Hi spreadem I have a philosophy that we cannot predict the direction of the market and only react to our trades by using risk management methods. There are so many market forces involved that it is impossible to predict the short term direction of the market, especially when day trading. However, for longer term trading (not day trading) the percentages are higher. You have speculators and hedgers all with different views on the market and to tell what each of them is going to do on any particular day or time frame is impossible. Each method has its flaws, so the best thing is to employ one and manage each trade. As for your comment âWhy do you think they didnât work?â My answer is...they did. I followed my trading rules and got out exactly at my stop price. Once again, managing your trades is vital for survival in this game.
Very insightful, in fact I'm also an ES daytrader and I agree totally. I guess I should ask my question a better way. Assuming that you're trading according to a system that has positive expectancy, do you think that you're in the middle of a typical drawdown having had 2 down days, 4 losing trades.
Spreadem I tend to look at my performance over a month not on a trade-by-trade or a daily basis. I do aim for a 50% success rate but it is to early in the month to worry about losing trades. In the last three months there have been days where I have had six losers in a row. The aim here is not to deviate from a profitable method. Robbo As for youâ¦you donât have to enter the thread. Thanks for your constructive input.
How many losers in a row are typical with this daytrading system? Have you defined under which circumstances most of your losers occur?
One losing trade today Long: profit /loss = -3.00 points/contract Spreadem: The most number of losers I have had are six. I have tried to qualify many reasons for staying out of potentially unprofitable trades and the market tends to prove me wrong half the time. I have looked at trading inside days, gap up and gap down days, market profile, pivot points etc and each of these do not have an effect on trade percentage. I have even looked at the trin, vix etc and find that these indicators also show similar results. If you look hard enough there are always reasons to stay out of a trade. If you wait for all the indicators to line up you will never enter a trade. So as I said before it is impossible to knw what the market is going to do on any particular day. So all we can do is have faith in our method and react to the market.
Maybe I will learn something here. I have subscribed to this thread. If not it only takes a few minutes to read the few posts here. Michael B.
Two trades today Trade 1: Short: -3.00 points/contract Trade 2: Long: +5.75 points/contract Not a very exciting week. For a short-term trader this would be regarded as a disastrous week...-14.75 points/contract. However, I am a short-term trader with a long-term outlook. Meaning, I look at my over performance over the month rather than day-to-day or week-to-week.