no trades today...it looked like there were a few decent set-ups in the morning....but for the most part I just decided I didn't want to risk anything on a Fed day. Everyone has their own opinion on trading a fed day...but I just avoid it, seems like you can really get whipped around and chopped to death. Had fun chatting and watching though. It's very important to have fun. Tomorrow's my last day w/ Realtick / then a short break...and pro account should be open soon.
dstod- 98% chance I'm going to Echo...unless someone can give me a good reason to go somewhere else. from everybody I spoke with it seems like the best match for me...the only complaint I've heard is the charting software is weak...but I also heard they're coming out with something new to fix that...so we'll see. Peace
today is my last day with Realtick, so i won't have any trades until my new acct is open, might be 7-10days and today my girlfriend has the day off(snow day, but its really like freezing rain up here)..so I'm done early to get in some quality time Enjoy
Uptik, Nice scalping chart pattern, but you were willing to risk .50 in order to make...??? You took profits at .45, so that's LESS than a 1:1 reward/risk ratio, very dangerous money management. And the fact that it worked out this time makes it even more dangerous!
magna- yes , I'm aware of the poor management on some of my tardes...my original target was one point...when I noticed the NDX getting in to the support I moved my stop to the top of the entry candle..which i think was 43.65, then the risk reward shaped up...the pace on the stock picked up so I covered.....i understand you pointing out having a good risk/reward ...but sometimes for me, i throw in other factors. including intuition and market action so another words...I always set a stop/target on entry...but sometimes I change it...maybe I shouldn't...but I do Thanks for you input. I do welcome all comments. Peace
Uptik, I always set a stop/target on entry...but sometimes I change it...maybe I shouldn't...but I do Sorry, I wasn't clear. I'm not suggesting that a trader shouldn't use discretion and change things as market conditions change. I was asking what was your target in the sense of, "What was a reasonable target given price support or moving average support or bollinger band support, etc." If you didn't take any of those things into account, and simply said to yourself, "Hey, I wanna get a point", or "Hey, since my stop is .50, I always want a 2:1 ratio, so I need to get a point...", then that's what I was addressing when I was talking about reward/risk ratio.
ok yeah I see what you mean...no ididn't just pull a point out of thin air as my target... what i did was this..in a falling three continuation pattern...the continuing leg should be roughly the same distance as the first leg....i think I've drawn that on some of my other posts...I think it was in my last qqq trade and then I use a bit of intuition, you know with Nasdaq stocks sometimes they move so fast...you don't really have enough time to figure everything out to the penny...well you know what I mean. What do you think? Is it reasonable? I was going over all my trades for the month(some were made b4 I started posting) and I had a great win percentage, I think even too high...but I think thats why i first titled this thread "one good thing about PDT rule", yeah i hate that rule, but it has forced me to be extremely selective...no spray and prays. ok, in my 1-29-02...qqq trade post , i drew green boxes around the legs of the pattern, see how they're almost the same length...I learned this from John Murphy's book...which I keep open on my desk all day long, the falling 3 is one of my fav patterns
nice trading. i really enjoy your thread. my only question/comment is why not short the first retracement at 44.00?
iiphos- Thanks for your support. I didn't short the first 44 because I rarely trade before 10am...it's just my personal preference. And it really didn't form a pattern there...if you look at the chart, i drew lines where the price was going up and the volume was going down...I always look at volume.