Hi jokepie, So happy that you replied me, and of course I'm opend to criticism as I know I'm a newbie, and today I've done lots of mistakes as usual... tonight from home I will post a resume of this day and will highlight all the mistake I did. Anyway I shorted because I had big resistance on all the futures and indexes on the main timeframes (daily-weekly-monthly), I'm not sure if you are suggesting that I don't have to short such a strong market or if I had to short the YM or the ES instead of the NQ... tonight I will post a resume with some charts. many thanks again for your replay
Still in my last trade, up $50, stop at break even, I noticed that I have to wait 30 min before I can edit a posted message, actually I would need to edit it immediatly as I'm not english mother tongue and when I notice a mistake I would like to correct it asap. thanks
moved up my stop under the 1 min swing, this because I thought that the market was more short then long today, maybe I should take profit now since the stop is so close (10 ticks)...
If you are going to trade futures, you will have to be a student of its behaviour first. - How futures are affected on some paticular days. FED meetings, key speakers, Key earnings reports, Unemployment numbers etc, there are tons of these. - Futures are very Emotion driven and therefore the first bullet point and reactions can be sharper than in stocks. - Since it is an average, movements are limited in range. So identify the strong/ momentum trends and trade them ONLY. - Remember that it is a highly leveraged product, so risk management (based on your account size) is key. Therefore Size in porperly, chose stop loss wisely and respect the limit parameters set. - During the lunch or non news times futures market can dry up very fast and hence can chop around alot. Stay away from those timeframes. You keep saying that you will not trade any more, still enter a trade. Its ok if you have a genuine reason to do so. If you feel that you are really loosing your control and Over trading. Shut the PC down when your last trade is in with stops and targets. As you staring at the screen will not change the outcome. Its really tuff to control THE MIND. Funny thing is that its the ONLY thing that we have control over. Not the Market or news or Life for that matter. Do not beat your self on the losses. We all had them, even the best ones did. you learn from them and move on. Its a part of the Game. you need to start accepting your ODDS. Once you do you can manage them better. Dont trade whne you are tired or stressed ove anything. Try to reduce the number of inputs - your screens seem to be feeding a lot of information- I have felt that as we gain experience we can process more information. just like when we start learning how to drive, we should not play music or talk on cell phones.... Slowly it all becomes natural. IF you feel that you always focus on the results/ your future/ past...and doubt your self alot... try to do some meditation. Try the bookl power of now. there is a audio version for 7 buck and playtime is 3 hrs. you can finish it in one night. It helped me stying objective and focussed on the Trade and not contemplate million possible outcomes at each tick. Gud luck
And yes, stop ET blogging untill you CAN multitask with positive results. it will just distract you. It will subconciously make you eager to close the position and report back to the world !!!
Hello darktrader. It's clear you've worked very hard and are very determined at this point. Is your strategy successful in a "live backtest", meaning going through charts over an extended period one day at a time and applying your rules consistently? The problem with truly discretionary trading is you don't have any idea what the expectancy is because there's no accurate history of the "strategy". Therefore you trade a little bit scared because you don't have any solid statistics to give you the confidence and conviction in your trades. I always like to say my money is made when the markets are closed, because that's when the homework is done which reveals where potential profits will come from. I know you've got some stuff programmed but the problem seems to be when you go discretionary. By all means ignore this advice if it doesn't work for you, but I would: - get a strategy or 2 with precise rules that test out on charts going back at least a couple years - start sim trading the strategy(ies) for at least a month or 2 - if profitable in sim start to trade live with smallest possible size - add size once profits are twice the historical drawdowns from testing Best of luck to you.
STOPPED and END OF TRADING FOR TODAY I'll post a comment to my trading day tonight... TOTAL FOR TODAY 9 trades +$50 - $42.48 (commissions) TOTAL +$ 7.52
Hello tomahawk! many thanks to your reply, very apreciated, I replay to your post a little quick, because I'm very tired at this hour of day (I'm in europe), and I'm about to go home. You are totally right, but it is impossible to test my strategy, this because I manually draw my trendlines, the tradestation automatic trendline indicator doesn't work for the kind of trendline that I draw (see picture attached), I have in mind to ask to a programmer if it is possible to program an indicator that could automatically draw for me something that could be similar, this way I can backtest and also even if I want to trade it discretionary I can have an idea of where to take profits and where to place stops, etc.. Also drawing all this charts is a very big work... it is very stressfull to work this way, with all the pressure I have from my personal life, with a strategy that you don't know if it will work, you don't know when is best to take profit, you don't know which is the best distance for the stops, etc.. I only know that many times the markets respect my lines, and that often they are the low or the high of the day. thanks again
Hi Again jokepie, It is ok to post here, this doesn't affect my trading the way you said, the only problem is that it is another big work, but I'm sure that it will help me a lot, today I made too much trades and this is why I posted a lot, but I must limit the number of trades so if I manage to do that, you will see less posts, now I need to post everything because it is the only way to understand my mistake, when tonight before going to bed I will read all that I've done today. thanks for your support