Ok, 2 cars felt good, you doubled the profit on 2 cars. Then you took flight and got 10 handles on a single car. Think just 3 handles on 4 cars as a daily minimum (with your learning curve working so well you can do this, YES you can). Then when you get days like yesterday ....YUMMY!!!! Do 4 cars for January to end of march 2010, then move up to 10 cars as a normal progression. Get consistent in 2 cars first though. You accepted the challenge of futures trading, now you understand how it is possible to make 100% on the margin per contract. Margin of $500 per car can make 500 with 10 handles. That simple math is a taste of why it is possible to do well over 100% a month in a futures account without being wild. Sheepie can make good in futures. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTvdoux04jo&feature=related I enjoy High School concerts, plays etc. It is such a joy to watch young people perform in their youth. This Sunday morning i go to a "COOKIE WALK" at a pre-High to load up on cookies. You pay up to $12 for a box and walk around and put cookies in your box. Great stuff and lots of fun. As always the secretary said: "come early, these go fast." Holiday CHEER PS: Thats why in futures you SWEEP the profits monthly out of the account and put in a safer place. Futures traders with half a brain do not compound profits..............the futures are for EXTRACTING profits for something else. Compounding in a futures account is a recipe for ruin.
And make the transition quick, so you can stash some away before they destroy this whole game with that damn transaction tax. Great day for shorts ... I'm sure NoD is KILLING it right now.
Hey can you help me here.... there is a comment on another futures site about "how lucky" some traders would be today to catch a rise and fall like today. my question is didnt this happen yesterday and isn't this kinda of predictable. I'm new and the other site is beyond me and this site seems to be for some new traders. I say predictable because it climbed up on the news so rapidly took out highs from yesterday as well as yearly and all before 9 ct. am, a fall /reversal should have taken place. now grant it i have horrible entries haha but the shorts aren't lucky that it dropped are they? responses appreciated.
There are days every week with decent moves, usually in the first couple hours of the day. It's not luck, it's a common occurrence on news days. And on range days and trending range days, although the moves are smaller, the trading's actually easier because it's more predictable IMHO.
+$342 Day +$1637 Week +$1504 Month I should've killed it today, but ended up quite disappointed that I hesitated to put on two trades that actually wouldâve provided some of the best moves of the day. I also only traded 1 car instead of 2. Not sure why I hesitated later on after trading pretty aggressively earlier; Iâm thinking perhaps I felt protective of my early profits, which is a psychological block I need to overcome and focus on taking ALL my setups. Short ES 1113.25 right after the open, pullback from double top, stopped out b/e +$7.70 Short ES @ 1117.00, pullback from new high, stopped out b/e +$7.70 Short ES @ 1116.50, pullback from double top. This one dropped quickly and I went to put in my stop and accidentally left-clicked instead of right-click, which covered me @ 1113.75, and actually that turned out to be 2 ticks from the pivot low of that move: +$132.70 Short ES @ 1114.25, weak price action off a lower high. This trade lasted almost an hour. I finally went to get tea, but placed a 1111.00 target at the lower channel line (the 1.0 line instead of the 2.0 because of overall market strength), came back to find it lifted very close to the pivot low of the move for +$157.70 Price actually made it to the lower 2.0 Keltner on this one. (Yes, thanks to tomahawk, I now have 5 lines displayed on my chart, which is pretty to look at, especially on the pre-market breakout this morning). ES was ranging again at yet another lower high and I though Iâd short it on a retest of the upper side of the range (~ 1112.50), but it only reached 1 tick below that and fell off a cliff. I didnât chase it but wow what a move worth jumping on. I really expected a nice bounce off 1105.00 area. Then when it stalled, I was about to put on a short there and it fell off another cliff! Aaarrghh... Short ES @ 1098.75, scratched for +$7.70. Short ES @ 1099.25, scratched for +$7.70. Short ES @ 1104.00, scratch for +$7.70. OK, put ES on hold here because I didnât trust it to the long side or the short side in the doldrums actually. Short JPM @ 42.04, when pullback from overbought lower high left a shooting star. Moved stop near b/e and considered taking some profit when it stalled around 41.93, but before I could react I was stopped out b/e on a spike right off the rising 10-period MA. I guess every Pristine trader in the universe trades this one. Decided this was the churn-fest hour and took a lunch break. Came back to find JPM falling nicely and at my initial profit target before the shake out. ES set up to the short side around 1102.50 when it left behind lower high off a failed uptrend and I was hesitant to put on the trade, missing a 4 pt move from which to extract profits. Bid ES to the long side @ 1094.25 as it approached the dayâs low, figuring there was enough strength to attempt a double bottom bounce, but it bounced from just ABOVE that level. I guess I couldâve chased entry, but not too keen on it actually after the earlier dayâs selloff. The fact that it found support a tick above the LOD should've enticed me to chase entry a bit. Since I didnât get in to the long side, I watched for a short setup. I saw those little pullbacks off the 1104.00 zone, but only two pushes up from the pivot low, so I refused to get trapped by that, having seen enough afternoon action after strong down moves. This is a hard-coded lesson only hours of screen time can provide. OK, so after the third push up (with shrinking stairs) I shorted @ 1104.50 after the small doji left behind at the topmost Keltner; moved stop to b/e when it dropped to the 20-period EMA (1102.75) and the bulls fought hard to hold it up. Stopped out +$7.70. Trading 2 cars would allowed me to scalp profits on all my b/e trades today with 1 car, leaving the other @ b/e. I guess I still need more confidence. Good weekend to all!
