Definately no need to apologize Anthony. I've seen comments of caution regarding ambitious SCT pursuits. I totally respect the posters and reasoning behind the caution, but personally, I aspire to SCT. But I do so on paper. And I would hope others won't mind my contribution along this stream of thought being posted in this thread no less than what you post regarding hershey's methods. I think Grob puts it best in the quote below: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=54894&perpage=6&pagenumber=152 "Everyone is a peer of everyone else. What makes the path work best is having all kinds of people contributing from assorted experience and vantage points. This is the equalizer: strong contributing efforts from differing places. What really deepens a persons strengths is passing on stuff to others and the concurrent self asessment." Sure, some of us may sit on the bench from time to time. This is tough stuff oftentimes. But we need others to step up and take the ball, and make a solid contribution to keep the dream team in full effect. [/endjabber]
Excellent debrief. You commented yesterday that you "have NOT got it all together yet," but I see that you have a good read of the market and are talking in terms of holding and reversing and profit takings per move... would you share where you are at in your SCT trading (what skills are solid) and what areas you are focusing to improve? I read the sheet music but couldn't play the instrument. Definitely not up to par but I'm working on it... of all of the new concepts/skills in front of me this is my biggest challenge.
Excellent debrief. You commented yesterday that you "have NOT got it all together yet," but I see that you have a good read of the market and are talking in terms of holding and reversing and profit takings per move... would you share where you are at in your SCT trading (what skills are solid) and what areas you are focusing to improve? Very kind of you to say, thank you. I just wanted to share what was on my log that caused me to take the other side of your trade on Friday. I would hope you'd do the same if the tables turned today, cause we all know that's how it goes sometimes. Firstly, I am on paper, so you may not care to hear the rest, but here it is anyway. [jabber] I am finding that there are fewer times where I do not understand what is going on. I can see each profit-taking as it develops, and increasingly I'm reaching out to grab what's there and I find it very therapeutic to do so each day. I'm having many more positive rather than negative experiences and I'm overcoming my phobia of being in the market continuously. After 3 or more linked reversals, I get creeped out and usually have to sideline due to disbeliefs resurfacing. So my grooving cardio needs work. These days, I'm like enter2-hold2-scaleout1-reverse2-hold2-scaleout1-hold1-reverse2-hold2-scaleout1---CREEPY!-sideline. However, most times, I sideline simply to regain perspective, not necessarily because I don't know what's going on. So I'm finding that SCT occurs in linked legs and I'm beginning to appreciate the laterals and dryup, at least until I'm ready to start making money again. "Come on, let's crank this baby back up, Ka-ching!" I also suffer from E1 syndrome. As I mentioned, I am handicapped on the 5m in reading bar ends so I compensate by annotating the traverses on a smaller fractal. This leads to early entries, so I calibrate with the 5m/2m. But my E1 problem, I attribute moreso to not having sufficiency down pat, and being more skilled at fine monitoring. My know-to-go sense is not fine-tuned. I compensate with other means so that I can stay in and work through the overlap. For example, I almost always reverse on extensions after the blowout spike, anticipating it to be a potential pt1 of the next traverse. For that to be true, I look for the potential pt2 to break the prior traverse RTL (while holding on the backside of the gaussian) and I look for a potential pt3 to set the tilt of the new RTL. Then I need increasing prorata for a resumption off the new traverse RTL. If the potential pt3 pulls back to set a lateral or no tilt, I wash and say I was early. If the potential pt3 pulls back past my early entry and extends the prior traverse LTL more, I say it wasn't a point 3 at all and I was lucky I washed. Finding the new pt1 during the overlap is a challenge at times. After a couple of washes its easy to sit back and watch from the sidelines, but of course that's the moment you get the continuation. The wash allows me to continue to participate so I find it to be a good compensation so long as I have the discipline and don't use it as a crutch to debriefing and iterating trouble areas. I worry that I may focus too much on the traverses to the exclusion of other pertinent things. I keep the other fractal boundaries in distant view but I'm really zoomed in to the traverses and their 5m channel boundaries. I can get totally absorbed into one 5m channel and its traverses for the lifetime of the channel, and never notice or care if its an M or W day. This concerns me. I really didn't fancy the BO I caught all that much. I was still fuming I didn't take more out of the first 11 moves. I don't yet do a TD. I mark my notes on the chart instead. I'd like to clean up my mental workspace and separate the 4 steps. Right now everything is scattered about. Each day's charts are becoming a valuable