Actions speak louder than words...Its up to you. If you have a change of heart about your arrogant stance then I hope you discover all that you can. Life is so short and time goes by faster and faster each day. I will place you on ignore soon, as I do not want to be distracted further and please no more PM's with your words. Please do not insult me further here or elsewhere, with your promises or apologies. When you demonstrate that you can behave yourself, I will approach you. Scientist, good trading to you. I do not apologize for what is and has transpired. I stand for this. I hope you can understand that I wish the best for you. As I have said earlier, trading is my lifes work and if you are a trader then you are my friend. When you begin to trade, I wish you all the success you can realize. Michael B.
Actually The harm it does to the readers and the PM's that I have received confirms that others are offended. Yes, it is sad that a few posters breed the sort of contempt in a community that spreads like an infection. I for one do not want to be a party to it. Simply using ignore does not solve the problem for the community that I am a guest of. But, again this is the modertors call. But they rely upon the members many times to alert them to a concern for them to evaluate. Many folks do not contribute here, as they are intimidated. I am sure that if the readership and contributions increase that the advertising revenue will increase and the community will grow and prosper. Perhaps the benefits of being a member here will be realized by many more. I for one am thankful for this community which is the best on the internet for traders. I have received a free subscription to S & C mag, a free t-shirt and more importantly, many hours of enjoyment and education. Michael B.
I don't know about the rest of you, but this thread is getting a little stale. I mean, Wavetrader hasn't come on here and cussed anybody out and talked about how stupid we are and how great a trader he is, in several hours. Wave, please come back with your bag of garbage. I need a fix.
Cutten - Excellent post! What a brilliant couple of paragraphs to sum up all that counts about it. This is how I think. FWIW, depending on entry I use 4-6T on ES, 3-5T on BUND, 6-8T on DAX, 6-8T on ER2. Although there's some places where I'll play the DAX or ER2 with smaller stops, like at extremes, I may use as little as 3-4T. Not because that's what feels best to me, but because that's what my tests have yielded as the ideal parameters. I back-test everything by hand, typically 1-2 hours every day for all approaches and markets. All of these parameters produce considerably less satisfactory results if modified in either direction, i.e. wider or tighter. There is very little if any modification tolerance, just one tick can make all the difference, in the long run. Regarding places where "noise alone is unlikely to stop you out"; There are plenty such places, such as solid S/R levels, like you can see them in a pre-breakout base, and other places where price is forming a "flat line" and you just know if price goes just a tick in that direction, the power of your setup is invalidated, and you might as well exit. Those are the places where you can use as little as 2-3T stops, and do just fine if you're right. If your stops are tiny, you don't need much of a target to get a decent R:R. P.S: Philly Fed wasn't exactly spectacular today...
Cutten, Do you find that plus/minus 3-tick band around the exact tick of support or resistance whether it is a flat line or not is better. When the price enters that zone it is wise to watch how it trades closely, and its just not to set up limit orders...right? I am talking abot the ES with the 3 tick band "non surgical" technique... Michael B.
Cutten: I am interested in these comments as follows: "sometimes you can place a small stop that lies outside the range of normal market noise. Obviously there is a limit - 1 tick is too small. But there are places where even a mere 3 or 4 ticks is far enough away that noise alone is unlikely to stop you out. In such cases, you still have enough time for your edge to come into play. Furthermore, using a 10 tick stop would stop you going for small winners of the magnitude of 3-6 ticks, unless you had a very high win rate. Someone using a smaller stop can take these trades, whereas you can't. This means they will make more money than you, other things being equal." I have gone through quite a few charts (ES) market, and find that support and resistance are often violated on an intraday basis. This happens when professional money decides to take price above/below those points to see if there is supply. So that means that you are thinking of other places where small size stops can be placed. A single example would be appreciated. Also the idea of going for a small winners is exactly the kind of thing that will eventually cause a trader to lose. Speaking in relative terms, I look at my overhead and have an idea of the smallest profit I can go for, anything less does not pay me enough to overcome not only expenses but the opportunity cost associated with trading as well. This works in reverse as well. Once cannot take certain trades unless they are capitalized properly to survive risk exposure (the chance of surviving consecutive losses). As a result, I would not be a scalper in this environment. When I say that, what I mean is that given my skills, my capitalization and my tolerance for risk and requirement for profit over time, I believe the risk is too great. By the way, there are plenty of times when I stop myself out at or near the 6 ticks that you speak of. However I have noticed a lot of times when I have stopped myself out, then seen the market take off without me. I hear comments about re-entry, but lets be honest about this. There are times when you are either on board or not and after that you may see a good re-entry point except in retrospect. Thank you, Lefty P.S. Today's YM chart (5 min bars) is an excellent example of how a 6 tick stop would have got hit, where a larger stop would have kept you in the game. On my charts (Esignal) the 9:20 EST bar, price dips below the pivot by exactly 7 ticks, then moves up from 10565 up to 10595. This is the kind of trade I have taken many times, leaning against the pivot, and I have seen this often.
Let's stick to the facts and not get carried away. There are certainly scum bag vendors that use ET as a means of getting customers BUT Scientist has never even come close to acting like one in my experiences with his posts.