When stupid Stalker enters at point three or ftt the markets of course going the other way and when he tries to be cautious and step aside it´s the opposite... Okey I´m right sometimes, I have winning days both live and sim., but I think I have to stick with the simulator for a while since I loose more then I win... Where do you usually enter Easy - at the right channel/pt3 or do you wait for volume to pick up and price to move in the desired direction? Anyway I think you´re right in what you´re saying, you usually are Dantheman, I´m clearly not an expert in english, but it seems to me that different people interpret discretionary trading in different ways, am I right? Anyway, I think about it in a similar way as you, a trading method based on you´re knowledge of the market rather then a system that tells you when to enter and exit. I´m not implying that it´s based on vague feelings or something. Just meant that if you fail it´s because you don´t have enough knowledge, so it´s easy to blame yourself. If you fail with a mechanical system you can always blame the system thanx, Stalker
Forget about everything for a minute and consider this classic pattern, the flag. This is probably the oldest setup in the book. You enter on the break of the trendline, your stop (oops) is above the pt. 3 and your target is the swing low. You can make a living doing this simple trade, the only caveat being that you are operating near the high or low of the day. If you are in the midddle of the range it is much riskier. Trying to catch the top and bottom of moves comes later.
Now we add the channel giving us a better picture and increasing our target to the left channel line. Pt3's are usually either a flag or a lower high or higher low which are all good places to be looking for an entry. If you choose the right ones you can be wrong half the time and still make out pretty well.
The beauty of these simple trades for beginners is the simplicity of evaluating your r/r. I hope Im not getting too far offtrack here as this is not sct stuff but my own opinion is that stops and targets are neccessary for new traders.
The weekend is a good time to consider the mental atmosphere of a person which your last few posts do. I like your comment that so much of being in a place to get the job done is clearing the bullshit that sits on the paths to gaining knowledge, skills and experience to do the job. The job is making money through participation in the market. What is sufficient to do that job is utterly uncomplex. It is the type of realization that arrives for a person wanting to play a good game of chess when he sees that making sound moves in the beginning is important. Controlling the center is important. Developing pieces is important. Tucking away the king is important. How can a person who knows this convey it to a person who insists on taking his knight and wasting precious moves jumping around the board because he was impressed by a knight fork he saw somewhere? There is a required seriousness to the game that can't be taught. A seriousness that comes from a desire to become good ASAP. A seriousness that leads a beginner to forgo knowing superficially the entire universe of chess openings for knowing one opening deeply and completely and playing it at every opportunity so that it can be experienced in as many different settings as possible. After awhile, he can anticipate the possibilities before they occur and even playing 5m blitz games with it is an unconscious drill. How many "A", "B" and "C" rated club players are there who have been at the game, in some cases for decades, who still don't get it? (Answer: 95%) Still they are head and shoulders above the non-tournament player in the general population who can't resist playing and thinks he can "win" because he knows how the pieces move. Making expert or master (Top 5%) is uncomplicated. Most people never make it, however, which is fine. Chess is for fun. Chess is not for money. Even the best players can't make a living at it. Trading is not playing chess, of course. It's a lot more lucrative.
You make it sound like a piece of cake easy Seriously, i´m gonna try to stop jump around between ideas. What you´re saying about risk in relation to where in the trading range the flag appears is very interesting, I remember you saying something similar about triangles, that you shouldn´t trust them if they´re not close to the high or low of the day. /Stalker
It was not my intention to make it sound easy. You already know how tricky it can be. Once you enter you start seeing and feeling all sorts of things that werent there before. However I do think most of the easy money is made around the highs and lows of the day, when youre making new highs or lows or testing the highs and lows. You get a flag and then you get the test and it either breaks into new ground or fails. Taking the flag you are already in when the test arrives and can decide whether to lock in profits or try to ride the bo, a good position to be in. Trading in the middle of the daily range is best left to the experts.
Thanks for your charts yesterday easy, was in on both flags today, 2, 25p on the first one, didn´t like the development of the second one so i was out fast for a 1p profit. This probably means I will loose for a week, but many thanks anyway! /Stalker
WTG. Bear in mind that you only need one or two of those a day to make a heck of a living and have the patience to wait for the good ones.
I know patience is a virtue in this game, trying to work hard on that detail. I´m just gonna focus on this set-up with flags for a while, feels good to narrow down the focus