Lets say i am long and have a 4 handle profit. (so no misunderstanding the SP500, ES, NQ, trade in handles and fractions of a handle. The term points is old fashioned and comes from the out of date DJIA itself, the DOW reported is for the publics consumption.) So LONG and +4 handles and looking for 5 handles to ring the register. Using stops when in profits is a seperate animal than when first entering a trade. So if +4 the trade is a success and the only subjective part left to ponder is would you ring the register now or try to nail the 5 handle and even more. First things first..............what is price action showing? Is the move at least an up bias? If price move slows i will yank it fast and not give back more then 25% of the profit. Taking profits actually is not using STOP LOSS. One would like to assume when entering a trade with a minimum goal in mind (5 handles) that you could use a STOP LOSS of 25% of the goal. That is a scary thought when considered naked. To defeat the math of making back losses and adding in commissions the trader must have good setups and be willing to ring the register and REENTER hopefully even better as the prior trade setup is still valid even if you took profits. Your job is to milk the trends and not let the STOP LOSS on entering trades milk you. Beginners get hurt after they enter the trade because they do not use proper trade management once filled. More experienced traders know full well the hardest part of trading will always be trade entry because even a well disciplined trader can get out of a loser fast with a small loss but never be sure if even a well defined setup will play out correctly. Now combine both ways to get hurt as a beginner and this is not as easy as it looks. Here is the simple math on taking 3 good setups but 2 do not work out. 2 are exited with small loss and the 3rd eliminates the small losers and gets you in the black. Thats a minimum daily goal and maybe even do that 2 or 3 times a day. The good news is some days price just throws you hugs and kisses and takes off early. Making a run this weekend to Chicago. Have a good day all.
+$122 Day +$388 Week Did not trade the ES 1007.00 short trigger, (yes I'm an idiot). Decided to wait for consumer sentiment #. Was watching ES and ANF for a trade on the news. ANF has high short interest so good numbers could mean a further squeeze and bad should be a nice sell off the gap up. Consumer sentiment numbers hit and after vacillating for a moment (leaving valuable profits on the table, tick tock tick tock), I decided to play ANF. I got into ANF a bit late as it was falling off a cliff. Short @ 34.20, trailed a stop, covered on the first pivot @ 33.95 in about 5 seconds for a $122 gain. I really shouldâve traded both, but the quick descent froze me for a precious moment. (And there went my huge P&L Hermit!) STEC consolidated in a range most of the day after a large down move followed by 50% retracement. I plotted the breakout triggers of 35.40 long and 34.85 short. I didnât place the orders, just glanced at the chart now and then, because the range was wider than I like. Suddenly, Destro called STEC breaking down and I opened the DOM when it was @ 34.83, right near my short entry trigger, but I didnât short it. I was concerned about its high short interest and the spread it had earlier during its more volatile moves. It was a fine breakdown, but I wasnât totally comfortable with it. Oddly enough I wouldâve been more comfortable with a breakout to the long side, because of the short squeeze potential. Things looked very iffy most of the day, so I stood aside and studied the action for stocks in various sectors, also ES action. At the very end of the day, ES dipped down to that magic 998.00 that was yesterdayâs support and todayâs resistance. It broke through that price and at 1000.25 I changed my Qty field to 2 and I âknewâ from all the screen time Iâve had with ES recently that this was very likely an excellent long entry, but I just couldnât pull the trigger. As I write this, price is up 6 handles from that entry. I will get there... My screen time now is so much more useful than it was months ago. Iâm knowledgeable about so many setups, and watching ES on the intraday and 2-week hourly chart is providing an amazing education. It may seem like Iâm doing nothing lately, but Iâm doing what I shouldâve done from the very beginning. Every time I detect these setups and see them work positively, it adds to my confidence level. I still believe Iâm due for a breakout here soon⦠Have a great weekend everyone!
