Sounds like you are making progress. You are projecting more focus and awareness. Just my opinion, if you plan on trading 1 car live then that is fine. If you plan on more size, then you should sim trade that size.
In daytrading there is not much time to think. In position trading with the larger drawdowns there is more time to think about position sizing, taking partial profits, double up on a small loser for a 1/2 way back strategy and bail out and start over strategy, (not for new traders), etc,etc. (I do double up on a loser now and then just with the intention of pulling the rip cord and bailing out because i see price bouncing around between a small loss and no sign of moving to profit.) Half way back and i am out. When daytrading our time is very limited to take action when price does what price will do. EXAMPLE: Lets say we just had a decent runup and see a well defined KEY reversal. What could be a good gameplan to play that? Review last Wednesdays 5 min ES chart and notice the key reversal bar at 1305 EST. You see a very sweet up "RUN" from the consolidation bottom range after a almost equal early initial down move from 1057x down to 1041.50. First we observed the hour long bottom consolidation with a rather flat top and a ascending bottom up to 1045x. the breakout was at 1100 est at about 1045.50, no false move, no failure, it never looked back all the way up to the KEY reversal bar. Ok, back to the KEY bar at what turned out to be the days top. Always keep in mind KEY bars are important because they have the potential to get you in to what you want.............beginnings of runs. When you see a KEY bar your brain is pinged to be alert. A "happening" move might be at hand. What to do? Well, right off the bat you know where you will be wrong if you go short. You will be wrong if price goes back above the key bars top. DUH!!! You can go Short as soon as you want after the key bar and just watch price does not get much above the key bars OPENING, forget the key bars close, that is history now, what you are interested now besides price going down That way you might get out with a smaller STOP LOSS before the TOP is taken out. Make sense? If you see price getting close to the key bars opening price now it is time to get nervous if short because it is telling you the trades sentiment is not believing the key reversal and that is what a 9 year old would say is "not cool!!!" Always pay attention to price as if it is the entire industry telling you something, let the big dogs bark at you. No single trader can cause a "RUN", it takes the herd to move price when it matters the most. Listen to price as a voice, price is your Teacher, your mentor, your lover. Trading key bars are a snap because they are a game plan in themselves. just play along and you will be rewarded. Ok, time to go shopping again..............winter is coming. PS: i am not saying i traded this as good as the chart looks, just an example of what to look for if alert and focused. None of us are perfect. PSS: A review of the previous weeks charts are good to see where we all could have done better, especially in the coming week. It never ends, but indeed, gets easier.
+ $113 Was trailing a stop on CL at the open, but the spread was really wide which is very unusual for this one. I ended up stopped out early for +$73, then the pivot failed and it fell as much again without me. Decided to wait for ISM report before putting on another trade, so I didnât play the ORB on ES. Market crept up leading into the news. Not much reaction to the number and a fairly narrow range ensued. I had no opinion for direction with ES and no desire to scalp it, so played a few stocks. Short CAT when a range established a lower high, looking for a breakdown of the range. Scratched the CAT for +$6 when the expected breakdown didnât materialize and price bounced off the lower end of the range. Offered 30.62 ANF, missed by a few pennies. Later offered 30.57 and missed by a few pennies. Frustrated, I chased an entry @ 30.34 after an attempt to reverse the trend failed leaving the 5th lower high on the day. This was a very weak stock in an up market, and I expected a breakdown to a new LOD. It made a new low by a few pennies and I covered @ 30.17 on the pivot for +$34. This stock has very high short interest and is quite oversold, so I preferred to scalp my profit after a 4th leg down and re-visit a new trade later, rather than risk a move back to b/e on the trade. The market seemed very choppy and nothing else really grabbed me after that. I considered placing a breakout long order on ES when it tested that major ceiling around 1034.00, but my bias kept me out because that level seemed so impenetrable today. Silly me.
Nod........... You are not yet convinced that "BREAKOUT" trading is where the money is. In your first sentence you are saying you had no opinion and that is what you want, ZERO opinion except what the screen is telling you. Then you had no desire to scalp it, well that was a good deduction also. That is part of what has you confused (in my opinion). Think of it like this: If you were automated you would need 2 SEPERATE so called systems coded to trade those 2 entirely seperate trading strategies. I assure you even a experienced trader is better off trading seperate strats in the same account. It is a lot easier to focus on the chart with the aim of watching for a particular setup. In your second sentence you had a bias that is a carryover habit from scalping stocks. SEE what i mean? I fully understand why this is happening...........those 2 strategies are completly seperate animals to trade, 1 grabs peanut profits in hopes of doing it over and over, the other is about milking the intraday trends or even a single trend. Your head is in both ball parks and the goal posts are confusing you. Work on this and you will be fine. ....................................>>>>> Time for football, i hope Brett Favre gets thumped. he needs to retire before he gets his bell rung one time to many. A guy 40 years old should not be playing a kids game. These were your 2 sentences.........................>>>>> I had no opinion for direction with ES and no desire to scalp it, so played a few stocks. Then you said: I considered placing a breakout long order on ES when it tested that major ceiling around 1034.00, but my bias kept me out because that level seemed so impenetrable today. Silly me. :eek:
- $39 JWN gapped up yesterday, ran all day, gapped up this morning and left a shooting star on open. Short @ 31.81, stop above HOD, stopped out for -$42. I was following the JWN chart for the action following the new high and neglected to keep my eye on ES, missing the ORB play. Iâm still straddling two worlds and need to focus on one or other. Short CL @ 77.62 pullback from double top, stopped out near b/e when it found very high support +$3. Out for most of the rest of the day.
