Hard stops in ES and NQ futures sometimes KILL me and sometimes they SAVE me. For me, the verdict is still out.....I think I need an automated system.
Speed for one, intelligence for another. With these recent markets, a 5 pt move in a quarter second in NQ is typical. Damn it moves fast. I need the stop to be adaptive. That's what is missing with manual orders. Yeah, I can move them, but many times I'm too late.
Or hoping it will stop....or counting on it...best hedge though...too many youth texting and driving....
It is too tight if you are being stopped out before you can react. Can you provide a recent example on a chart..entry...sl..etc
My "better" setting for the authorization channel (personal reference 6ยทยทยท12) was too slow, and in fact, the original authorization channel from Post #55 (personal reference 5?58) which is now nothing more than the red moving average (see below) was too slow as well. (It also takes the place of the most resent setup's moving average cluster.) The key for me (I believe) is the zebra Battenburg moving average, which I began plotting on my charts last week. The "better" authorization channel is now more of a price magnet moving average (the bold black trend line) with the strength of the attraction between the magnet and the candlesticks conceptualized as increasing rather than decreasing as the distance between the two grows wider. Longer-term considerations are deemed essentially irrelevant for intraday trading, though I still find it worthwhile to refer to higher-timeframe charts in that they often supply added confidence for going ahead and following through on what the Battenburg moving average tells me I ought to be doing. Such MAs have been deleted from my trading setup though in that they just muddy up the waters. (The Battenburg moving average has begun giving me a much better winning percentage of trades...) Unfortunately, this manner of trading did away with my dynamic stop loss and take profit targets, which must instead be set either at the local high or low, or at what I call statistical support/resistance levels as defined by specified deviation settings for the bands belonging to the moving average envelope associated with the price magnet moving average (as a hard stop loss) and at the *price magnet itself (for the take-profit target). *Nothing to do with Option Expiration Price Magnets
Totally agree...my stops are too tight. I'm working on this......to optimize stops based on price action. I'm trying to use highest high - lowest low for the past 10 bars.....as a proxy for the stop range.....200 ticks per bar.
Pay for the data from a known and trusted provider, like CME or CQG or Bloomberg. Free data is naturally suspect.