Good trading NoDoji. I actually like Doji's but maybe that is me. Anyway, having the similar problem with real money which is like to over trade when losing and under trade when winning. After having 6 winning es trades in a row this week over multiple days, I did not want to have a losing trade on Friday, and decided to not trade. Good news, as I previous mentioned on this thread I was long 500 shares of RMBS. RMBS went up almost 2 points today and I did not sell any yet. As noted RMBS is a longer term trade, I have a bunch of other longer term trades that have made me $ 6,000 in profit this week so far, and still holding long all of them.
small profit today. Took a long trade early in the day, a little too soon without enough confirmations. As I saw it breaking minor support, I killed the trade before it hit my stop. I then took 2 more real money long trades both winners but took profit quickly since both times did not get in a good places and was near resistance so killed at profit at resistance levels. Since I already took 3 real money trades went back to sim for 4th trade since goal was to not over trade, and of course sim was profitable. Good luck NoDoji, I think market was hard to trade today but maybe you did much better.
Last night I tucked in to bed with my favorite (price) action novel, "Reading Price Charts Bar By Bar", and I turned to Mr. NoD and said, âYou know, we should short ES because Friday's consumer sentiment will drive the overseas markets lower, which will cause our futures to tank.â And, too lazy to get up and open my platform, I drifted off to sleep. The bright side is that Iâve been trading long enough now that I am seeing these macro views now. I really shouldâve thought of it on Fridayâs end of day run up; perfect short entry on just about anything because of the logic of overseas reaction rounding âbout and driving our own futures down. I missed the first half of the dayâs trading because my good friend was in the ER. By the time I got back it was almost 1 p.m. and the market was completely stagnant, so I visited my trading roomies and opened my sim account to pass some time and practice a bit of trading during the worst time to trade. I scalped ES and stocks in the midday range using stochastics for stocks, and Keltners for ES. I had vowed never to trade the midday chop any more, but my sim results were so awesome I may change that rule. Took $260 trading ES (only counting my 1-car trades, not the humorous 10-car trade I did, which netted $750), $258.50 trading FWLT, $797.50 trading ANF, and -$54 trading STEC. Traded 1000 shares on the stock positions. The end of day which normally provides a strong move really didn't send me at all, so I ended up with no live trades today.
Here is hoping your good friend is doing much better. Sorry to say on this side of the Mississippi River a very cool and always alive and active lady who raised a couple sons and sent them through med schools on her Fly Fishing "FLY" business that she sells to avid Fly fishermen and women all over the world has decided to in her words "I am just tired fighting this illness". She had a kidney transplant a while back and her body is rejecting it. She is 62 and up until those words she was still in her youth. I am not ready to say she will not fight on yet. Life is something we all should never take for granted.
Hi NoDoji, I would not "hijack" your thread if I was not also trying to assist you as well so I hope this is of some value. Oracle77, Firstly let me say congrats on your winning trades and I know from experience how that feels along with having a "streak" broken. With that being said I want to bring up a point that is very important to understand. Its the LAW OF INDEPENDENT TRIALS and you very well may know of it(many do not especially in vegas where it might be really needed along with some math skills for so many). For those that do not know what it means in a very simple way is that what happened in the past has no bearing on what will happen in the future. With a fair coin and fair flip if you flip it nine times and each time it comes up heads the odds of it coming up tails is still 50/50 So taking this one step further if you gave up a valid edge producing setup it would appear that you cheated yourself (assuming that your trading for yearly profits) Many will agree that it is very satisfying to have (and keep ) a winning streak going but you must ask yourself are you changing your goals from wanting a monetary gain to an emotional wellbeing. I would suggest that as traders we are NOT paid by winning and losing trades but rather by the net results of our decisions that we make over the course of a year. Mathematically it can be shown that a trader with a 2% edge that has a win/loss rate of 50% actually then makes 1% on average with ALL trades and the more the trader trades the more they make overall. Please give that some thought and I hope that this post is some value. Let me end with these words in support. "In trading more often than not what FEELS right is the wrong thing to do" Best of trading to everyone. Robert PS NoDoji, "lunch is for wimps" : o )