Nod, congratulations!!!! You are catching on to a hard fact about this new profession you decided to tackle when everyone told you the odds were not with you. The trading game is probably as tough as going into politics. In politics as well as climbing the corporate ladder the person needs a line of shit a mile long and can bullshit the other person while flashing their best smile. Trading is a "NO BS" contest with no excuses allowed. Can not be begged, borrowed or stolen. What you are learning just takes time, a lot of time to develope the internalized intuition to act automatically, discretion or automated, probably makes no difference. I never automated by code so really can not speak to that. Correct, it takes time to place trades and exit trades without thought. New folks think this is a mechanical game like repairing a car. They have no idea the enemy is between their ears. Going live in trading is not like dating, trading live is when the wedding is over. Then and only then will reality hit...........this is no cakewalk. For better or worse they say, it is easy to commit when you have no idea what "for worse" really means. Same for trading. No thinking in trading is an acquired skillset. Sure we all are not robots, but we must almost be one to survive. The hard part to learn is that it is the "ME" part that makes the mistakes, that holds a loser to long, that gets out to early, that revenge trades, that thinks to much and fails to do what is needed. PS: Something you might consider about using TRAILING STOPS. When we get into a trend and show a profit, what must be considered is that even the 3 trends, major, inter, minor all can have so called normal retraces. As daytraders even a 5 minute chart is visualized the same as a position trader would consider looking at a daily chart. Same principles different time frames. With that in mind is it any wonder why placing a trail Stop in a 5minute chart will be taken out quite easily There are in my view 2 rather basic ways to handle profits while still seeing a valid trend still in place. (This comes with time). Let the momentum of price itself dictate when the leg you are in is slowing down..............either book what you have knowing full well you stand a good chance to get right back in at a better price if in fact you do get a retrace............OR, you just decide you are going to have to take some HEAT before the trend continues on with maybe a "HOOK" a flag or whatever. Those are your 2 choices to milk a trend. It is no easy cakewalk so we must learn how to read trends rather than just expect them to carry on like a dead fish and follow the flow. If you book some profits and price continues on before you can get back in..................keep working on the timing. Hang in there. I am much, much better in getting out of a trade just before a retrace than i am getting in. You would think a breakout trader would have an easier time getting in on trades.........but for me, if i am going to have to take heat it is getting in and fighting off pulling the rip[cord or getting stopped out. The hardest 2 ticks in trading are if the first 2 ticks are against you, HA.
That's exactly what it was and what a mess. Yes, most recently on 12/3, 1/11 and came pretty close on 1/21. I'd expect to average $1000/day if I was a seasoned pro, had full confidence and eliminated all my noob mistakes. Working on it. OK!!! BANG!!!
I prefer to take profits and get back in if the retrace holds up where it should. Problem is, I often fail to get back in. I mean today I started out looking for AAPL to signal to the long side, hesitated on initial setup, then never even entered on any of the retraces. I still have a mental block about getting into trends in the middle. Most trends have a minimum of 3 legs and a profit's just as green no matter what piece of it you extract. Tomorrow I plan to focus completely on my timing and try to get into a position early based on the opening range action. I changed my 5-day 30-min chart to a 3-day 15-min chart to help me gauge the best entry point and direction off the opening range. Looking at it, it seems more useful for me that way, since I'm not really looking to swing any positions, strictly day trading.
I have to call trading stop loss Doctor NODO.Now I am start having trouble honoring the stops,how you do so nicely?
No way! Jack, you are my STOP LOSS inspiration! I asked you a couple times about stop placement while we were trading HOTT early last year and after I blew something like a third of my profits with a ridiculous stop loss placement, your replies to me were etched in my brain forever (actually printed out and pasted on my wall): "Stops are a very basic tool, without it one will never survive." "My stops are hard stops no compromise there." It's because of you that I can now manage risk properly. That's not to say I don't become tempted to start averaging down, or move my stop to a ridiculous level, but as soon as I have those thoughts I read those quotes from YOU!
Are you going to push this to the real world?. It seems to me the most stress-free, natural, and profitable way to go...babysitting the computer to make sure there are no malfunctions, and increasing the share lots ever so slowly, you can be making 7 figures a year in a short time. No way you will bend your mind to make 7 figures that quickly if you are trading manually. that is, if the autosys actually works... I think you owe it to yourself to actually test this. You've run a marathon and then decide to take a nap on the last yard before crossing the line. Not kewl.
Yes, we're going live this week. Tried on Tues and an API was missing on the live system. Yesterday everything was a go, but there was an account minimum programmed in and the test account didn't have the req dollar amount, so no trades. I think that should be remedied today or tomorrow. The system worked well using the demo account, despite many early trades that were triggered but not filled due to poor execution in sim mode during the opening 15-20 mins (we had to manaully review all those trades to determine the outcome). If it remains consistent with the sim account testing, it should be able to eventually churn out a decent annual income. You never know until it's real tho.
+ $190 Short AMZN @ 119.48, pullback from HOD when sellers came in at overbought, stop just above HOD, hit for -$41. Short AMZN @ 119.68, when a bearish engulfing candle followed a pullback from a double top; covered @ 118.36 pivot off LOD (forming a double bottom) for +$130. I was very pleased with this trade because I left my initial stop in place, willing to accept that loss without emotion and trusting the fact that I was trading a confirmed setup with a volatile stock and could expect the unrealized P/L to go from green to red to green to red before finally ending where my initial target zone, which it did. I trusted the probability of the setup to work in my favor and it worked great. The only thing I couldâve done better wouldâve been to wait for slow stochs on the 1-min to reach overbought before putting on the first trade. At that point the HOD was put in. I really donât consider it a mistake though, because I took the setup and stuck with my plan. Price tried to bounce off the LOD twice, leaving an internal double top and I shorted the breakdown thru the LOD @ 118.15, covering @ 117.13 for +$100 when price pivoted off oversold after a measured move down. Had to leave the office for quite a while and returned with just under 2 hours left. Things looked pretty stagnant and indecisive, so the plan was to watch carefully and position myself for a late day move if indicated. I just didnât feel real confident in anything on my watch in that last hour, so I called it a day.
When i jotted down the pivots numbers before the opening i got down to S4 and it was 1066.25. Resist 4 or support 4 are rarely hit because the pivots adjust daily and for S4 to be hit you will be looking at a bad day. I felt like Nod today...............not even a hint of taking a trade to the LONG side. The numbers on working the SMALL retraces were like magic. Nice job on not trailing the profits and getting knocked out of the trade nod. That, that and yes that is how to read price action in a trade, you sit there after you get filled and have 2 subjective objectives in mind............a bailout point and a profit point. Our reading of that price action is how we develope the trader muscles. Yes, as price bounces to a profit, comes back, goes back up...................or price drops and makes us nervous in the trade, comes back above, goes back down...............those are what we use to develope the battle scars and become battle tested to handle the small stuff in order to win the bigger battles.........such as today. PS: first trade was short at 1085.00 which normally would be the +6line...........we were weak and getting weaker so i had a bias..................... when you are right, you are right...... Double PS: let today be a lesson in chart reading with price only as your only guide................it looks so easy .............well, it really is just that easy. Keep working at it and you will wonder why anyone would even consider going against a chart like today. NOINDICATORS aside from price itself needed. Just the facts, no nonsense. PSS: about WORKING a trade with a mental stop and no trail stops..........always know your MAX stop loss and honor it without fail................your job is to read price action and get out of a loser before the max is hit.........that is a winning strategy.