Volpri is very smart. I take my hat off to him. For him, a trade that goes against him is part of the same trade. Mental flexibility while developing the trade is crucial to being successful. I trade differently, but averaging has helped me. Every trader has something that makes him special.
If you are comfortable with the risk, 2 bux is 2 bux. If your technique creates slippage and your "edge" is dependent on no slippage then I suggest there is something wrong with your edge... Unless you are HFT. In which case one would need to ask why are you looking at the journal of a self-professed, discretionary retail trader, comparing and even chiding? Everyone is sooo altruistic nowadays.
Traderking there is a reason why I enter as you call it “incorrectly” and a reason why I will average down. Take a bull BO from anything. See sometimes I am getting in early in the move and it takes off and least I have a position on. Since I do not know beforehand just how big of a move it will be, if I enter, and if it doesn’t take off right away instead price drops, then I add more. I simply see that as getting in at a cheaper price not an incorrect entry. My premise is still intact. My initial entry might be a little soon but I’ll take that chance because IF it does take off immediately after my initial entry at least I will have some position on. My tactic is to build my position in such a case as long as my original premise of a bull BO Is likely. If that changes I dump it faster than you can spin a yo yo and look to reverse usually doubling up. Nothing is ever certain in the markets. Entries nor exits, but my view and strategies affords me the opportunity of combining; reading the finished PA with reading the dynamic PA and making adjustments as a trade unfolds. I only have to have a slight edge and it usually renders me a high win rate. Sure I have losing days but not that many. There are days my brain does not work right and I can’t seem to read the PA correctly. When I post a chart with a days worth of trades I generally try to show all the trades for the day and not just cherry picked trades. I can’t help it if I made 10 trades and all were winners or I took 8 and one was a loser. Or 12 and 4 were losers and 8 were winners. Take range trading. 80% of BO attempts top or bottom will fail and price will start heading back towards going into the range with 5 bars. But often the BO attempt will not quite reach the top of the range before in reverses back down or the bottom before it reverses back up. So, what do I do? As price moves up into the top 1/3 I start shorting. If it keeps moving up I keep adding (i.e. averaging down). Why? I am betting the BO will fail if it penetrates the top of the range. And that 80% is pretty good odds when you think about it. However, if I short initially in the top 1/3 and no opportunity presents itself to average down but instead after right after my entry price immediately reverses and heads back towards the middle or bottom of the range, in such a case I at least have a position on. The concepts are the same if I am fading the bottom of the range, but everything is going long. See, I don’t see these as incorrect entries but playing the 80% tendency for BO attempts of the outer limits to fail. Wish you the best too.
I talk exactly like i trade. i have the utmost of confidence when i take a trade. i enter n exit long or short with the same dumb confidence as i do writing about trading. Volpri your method is flawed because it is subjective it is discretionary and has zero probability on its own other than your own instincts actions and interpretations. that is the problem with price action trading. when i see this painting maybe you see a girl in a chair while others interpret a homoerotic underlying theme and yet others view the peach as a womans vagina. just like price action on 1 5 10 30 daily monthly they are open to interpretation. my main point about your method is averaging down thats all. your posts are good though because they get people thinking again. but adding to losers over n over tells you that you are on the wrong side of the trend.
I'm starting to see what Volpri is seeing...The thing is that Volpri has been focused on the ES, while I have been focused on NQ. When the ES is sitting there ranging up and down for 20 points, going *hummmm* (soft and quiet-like), the NQ is going gangbusters like headless chicken all over the place, like *LAKEUGF<SADLJKFLkk*. (Very LOUD) In reviewing some charts over the past few weeks, I give Volpri's method a bit more credence. It is still dangerous, but I think NQ has fried my brain to the point that I think it must fail on all instruments, and that is a closed-minded attitude. Not being adaptable is doom, so I will acknowledge it.
You too have a good night. I’m a bit tired. Down near Destin Fl vacationing in the motorhome and the park we are in won’t run the tram down to the beach because of covid so we have to walk about mile down there and a mile back pulling a wagon loaded with beach chairs etc.Then once we get there the boardwalk is quite long. We left around sunset walking back and I am tired.