record of my work and I find myself gazing at them and debriefing at the end of each day and then debriefing the whole week on the weekends. I understand the need for the TD now and would like to integrate it into my workings with descriptive notes on each bar of what the MADA brought. Insights that seem to have aided my SCT: I am a moron and in need of constant remediation. Therefore, a moron needs more than one exit besides the LTL. At traverse/channel endings I consider that my exit is: a.)LTL (the pt2 safe but early exit/reversal) b.)middle of traverse/channel on 2nd/3rd price rotation or oscillation(right on-time FTT exit/reversal) c.)extended LTL (the I-am-the-sh.t exit/reversal) d.)traverse/channel RTL (late moronic exit/reversal) or e.)pt 3. of new traverse/channel or new traverse/channel RTL (the retarded, but better late than never exit/reversal). After a reversal, my main concern is what type of channel did I reverse into and is PRV grooving and pushing me. If I am in a channel that is tilted at an angle, I make money by holding. Pt3 settles everything. If pt3 sets no tilt (a lateral, I wash).[/endjabber ]
This is how I felt coming out of Friday AM - I gave up 7 pts because of a multitude of mistakes - trying to get out of the pennant at breakeven. While I know I need to debrief on those trades, and I know I should have done it immediately, it's still hard to consider looking at. That coupled with seeing what Jack had said, tiredness, and forgetting the points brought up recently, and I was feeling frustrated with the whole thing and that I should just be an observer. I feel like I am in the center of the IQ/EQ diagram and moving towards the right. The best move is for me to shift up a row. I'm not exactly sure how to achieve that yet, but I am doing research in order to find out.
be aware that Greenspan's replacement is to be announced at 13:00 EST. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9803463/
Only made three entries today but also had five reversals to keep me in the market for 5, 6, and 28 minutes. Volume seemed low most of the day so I avoided a lot of the trades that tempted me in last week. I was noticably more relaxed while holding and logged more observations than I have previously. Net -1.5
i think if you excercised a little patience to wait for your wash price (same entry/exit) then you'd have had 1. less hyperness (referring to the 10 ish series of trades) and 2. no loss (aside from commissions). you'd have saved 2 pts in losses by washing. -.25 isn't a true wash, and it adds up. just my 2 cents for what it's worth if you can wash or makes some points, you don't need very many to be a consistent winner, this is half of what i'm learning regarding the this holistic channel/market approach. the question that needs to be answered is 'what's the best way to wash and still have protection against a runaway mkt against you?' i also just noticed the BO trade...just wondering, why enter on the left side? why not wait for the new channel to completely form and then get a RtL entry? I think that area was a FTP also.
i think if you excercised a little patience to wait for your wash price (same entry/exit) then you'd have had 1. less hyperness (referring to the 10 ish series of trades) and 2. no loss (aside from commissions). Good feedback. Acting hyper is still a problem for me but I notice a considerable difference from just a few weeks ago so I am encouraged and believe it will diminish as I improve my MADA. You are right about the 10ish trades and also L6 was hyper on the entry (as soon as the bar peeked above the RTL I jumped thinking BO). I should have washed it but I decided to play it out since I had the position... bad decision. the question that needs to be answered is 'what's the best way to wash and still have protection against a runaway mkt against you?' I hope somebody experienced will address this but I'll say that when I have a position and have second thoughts (often!) I play it based on pace... slower I will try for the wash, faster I am more willing I am to give up the ticks for a speedy exit... but this is also ideal for a reversal. how is your trading going? are you still focused on rockets?
insofar as i have observed that rockets get you in AT the left trend line and my observations that 'channels work'.... i can not reconcile the apparent contradiction between the rocket setup which puts you in on the extreme side of the market AND simply trading the bounces off the channel where you have a clear GOOD rvr. i just don't see how the rocket setup is a beginner setup, rather than entering on the R and exiting on the L. i am open to being educated however. the only solution i can think of is if you could wash out of every rocket that fails to 'go' (and we're talking about rockets as defined specifically in the beginner rockets.doc...no permutations) and were able to make a few points on the ones that DO further extend the channel width...i guess you could win that way the other idea that i had, which may not be much comes from a sentence in the .doc..."rockets form channels". Typically the formation of new channels occurs on the RIGHT line correct? Well, if one disregards rocket signals on the LEFT line, and only takes ones on the RIGHT line, perhaps that makes it workable...but i haven't tested/investigated this idea. and the rockets.doc says that there is no price formation criteria...so i'm ????