Journal starts October 1. Over the next few days I will lay out the ground rules for the journal to give an idea of what will be posted. I will attempt to make it entertaining as well as educational. The trades will be based on the framework of the system I am currently trading within. I will update it everyday and the trades shown will basically be the same ones given to the chatroom. Over the next few days I will give weekly and monthly profit goals within the parameters of the advice I have given on various posts recently. Also I will attempt to explain my basic trading strategy without giving actual setups it can still be understood what I am doing. I welcome criticism and questions, remember the more questions you ask and comments you make the more everyone will get out of the journal. If not it will at the very least be entertaining. Let the games begin. AllenZ
Hey Allen- It seems everyone wants to talk about entries. How about doing something different and talking about the exits? Keep your setups to yourself, if you are afraid of them being overused. It would help me more if you told me what you saw to keep you in the trade or to get you out when you did. I think that's where your experience would be most helpful, to me anyway. Just a thought, -JPB
Maybe you'd like to put your trades and trading life on display: Maybe you want to feel yourself to be part of a community. Maybe you like the idea of others admiring your success. Quite possibly, you believe that exposing your trading rationales and results to a small "public" will reinforce your own learning process and discipline. You may also hope that criticism or other commentary might show you some useful or interesting things you might not otherwise have considered. Unfortunately, you can't get those or probably any other benefits from keeping a journal unless you offer something: Enough so that comments and criticisms have some meaningful context and points of reference, and also enough so that anyone might have good reason to follow along, if only passively. The less you offer, the less meaningful whatever exchange, whether real or imaginary, can be. It's possible that the widespread worry over giving "trade secrets" away is highly overdone in these parts, and amounts to paranoia, and that, except perhaps in some very narrow instances, it's rather highly unlikely that a set-up, pattern, approach, or idea will lose effectiveness as a result of having been outlined in an ET journal - even a relatively popular one. If that's true at all, then the real question is whether you feel that what you'd get out of doing a journal, as above, is enough a) to make you feel comfortable casting your "pearls" before us swine - and this site can be, in my observation, rather a swiney affair, on the whole, and b) worth the intrinsic effort. As for myself as a reader and ET member, I have yet to find any journal very interesting for longer than a few pages - precisely because the writers seem generally so reluctant to reveal much about what they're doing in any accessible way: Mere lists of a day's trades hold close to zero interest for me. I've occasionally been sustained by a bit of personal drama - trader contending with the effects of account disaster, that kind of thing - but I haven't seen anyone take it very far, and don't really expect anyone to do so.
I am glad to hear that you are profitable and are making money. But are people really paying (you or anyone else) to make 6 points in the NQ?
Well, an average of 6 points a day over the course of the past 9 months is nothing to sneeze at. If you can post trades made in real time that beat that. My hat is off. Keep in mind I dont scalp, only trade an average of 4 times a day, and explain every trade prior to entry. Think it is easy? Also, even 10 points a week, risking 1% per trade with a 4 point average stop is 100% a year after commision. What I teach is more than how to rack up points, it is how to control risk, stay in the game, learn profitable trading, and how to read the market. Since you are able to laugh at 6 points a day I guess you have nothing left to learn. AllenZ
Allen, I would not take any offense at all to Saratosa's smug remarks. From where he is standing he can be as cocky and arrogant as he wants! He pulls 10 ES out of the market consistently each and everyday PEACE Al and look foward to the journal! Commisso
AllenZ - That's a good, workable return. My trading plan runs just about that - 100-110% a year on a winning percentage of about 40% with an approximate 2.45:1 Gains:losses, trading a rotating basket of 10 stocks. It took me over 6 months to develop; timeframe/bar length was the hardest part. Too small and you risk overtrading and pulling too little out of a move; too long and you're giving back too much and/or risking too much capital. Rough game, this trading gig, but it can be done. I just don't see how anyone can really expect to consitently pull more than 100-150% a year out of on a *consistent* basis. A broker friend of mine was a floor trader in Philly and said 60-70% was a great number to shoot for. Anyone who says "Yes I can make 200% a year" had got to be commended becuase you're surely the exception. Of course we've all had our 5% in 1 day kind of days. How about doing it over time. Another story. Look forward to your posts, AllenZ
6 pts a day with 10 contracts = $1200 a day =$240,000 a year. Hmm, yeah I think I could make it on that.
Looking forward to follow your journal. I have already learnt a lot from your posts. Hope to learn some more.