That is not a bad strategy at all. Especially in longer trends. I too scale in on a larger move as price moves my way and if I see enough pressures to keep the move going. Why? Because the market has inertia and I am betting it will continue far enough to be profitable for scaling in as it moves my way. The problem is on slower moving days or tighter range days that strategy will have you losing over and over again as you buy one...moves 2 points in your favor...buy another...instead of continuing the move it immediately reverses 4 points and suddenly you are down 2 points on 1 and 4 points on the other. You had a chance to lock in 2 points on 1 but didn’t and now you are sitting on $300.00 dollar loss when it initially moved in your favor and you scaled up. See, in works both ways in the world of scalping. Scaling up can be a double edged sword as well as averaging down. However, I agree if it is a powerful move there is no reason to not add to a position as it moves in your favor. On slower grinding days or smaller range days averaging down and grabbing a point or two over and over as the market gives it to you then entering again as it drops below your previous profitable exit, then averaging down again taking profits again and doing this over and over has the same effect as compounding your profits. In effect you are grabbing monies as the market hands them to you then going right back in again playing now with your previous profit. Averaging down can work if you know when to do it and how to use and what to do when wrong. Probably 1/3 to 1/2 of my trades are of the averaging down type, another 1/3 of just straight scalping long or short with no averaging down, A very small amount are scaling in as it moves in my favor. The latter certainly is not my bread and butter. It is one thing to theoretically write something out and another thing to embrace the strategy live. That doesn’t mean it won't work in select context but do that on every trade all day long and it will be a losing strategy. Too often a trader will find he scaled in as it moved in his favor and only to see an actual profit on his first entry dissipate into thin air just about the time he adds to his winning position. Then if a strong reversal takes place just as he entered on his second or third time He finds himself with a much bigger loss and is ready to kick himself for not grabbing his profit when he had a chance. You gonna get maybe one or two good trends in a session to do what you are talking about above. Of course there are days in broad channels or ranges there will be more opportunities for doing so. But often you will just get a morning trend and an afternoon trend that might make what you are talking about feasible. So, if a trader is content to wait for those periods thats ok. But he is bypassing many many trading opportunities on the 81 five min bars of the ES. On most of those bars 1 and 2 point scalps can be made. Myself I had rather make 3 or 4 two point scalps with size even if averaging down..make my money and go fishing. Instead of waiting all day for a strong enough BO to employ the strategy you laid out above. 5% to 10% of the session is gonna be strong enough intraday trends to BET the way you are describing above and to facilitate employing the strategy above, that you lay out. Given the fact that most BO attempts, of anything, fail employing that strategy, as a discretionary trader, all throughout the session will have a trader giving back actual (not hoped for profits) over and over. See both (Averaging down), and (scaling in) on favorable moves have their pros and cons. So, we have to ask ourselves what is most of a sessions price action made of? Trends and Successful BO’s which are conducive to your strategy or is it made up of PA that would be conducive to other strategies? Again, there is nothing wrong with doing what you say above as long as it is done in the right context. I do it but it is certainly one of my lessor used strategies. One can’t Or rather shouldn’t just type a theoretical (even mathematical) concept up and expect that is the case across the board and that it is the strategy “par excellence”. Like anything else, used in the wrong context, it can be a horrible loser. Many years ago when I was a young kid someone talked me into selling Amway. The chalkboard diagrams and the perfect presentations made it look simple to a young kid gunning to make some money. With great zeal I bought my kit and with excitement hit the road with $$ signs twirling around in my eyes. I quickly found out people didn’t give a damn if the LOC product could in fact clean, and I might add in seconds, black shoe polish smeared into a white hanky. Sure my live demonstration resulted in amazing looks and comments from them but as soon as they heard the price of LOC their amazement flew the coop faster than a chicken escaping a possum. I quickly found out them Amway demonstrations on the chalkboard or paper diagrams were not going to be so easy to pull off. Them dollar sign in my eyes were adjusted to cents..... My Amway venture did not last too long. I found out the ones making those $ were the ones signing up folks to hit the streets and do the work of selling for them while they stockpiled and distributed the products to their many many little busy work ants feverishly trying to make them dollars twirling around in their eyes as the “for sure” presentations were the factor that induced them to the laborious process of trying to pull it off, in the real world of knocks and rejections. And then you had all those big conventions highlighting the successful distributors rolling in the $$$ that would raise the expectation and hope of the beatendown..downtrodden..worker ants and it was almost like going to church...the atmosphere of those conventions. One could leave floating high on cloud 9 scrapping up enough energy for another 6 months of hitting the road doing you best while the distributors way up the line are on yatchs or cruises or expensive vacations. After a while one begins to wonder “what the hell is wrong with me.” Why can’t I make it. I seem to be as intelligent as them vacationing distributors. Why can’t I make it work? Is something wrong with me? Am I just a flop and failure in life? No! what has happened is you have been hoodwinked into a perfectly laid out strategy that doesn’t “fly” in the real world. And you have been using the wrong strategy for the context where the probabilities for success are very small. Bottom line: if the methodologies I employ trading are gambling so are yours LOL. So we both take a chance and bet. You bet when the odds favor you. I bet when they favor my tactics and strategies which is most of the daily trading session. So if you have the Tudor Jones paper posted to your trading monitor “only losers average down” you may wish to rip it off and replace it with “scaling in, as price moves in my favor is a losing strategy for most of the day’s session” Happy Trading!
Excellent write up Volpri, enjoyed reading it. I want to add, that there are only about 5-10% of the bars are BO bar(s) in any timeframe chart one trades, and those are the bars not fitting for averaging down if you are trading against the trend. Many who remembered never to average down probably did it in such a BO mode against the market, it is surely a pain trade. All others parts of the chart (90-95%) will work fine with averaging down. But where to add and how much to add depends on the account size and risk profile, that is the harder part to learn, need to learn it with a lot of experience and fast simple math while the market is unfolding.