Thanks.. maybe I misread the newsletter I got last night, or it was wrong. Best info direct from the source: NYSE Market Holidays Curiously it does not list today as a 1/2 day.
Here's the newsletter. I guess "CME Financials" referrs to the pits. Also closed Monday. Looks like a good day not to trade. ======================== This Friday and Monday we will be observing modified hours in observance of Columbus Day. ALL TIMES LISTED ARE CENTRAL STANDARD Friday, October 10: The following markets will observe regular hours: Grains, Meats, Stock Indices, and CBOT Metals. All New York markets (except Dollar Index) will observe their current modified schedule. CME Currencies, E-Mini Currencies, CME Financials, CBOT Financials, and the Dollar Index will close at Noon. Monday, October 13: The following markets will observe regular hours: Grains, Meats, and Stock Indices. All New York markets (except Dollar Index) will observe their current modified schedule. ALL FINANCIALS, CURRENCIES, AND THE DOLLAR INDEX WILL BE CLOSED. GLOBEX financials will close Friday at 3:15pm. GLOBEX currencies and financials will open as usual on Sunday evening and close Monday at 3:15pm. GLOBEX stock index and meat contracts will trade normal hours all days. A/C/E Financials will close at 12:30pm on Friday. Sunday evening through Monday afternoon, A/C/E Financials will be closed while all other A/C/E products will operate on their regular schedule. A/C/E Financials will resume their normal schedule Monday evening. Access will observe regular hours. Happy Holiday!
Taken from yesterday's Innerworth newsletter: ================================= Sometimes success is a matter of making the most of a few key moments. Those hoping to gain acceptance to a prestigious college, for example, must perform well for a few key moments on a standardized test. Olympic athletes prepare their whole lives to perform at their best for a critical moment in order to win the Gold Medal. Trading can be much the same way. Though there are many opportunities, you must identify those specific opportunities where you can succeed, and be ready to take advantage of these opportunities and perform optimally. It's crucial to be at your peak during these key moments. You must be prepared and ready to take full advantage of the opportunity. Ideally, you should be fully rested, relaxed and ready for action. But people's personal physiology differs as well as their psychology. It's vital to ascertain your physical and psychological limitations, and work around them, so you can be ready to capitalize on critical trading opportunities.
Ambush vs. Confirmation - Preliminary Results ================================ Avg. risk (difference between open and initial stop) reduced from 3.7 to 2.4 NQ pts Avg. loss per losing trade reduced from 2.7 to 1.8 Avg. maximum favorable excursion (MFE) increased from 1.5 to 8.7 (!!) Number of losing trades increased by 25% So basically, while I got more losers, it was a huge net gain to switch to the ambush method. Sure, I got some losses from trades that I wouldn't have taken waiting for confirmation. But for the ones that did confirm, I was already in the driver's seat. Best of all it felt really good to trade this way. Now I see why I was not profitable (in real-tme testing) taking an automatic +5 using the confirmation entry. The entry was so late, that if it went another +5, it was probably going to go more-- some kind of big move had to be going on. By the way, I included all my nutball mistakes in the counting. So when I get my act together next week it might look even better.
Hi Sam, well, i'm partly irrational, but besides that, on the micro-level all the entries are the same. In other words when I see price down at the 18 SMA on one of the four charts, or price heading to an important S/R level, I switch down to the "tape reading" 10 tick chart and look for the move to stall to enter. As for exits, it's the same for all. So in my head it's all the same method. I do both real $$$ and simulated trades with TSim+ while the market is open. This way when I train, i'm doing exactly the same thing as when I do it for real. As far as spreadsheets go, I have one with lots of info on every trade, including time of exit and entry so if I think of something later I can go look at it. P/L is just a peripheral part of it; I care more about the risk of each trade, avg. loss, and MFE. I say if you take care of those last 3 things, the P/L will follow. For 30 trades, you might be doing the right thing, but have a lousy P/L. (Not likely but possible. )
Here's the distribution of MFE's I got this past week and last Friday. Looks like a gaussian tail up to +2.5 pts. Just by eyeing it, looks like if I take +5 for one ctc then close the second with discretion, I can capture more of these potential gains. Case in point: there were six trades that made it to the +5-7 region. Taking +5 would give 30 points. What did I get? Only 9.5 points, less than a third with the discretionary exit. For the longer running winners, I usually caught more than 50% of the MFE. Once there was more room to work with, I could look at new s/r zones, fib retracements, and chart patterns.
After I got my sanity back on 8 Oct I made a great little trade. After that decending triangle breakout, price moved sideways for a while. Then I saw someone trade a wagonload of contracts (shown in the blue circle). Went long right there with my stop just below the low of the day. Sure enough there was a great move up right after that. Exit was after price turned down near the blue line (corresponding to the triangle breakout price). I get a lot of good exits by watch how price reacts to an important s/r level. Usually I'll let it hit; if it comes back i'll close; if it goes thru i'll move my stop just behind the level.
"It takes most traders a long time to understand the significance of S/R. While a rookie will wait for a resistance level to be violated before they buy, the pro's short resistance. Likewise, a rookie will wait for support to be penetrated before they take a short position. The pro's buy support. The significance here is the pro's take the lower risk trade while the rookies take the higher risk trade. The reason the pro's do this is because they aren't subjecive. In other words, they bail out immediately if it moves against them. Tanking through support is without a doubt a big negative just as blowing over resitance a positive, but that's when things start whipping around, which means you have to give it more room (more risk)." --TAguru5