Great start to the journal. You're taking an excellent approach to this. Keep those stops in exactly like you're doing . That's good to see. Ill add 1 thing. In order to gain comfort, find 2-3 high quality setups. Keep track of them as you trade them so you understand the probabilities (pct win/loss) as well as the risk:reward. Once you convert to real money, your emotions will be put aside because you understand that you're the house. You'll be able to take a more quantified approach and it will get u in the habit of being patient. In addition, it will also prevent a lot of emotional strain as well. . Hope this helps!
Have you checked Litespeed as a broker? If you using limit orders and not trading an abundance of stocks, it is like 26 cents per hundred.
I like your overall idea, but I think you will get even better when you dial in your stops and entries. Notice that you are entering and getting stiopped out alot miday in this example while the market is moving sideways b/w the support/resistance level. You cant have your stops so close in this environment IMO. Also. For entires I would suggest going long when the stock retraces back (weakly) to a pivot level/support level. Thi is very safe, and stocks often test this level b/4 going on to test new highs.. (vice versa for shorts) your 10:00 entry was excellent. but b/w 10:00 11:10, you see the sideways chop? try to avoid this. Your 11:00 was also excellent.. I would have waited a bar later though for entry.. See how it bounces off red line (was previous resistance, but now BECOMES support?) BUt important thing is to see what happened at 11:00.. it FINALLY broke.. and bounced off the new support level. Look at it this way. You might miss a few big moves that never bother to retrace with this metohd, but you will also not get chopped up as much, which is psychologically easier long term.
You seem to do a lot of break out style trading. Ditch the indicators, you dont need them, and add to your position when the market pulls back, and have stops right under strong support areas. Targets would be an equal distance from the high and low swings.. for example: Here is a trade I took on eur/gbp...target not hit just yet, and here is another on gbp/usd that I missed but would have been a great trade.
Since you really like the idea of day trading it would probably help to start out looking at a daily chart to help determine which way the stock is heading for an entire day then start dialing it in to an hourly chart then 30 minute and trade using a 10 minute chart. Those 1 minute charts are very noisy. A .25 move looks like a big trend but commissions will eat up most of the profits. I know you are getting a lot of info but some of us have been doing this for years and are trying to help you get a good start. Take it for what it's worth. You are the only one that can determine your success.
^ I would agree with the daily and the 1hr, but anything more is just analysis overload. How are you scanning for stocks?..what types of trades are you looking for and what are the filters you're using to find them? ie, when I had trade-ideas.com (stock scanning app) I looked for stocks that were trading at 2x the normal volume, at least 1 million shares traded daily, at least 10.00 in price, and had made at least a 1% move off the 5min charts. trade-ideas is great for day traders, I highly recommend it, but be willing to pay around 65.00 a month.
I had to add the 30 minute chart due to my OCD. I am very compulsive about the rule of 3's. I even have to have 3 touches on my trend lines before I consider it valid. I use stockcharts.com for my scanning and I re-scan every options expiration day. I scan based on: Price between $7.00 -$100 Average daily volume greater than 1 million BETA greater than 2.0 then I use several other indicators as filters to narrow down my selections. I like to know where the action is and if the stock is being accumulated or distributed at the time of my entry. But my actual entry is based strictly on chart reading. The filters I use most are: Historical Volitility On Balance Volume RSI 2 and 5 period settings Yes, I put a lot of research into my selections and that is why I don't day trade That being said I did take a crack at day trading the ES several years ago in a journal here on ET. It was successful but took too much time that I needed to spend elswhere. Sorry for the long winded reply.
4re, plaease don't brake your wind-ie repy! Actually, your experince with ES helps me understand where I'm at as a new trader starting with ES. Glad you added that final thought! Thx
Thanks...I just don't want to hijack Sam's journal but feel free to look through my old journal. I saw that it is listed in one of the hall of fame journals here on ET. It was called the S/R emini journal or something like that. I closed it about 4 years ago but it had some good info and I posted all my trades the night before with charts showing where to enter. Good trading to all...