that is why being well prepared ahead of the day is very critical. have some basic judgement about the day in front of you is very useful. or have some "if then" in mind will keep you ahead of the game. most people make trips they do not have plan, that is why they get lost. when the market rallies, they just watch. when the market drops like rok, they feel they are lucky since they did not buy, while they did not realize they should short.when the market enters indecision zone, they do not buy low and sell high, they sideline to sim play breakout.
Good day today for me. I just still have problem that once I win on the 1st trade, I stop taking real money trades, and went to demo where I also made money. Of course if I lost on the 1st trade, I would have tried another trade with real money assuming I felt I made a mistake on the 1st trade, and that the market was not acting randomly. I had 2 negative days, no real bad losses, but I just thought to myself, I just won today, I don't want to turn this into a losing day. Yesterday, my trade I traded against trend, and ate it big, also made 2nd mistake in that I averaged into a trade against trend which I put down as a rule never average in on counter trend trades and for the most part its probably better for me to not counter trend trade. After that, I made most of the money back on 2 winning trades where I did not break my rules. I think one of the hard things about trading is being disciplined to follow your rules, and of course not revenge trade (ie random trade to try to win back money). If one can stay disciplined, then the chance of success is good. I checked my win%, it is 65%, averaging in does not increase my win%, it only makes my losers cost me more money. If you get in at a good price and it looks like a good trade, averaging down if the trade fails can cost money when the market is extremely directional. For example, once the market price changes, it can go 10 - 20 points. My worst trade ever, was when I held a losing position for 10 points thinking the market could not go higher. If I am not willing to hold a winner for 10 points, there is no reason in the world to hold a loser for 10 points hoping that the market will finally reverse to become a winner. However, if you have a 90% win ratio, I think you could have a very high emergency stop. I rather scalp for 1.5 to 2 points with a high win%. Maybe in the future, I will try to let a contract go for a possible home run. Today was beautiful market for my type of trading. All my signals worked. I got fast victories, not having to wait an hour for a payoff. I am trying to read the pre-market to see if my signals are going to work during the normal trading. I was in a free trial trade room where they call out their winners after the fact. It was kind of funny. The only good thing was that they talk during the day which makes you feel like you are with traders and not trading by yourself. They had one indicator that I liked and may want to add to my indicator system if it comes out in my platform. My other indicator for volume was 10 times better than there volume indicator. I did not see many of the members posting that they took any trades.
Tested a trade on Nov crude in the sim account on the inventory news. Again, because I can't bracket orders in sim I picked a side, choosing short because I believed low demand would be the news of the moment. Unfortunately the slippage on the stop order that got me into the trade was awful. I was offering at 71.40 and got filled at 70.90. It quickly bounced a bit and and I took around $1200 heat on the trade before it continued to make new lows, eventually netting me over $1800 (and yes I left a ton of simulated money on the table). I've been waiting for the inventory report to test this pre-news stop order strategy and it taught me that if I want to trade the news, it's best to wait for the initial reaction, THEN put on a trade with something this volatile. Out for the entire rest of the day, no live trades.
Hey Oracle, I've been focusing very hard on patience and following my trading plan lately. I've firmed up the rules and as long as I'm totally patient, the trades work out. My biggest problems are: Trading the midday chop (a waste) Missing a fill by a tick or two then chasing entry and ending up taking a tiny profit instead of a decent one, or getting scared out of the trade too easily by not wanting to allow it to play out, which may involve some moments of "red" before the full "green" returns. ASSUMING further strength or weakness when price is in a zone that my trading strategy does not allow and putting on the trade anyway. This usually ends with a stop out unless I'm willing to risk a very wide stop, which there's no need to do if I follow MY trading plan in the first place.
point of clarification please a doji is a candlestick pattern, usually a hammer or something (ok, just acting like I don't know) so is this thread about trading where you either ignore or don't have these patterns on the charts? or is this just someone's handle, and this is their personal thread? little confused here