learned something from you,though some point I do not agree, sorry to mess your point (large cars for small ticks gain is dangerous, should be small cars for large amount of ticks, I love to buy the cheapest lottery ticket for millions, that does not hurt me). you are highly disciplined! that is a very great trait a successful trader must own. I once tried hard to commited myself to just trading CRUDE, but still can not stick with it, may goof around, trade natural gas, trade 30year-t bond.... today I am trading USEG, did not take the morning high breakout trade on CRUDE, it breakout nicely. have a great weekend
Bought 10,000 shares of another stock waiting for approval. Looking for 3 - 4 points of profit or $ 30,000 - $ 40,000. Possible approval sometime in 2010. Scalped today made $ 50 real, $ 150 sim. Once I get more consistent on es or ym trading, plan is to increase the number of contracts. Also, looking to maybe try a hedge strategy instead of using a stop by being short in for example ym while I am long es, and get out end of day. I will work on this strategy next week. I am not talking about entering both orders simultaneously but for example taking the trade where I would normally have a stop and see what happens.
+ $42 Short ANF @ 36.78 after the Mich sentiment numbers. I entered really late because of a distraction and only took $42 of the move. Later ANF made a strong run above 37.60 and started to look overextended. I thought about where early shorts wouldâve placed their stops and offered 37.71 and missed by .04 cents. Nice move too, nearly .40 cents down. Decided last minute to short ANF near end of day @ 37.65 pullback from lower high, overextended on the 30 min chart, and very overextended on the daily chart. Looking for Monday morning pullback continuation. Still intrigued with Hogâs âlarge size, small moveâ tactic, I continued working with that in sim, trading 50 cars to catch small pieces of moves. I netted $33,850 after commish doing that. I may as well trade that strategy live with small size, because it wouldâve been a nearly $700 day trading 1 car. The ATS tested well today, netting $290 on a short morning run with 100-share lots. Have a great weekend all!
$700/1car is not a small move. for ES, that is 14point move, for YM, that is 140points', for NQ, that is 35points'! for miny crude, that is 1.4points', for crude, that is 0.7 points! normally crude's intra-day wave move is around 0.5~1point, daily move is around 1~3point, you caught major intra-day move! read through HOG's post, he said he just wants to net 4handle for ES, so he can net 96k a year. so you are his super student, way above his expectation. or I missed something here, you did exactly just like hog's suggestion, for cude, you did 50 trades to produce $700/1car daily reaults? if really like that, I apologize here. I just traded USEG yesterday, bought it at 4.5 in the thrust (planned to lose $300), then sold it at near closing at 6.33, netted around 1.8k real money,not paper money. my suggestion, never trade other's idea, even HOG himself does not do that, if he has this edge, why tell others, let others to make money. if you read through jisse livermore's story, he lost his first million just becuase he traded others' idea.
What we do when we post is actually posting "food for thought". Lets take nod for example: She is progressing at a decent rate but still has a few hurdles to reach the finish line. We all know in trading the goal posts are always in flux and we use incomplete dynamic inputs to try and score. No easy task for humans that all their life have been programed that in life there are only right and wrong ways to accomplish a goal. I have suggested a few different ways to hone in on a goal, ORB, 5 handles a day as minimum, 4 cars for 2 handles for a K-A-DAY to keep the bill collectotrs away, @400 a day for 2k a week, etc, etc. Those were all suggestions for thought. As a trader progreses as Nod is .........she will find her own niche. The end game is simple: Do what works for you and you will have VERY FEW losing days. A good trader is a consistent trader. Once the losing days are almost eliminated.......... "then you have arrived". A losing start to a day is not threatening because you know you will be ok before the day is over. We change tactics almost daily after the ORB is over......the ORB is just a way of firing up the engine in the morning...........a way to pull the car out of the driveway and take a trip. Once in traffic we might need to adjust the route as conditions warrant. Setting minimum goals such as $400 a day for 2k a week = 96K a year is nothing more than food for thought for new traders to shoot for. The rest is up to the individual. 96K a year before taxes is not much at all these days, BUT, if a trader can do that and do it consistent month after month, he/she will be doing bigger numbers. Then it is a matter of size to progress because we will never defeat the trading game, we just find our chair at the profits table. PS: GO Dodgers, Go Yanks. I am for a "coasts" series
I can't log into IB on Saturdays so I'm not sure this is exact, but I believe my ES sim results yesterday came out of 7 or 8 trades, so basically around 2 pts per trade. I had 100% win rate! BUT to be fair, I used very wide stops for very small gains. So hypothetically if the market suddenly made a very strong move against me and hit my stop, it could've wiped out the entire day. Because yesterday was a slow ranging day, my particular tactic worked very well. What I do is, as price moves toward a particular level in a channel, I place a limit order at the price level I EXPECT it will reach. When the price action leaves a footprint that entices me to take a position, I ask myself, "If I went long/short here right now, where would I place my stop?" This would be where the early longs or shorts would end up trapped if indeed the chart footprint was nothing more than a tease, a bear trap or a bull trap. I then place the limit order at or near that price and only on strong setups. Not all my orders get lifted with this tactic, but the ones that do place me in the trade at a high probability reversal zone in the range. When I'm completely disciplined and don't cheat, it's a fantastic strategy in a range or in a slow ranging trend. In a strong trend I would hope to be in a position early on and have the mental fortitude to stick with it instead of cutting it short. No easy task... When I cheat and become one of the early shorts/early longs, I end up taking heat on the trade, which then causes me to exit too soon when the move I was looking for ensues. I still need more time on sim to get into the mode of NOT CHEATING. I jumped in too early yesterday on several trades and left quite a few pts on the table exiting way too soon.
You can take this for what its worth, but in my estimation you are allowing yourself to play video games whenever entering contract size 50 in simulation mode. You've stated elsewhere that you will be trading a 53K account when fully committing to live trading, and further that your max daily loss will be $500. You do realize that in 95% (or greater) of the fills, that your initial entry will instantaneously be $625 in the red. That is well beyond your also stated intentions of normally using $50-100 stops. I'd be embarrassed to state how long I sim traded. And I also allowed myself to play these games, and in my experience, I will say that it proved to be quite harmful once returning live. It created a false sense of empowerment, and propelled me to take much greater risk than I was emotionally able to handle, causing reactionary exits at the worst possible times. And I was handling far less than 50 cts. I believe trading is all about developing the proper mental pathways, and feel you are doing yourself a disservice playing the 'what-ifs'. I feel a much better approach is to first earn the right to trade 50 cts, through building an account capable of sustaining such large risks by accruing actual profits. As bighog said, these type of posts are nothing more than food for thought. The morsel I am attempting to share today is *** Keep IT Real ***
Mephisto, no worries. I only trade 1 car when trading live I only did the 50-100 car thing in sim recently because the sim account is huge, and I was curious to see how easily one could wipe out an account scalping small moves with large size, using very wide stops. Fortunately I've had a high win %, but in reality if I scalped a point 5 or 6 times, then had a 5 point stop hit once, that would erase the day's gains. I imagine when I'm a multi-millionaire and I have some spare change to play with I might try that style of trading on range days, but right now I still feel like a nearly complete beginner, learning something new every day, so I'll be sticking to 200 shares stock and 1 car futures when trading live. To add: I'm only doing this during boring times when I'm not trading live, sim trading and playing my guitar
LOL - I hated IB's sim platform. Hell, I made more in interest everyday than I could normally hope to do trading
Wost part is IB won't let me transfer my sim profits to my live account! I mean, come on! I put in the blood sweat and tears to earn those profits! It's not like I'm asking to transfer starting capital, you know???