balls on the entry at the point where, it'll either reverse or murder you, with no time to wait and see, is where it's at. Just got to a) make more profit at other times to compensate and b) reduce the loss when it goes wrong without creating 100's of small losers which could of been profitable. Current phase isn't method dev work kinda it's, it's trade trade trade make make make, get up 20% then give it all back in 1 bad trade, so operation make more and loss less is in effect. Expect 6 months of getting no where fast
If I didn't average down, maybe one losing day a year, but equity wise, even with losses, each year higher than the last, so a losing day will now take 3 weeks instead of 2 months as I have adjusted number of levels, put on more lots/stocks/options as I got losing percentages down more, changed my philosophy on greed factor. Now it is seeking less profits but much less drawdowns and overall risk has deceased to almost nill on longer terms trades. This is first year I have used margin in stocks as my long hours have paid off and simple not afraid any more of self, but respect the markets. My mind is more open of almost anything is possible, but requires much testing, and I can understand why companies hire PHDs as the game had turned much wider in the 80s, but charting still works if you understand how to read well. I use BB on most of my automation, but again you have to think outside the box on how to use it. and develop rules based on when to skip signals. What I find funny, when I started I had much patience and that hurt my account, now I lack patience, and account goes up.
Stop Losses don't really work, there an illusion of protection, few weeks ago 20% hit in 3seconds, jumped right beyond the SL, SL was 4% hit, sadly there not perfect. They also get hit on spikes and reverses, meaning you take a 4% loss frequently when you could be taking a 4% profit from the same trade. Not a Stop Loss fan, prefer manual exit 95% of the time you can exit at a better price even if still negative, just double click close all!!
I understand. I need my set stop losses and exits, because I can't think quick enough, and sometimes I second guess myself. Everyone has different strengths, so there are many different ways for people to trade.
I'm just swapping many profitable trades which world be small losers for occasional big losers, sadly works out the same at the end of the year
Back to worrying trades might fail and not taking any, kicking myself in the arse to get back in the game, engage damn it, engage, skip this it doesnt look good BS Maverik!