What are you talking about? Chris can't trade to save his life! The only thing he does differently than anybody else is 1.) post winning trades in realtime 2.) grow his trading capital on a consistant basis 3.) steel points away from unsuspecting losers 4.) user spiderman like predictability to forecast price movement other than the above he is just like everybody else! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!! I GOTCHA!
Hi Fast , As you I'm a 100% discretionary trader. I've tried a lot of stuff ( software, systems , etc ) to realized at the end that it was a waste of time for me. After some dedication and work with stops I decided that a fixed amount stop should be the best for me . So I started from that. With a fixed amount I don't have to deal with a pre - entry pressure to get the stop placed in the supposed " right" position. I like to use hard stops and change them myself in lieu of a trailing stops. Besides , as far as I know a trail stop is only held on the broker's server but not in the exchange itself, so if you walk a way from your pc and something goes against you you'll will be in a better situation with a hard stop placed. Also I've learned that a good entry is a psychological relief, so I watch closely and wait til my door is open. What I do is to look for exhaustion bars to entry and exit. In an Up move I wait for a heavy buying ( more than average volume ) at the end of the move to go short, mostly at the last part of the bar , in a down move I wait for heavy selling at the end of the move to go long. So , that give me the chance to work with quite tight stops. I like to trade pullbacks and corrections after the main movements ( main trend) , to do so I use 5 points stop and look for my entry door at the exhaustion bar , My target is 8 to 12 points in this move. Trading the main trend is another story. If the range is narrow I just watch and don't trade. I don't feel comfortable trading narrow ranges. If I see a lot of the " tail bars" forming I watch carefully since those eat your stops nicely. If is a trending market within average range I use 12 points stops to trade the main moves ( targeting 25 to 35 ) , trailing my stop manually in the corrections, watching that the price will trade in lighter volume during the retracements. I don't move the stop until the price tells me to do so. I 've learned that if a retracement is bigger than 40 % the initial move was weak , so there's a chance that the price will not advance so much more in your way. So its time to watch price and volume action very closely and take what is on the table while is there if you have to. Also I'd like to add that once you learn how to find your entry doors and you're getting positive results ( profits ) you don't have to rise your stops to a bigger amount but to increase the contracts quantity progressively. BTW , congrats for your journal, nice job !!