Well, I only traded with one eye today. It seems that trading: 1. Requires 100% attention - give anything less and your performance will suffer greatly. 2. Needs a lot and I mean a lot of self-discipline. controlling your emotions is perhaps 80% of the game. 3. Forces one to be painfully honest with oneself - the market does not discriminate, does not like or dislike you. If a treader gets his buttocks beaten, the fault is his and that is it. 4. Will in the end make you a more together, more disciplined person provided you come out victorious from this little exercise. 5. Looks so easy, but it is anything but. 6. Could easily become a sort of gambling addiction if approached from the wrong angle by a person who has the propensity for abovementioned "sin". As for today's figures - up $200 for the day. I got my first bill from E Signal - all I can say is wow, I wish I could be on the other end of those checks coming in at the end of the month. However, I must say, the service so far had been superb. Enjoy your weekend guys/gals and as always Happy trading to all!
break even trade today. Started early losing losing losing, Trading indicators. Down 4 points or so on countless RT's. Afternoon up 6 points on three trades. Had to leave early from one trade to get groceries or it would have been more. Moral. I gave up on a system. Took trades with the flow as best I could in afternoon. I'm think there isn't a system. I have seen the rules surrounding several thousand dollar systems. Have tried them and the general principals work, but they become profitable in the hands of their seller only when he or she doesn't follow them exactly. That's where I think new users get slapped. The systems don't work well. Experience to know when not to use the system is what works. I have seen the posts here in ET. Seen their profits posted when the system they sell was the other way. How did they know? What do they tell their customers. YOU HAVE TO GET THE FEEL OF THE SYSTEM. The exceptions to their systems is what makes these people profitable. I think a general system as a framework to work from or a guide to gauge the markets are good and logical. But to thinking you can find combinations of indicator that tell us what to do when is useless. I have scraped every system I have found, I have tried making countless numbers of combinations of things. They have produced bubkiss (spelling?). I'm going to try to watch a couple of charts look at a line or two and try to trade. Maybe it will be crap. But that wouldn't be any different than all the indicator based trading I have done. Point being. Maybe all the people in this thread need to just trade until we get it. Use 2 charts or 1, 80 EMA, 20 SMA, MACD, STOCH, 9-18 cross, whatever. Keep trading the market and keep an EYE on the indicators. Being affixed to a cross of meaningless lines or bouncing off something is driving me nuts. I was able to predict market action much better when I didn't know any better. When I started out. Maybe this is crap and I'll probably be blasted by a whole bunch of people that know better than I. I think those people are fooling themselves. They have learned to read the market through their system and learned to ignore it when it's wrong. I believe experienced people selling their guidance can help. I'm not knocking people who sell stuff. Just stating I don't believe you are selling a money making system. Just a framework and a story of how you did it. I'm going to start posting my P&L again. No system. No real signal. 1.5 Point stop in ER. One bigger chart. One smaller one. We see where I get. Ciao. JIM
+ $ 30 I am now testing a new system. Did 2 mistakes still landed in $30. lets see what happens next.
No system ER2: +$4443.50 profit after com. on 50 RT. Far to many trades. Get a little confused sometimes and it cost me some profit and commissions jumping back and forth. But there for the larger moves. Avg. win =+2.23 points Avg. loss=- .69 points P/L Ratio= 3.25 Percent profitable- 54% Maybe the expanded range makes this possible. We'll have to see how well I work in choppy choppy. JIM
There's a lot to be said for chaos scalping, but if you learn one pattern, and either weahter the drawdown when it's not working, or learn it's opposite, you would probably do better for your trading in the long-run (especailly your state of mind). It will help you think about what is happening, and why, but if this doesn't work for you, that's cool too. Good trading, JJ