"You will need to show the courage of your conviction in order to properly implement those ideas. If others shout out their ideas at the sidelines, screen out those voices. Few signs are as intuitive and imaginative as you are, so trust your instincts. You have the right answer and don't need theirs." edit: i can always count on my psychic to cheer me up... whether it's bs or not i don't really care.
If i make a good trade, I decrease my exposure on the next trades. I do this every time, until I am trading nothing, when i am trading nothing, i'm done for the day. With bad trades, I only allow myself 2 in a row and then I'm done for the day... no increase or decrease in exposure after the first one. Complete decrease in exposure after the second one.
edit: i dont know anything except that i dont know. stay tuned. and i beleive i can make / preserve money with this information.
i think i finally understand whats going on... I'm short @ 1131, and will average up to 1136 if necessary. it's a swing trade. edit: i plan on holding till we hit 1100.5 (minimum) edit2: the price should actually rise to near 1136, so i'll short heavier up there. the only reason i'm short 1131 is because the price might not get to 1136 ish as it already went close.
I hate it when i forget to role over to the new month. No wonder liquidity was so weird today. all my numbers today were on the old contract. hmmmm, i guess i better switch over now.
This seems to be less a "thread" than a monologue. I will say, however, that I have been trading for the "gaps" as well as daytrading for over 15 years. And almost exclusively overnighting for the past 6 years. When it works, it is great. I made a lot of money when it did. I also gave back a bunch in the past year. Fortunately, I realized early on that it was working less and less over that time, and I cut back substantially. I traded intraday more and overnight less. If not for the daytrading, I would have been hurt pretty badly. The thing is, in a trending market, you play the momentum. In a choppy market, as we have had, you have to take what the market gives you.....which isn't easy. Lots of work, lots of concentration. Small gains, smaller losses (hopefully). When overnighting was working, I could withstand 50K per day losses knowing that I would make up for them "tomorrow". Now I risk very little on overnights. Two years ago, I thought nothing of taking 2-3 million (buying power) home overnight. These days, 500k is heavy for me. And most of the time I go home flat. It is true that I have not given great emphasis on technicals in quite a numer of years. Perhaps a mistake. But I have devoted much study to what works and what doesn't. Relative strength and momentum were working for years. That has ceased to be the case. As far as averaging down (or up in shorts) that are against you overnight, seems to work lately....true....but there is a rather easy explanation for that (which is too many people are doing the same thing). So why bother? Why not be flat overnight, and buy the first down move when being long was your plan? (opposite on shorts). That way you don't have to make up your losses in your original positions?
this is a journal... so i post my thoughts here, and sometimes people comment and we get a dialog going. why should I play the gaps? cause as i refine my system, I right more and more, and wrong less and less. Why risk the world for a 10% gap in the futures? Because it just works. It's the exact same proposal as trading a system that has a win/lose ratio of 1/10 and winamnt/loseamnt ratio of 20/1. Except that it's exactly the opposite. Same principal. Same principle as most of the sell side of wall street. Basically, i'm just doing what works just like you... I daytrade as well, i do alot of things. But, since I know about the gaps ahead of time, and i have adequate time to post my thoughts on them, i thought it might be interesting as a journal thread. short @ 1124 agian.