I did good today, took 1 trade real money then I went to sim on es. No losing trades on my main demo account and real trade made money. Yesterday, I put in a limit order to buy RMBS at $ 20.50. I checked now, and saw the limit order did get filled, stock is now trading at $ 21.50. I previously, bought the stock at $ 16.50 with covered calls for Dec to get me out at $ 18/sh. When I saw stock through $ 20/sh strong resistance, I put in the limit order to get me in at a slight discount to after hours price and to take trade in normal hours. This was basically an average up on my trade. I was hoping to not get called out on my stock at $ 18/sh and thought no news would be coming out since trail is set later next year. However, news came out that Samsung was selling their product. This is major news since the whole point of most of the trials was that the manufacturers of memory were changing the name of their memory and not paying RMBS. The fact that the largest supply of memory was now selling the name brand product would mean even without winning the next trial, RMBS would be making money. I have decided to not sell any covered calls against this position and will look for around $ 30/sh to get out at a $ 1,000 profit. The previous trade will call me out with a $ 300 profit. I really should not have sold the call against this position or at least bought more shares and only sold against 1/2 the position, but I have been more conservative lately since I did not believe in the rally and thought I would be able to average down at a lower price.
Hey NoDoji since you are on IB, take a look at booktrader, and setup some hotkey with pre-set bracket order. Get familiar with it you won't have these mouse errors etc. Tell me about it I got chopped pretty bad in that hour, ES tried 1115.25 and 1113.25 4 times each, and I was just busy scratching trades. Really hated trading at that point
I do use Booktrader and I use the Alt-click to auto-bracket orders at times, and sometimes I don't. I don't want to use it if I'm catching a volatile move or if I expect a quick move off my entry signal because it defaults to a pt on either side and that would quickly take me out at a very limited profit before I could adjust the bracket prices in a fast moving market. I expected my 1116.50 short to drop quickly and so I planned to manually put in the stop and it did fall pretty quickly and interestingly the accidental LMT order I put in was 2 ticks from the pivot of that move. I should find out if I can set various default ranges other than 1 pt. It would be nice to have hotkeys for 1, 2, 3 and 5 pt brackets.
Take alook at bracket trader. A great program for managing a trade. Best part if you only use it for ES it's free. Works realy well with IB. I've been using it for about a year now and have had no problems.
Yes, there are a couple psych barriers that impede the flow of profits in the beginning. #1 we all know about the fear of losing. #2 afraid to give profits back. This bad boy works in 2 ways. First it hinders us holding with a winning trade to milk it for more. Ok, second lets say we booked some small or decent profits, we are feeling good but know full well there are MORE. The question arises then................do we want to go for more but risk what we have and lose that GOOD feeling? How are these roadblocks defeated? COURAGE, that is how. Not with blind courage either, that will get you a ticket to the poor house. Courage in trading is not the 15 year old fearless kind, it is developed from EACH and EVERY individual trade. Every trade is an experience, every trade imprints the brain. Yet, every single trade is a part of the whole process of developing the necessary skillset to win. Each trade can not be treated as a part of the whole, that is a givin, each trade must be treated as a seperate entity. Chasing profits is sort of like chasing women. We all have enjoyed the pleasure of a womens company. We melt from a lovely smile, a great pair of legs, their wit, etc, etc. But what we learned real fast about women is there are no two alike, we especially found out you NEVER compare one women against the other, it is almost suicide to mention a good trait of an old gf to the new one. Women are seperate and not equal, believe it. We must treat each trade as seperate and NOT equal also. Each trade is about THAT trade and not the last girlfriend.