I have quoted a part of Handles post below. This keeps repeating itself to me in my mind "Distance of a Trend in Time". There is something to this. I have never measured it literally but have simply not traded during chop...I have often just canned retracements at 50%. There is a lot of time and money I am leaving on the table as much money can be made during certain times of the day or the slower times of chop (volpri trades chop and kills it). It's funny I could backwards engineer Handles posts and he has probably revealed how he trades some of his systems completely in bits in pieces all over the place here in very long posts. lol... ES Have you figured out in minutes of the distance of a trend in "time"? So like a trending wave is so many points, then counter wave(retracement) is so many points, wave 3 is so many minutes/points, along with 4 & 5. A reason to know averages of time in a trend is a filter to stop you from losing your account. Let's take an example of 20 minutes in first 90 minutes, so one ave perhaps trend changes every 20 bars and you can identify at least 3 waves, so more than half of suspected swing is over, so the amount of time we give a trade to work out reduces a little like an hourglass.
Buy 2, if price goes against you 2 points buy 3. Sell 1 (or 3) at 1 point, close entire position at 3 points against you. Keep 1 (or 2) on in case you catch extreme point of day.
Position size pointer; less is more. BUT ONLY ,only,if you want to trade/invest a long time. For max thrills/chills/spills-ignore this.
What do you do with all of these dots? pick one and enter? I sure the hell do not have enough Capital to "add to" or "pyramid" with each one?
%% Are you making a profit , 52 weeks + more on it?? IF not ;then Steve is right.And compare the cash market with dividends......................................................................But thats only if you like profits more than thrills ;most traders prefer thrills > profits, so they trade rather than invest. But its still a free country.
That is why we ETers are called traders and not investors. Investors put money in today to get more money tomorrow, I just want to survive and live to trade another day.