You know I did think like you, until I made about a 100 real trades. There is a difference between 2 basic set-ups. 1. You go all in, using a tight stop - averaging down is stupid; 2. You start building a position with a minimum position size with a wide stop - what's wrong with averaging down here if your max risk remains identical to the 1 set-up? Forget right or wrong, just try to understand my point of view, it's about your max loss, rather than scaling in, averaging down. When you say "most traders", who said that your predicament is correct? No offence intended.
Well done Bright! And since this is a S/R journal, I'll explain how I see B taking this trade, same as me I expect. When Gary has taken this short in the morning, he was hoping for a breakout below 1329, it didn't happen indicating that support was strong at that level. So what B has done, IMHO, is look at the chart and seen the bottom of channel and decided to buy it, hoping that support would hold yet again. Good trade.
for #2 i think it depends on how your trades usually work out. if your trades tend to go against you at first and then goes in your direction, what you're doing works great. but if most of the good trades go in your direction right away, then you will have small size on the great trades, and large size on the not so great trades.
There is no offence taken. Like I said, most people in here, me included, probably do not know your money management methods. And as this is a forum of traders following a methodology posted by Gary who would probably like to know what is going on. In fact, following your theory, your stop loss should have changed after adding to your position, no?
If you are confident in yourself and your trading plan , there is no need to scale, only follow your rules, take your shot, set your stop, and let the trade work.
There may be an inverse H and S setting up right now. http://quotes.ino.com/chart/?s=CME_ES.Z06.E&v=s