good morning IndexS, As I recall, after one week and hundreds of trades, your account is more or less as it was one week ago.... churning. The fact that it is not blown is the good news, but the risk of doing so is extremely high. You obviously have an unlimited supply of entry signals, too many in fact according to the state of your account. Death by a thousand cuts immediately springs to mind. My suggestion to you is to clear your mind of any thoughts gathered so far and clear your chart of anything other than price. Bars or candles, it doesnt matter, they are only the bundled output of the streaming strike orderflow. Chose only one instrument and watch the difference in behavior between RTH and the pre market. Watch the price behaviour change and take note of the time and then consolidate these observations into blocks of time. To make it easier to begin, just break the clock into thirty minute segments and you can give it a tune-up later. I only know the ES as I have discarded all other instruments for day trading. I am simply not clever enough, flexible enough, fast enough or silly enough to attempt to spread my trading style over more than one animal. In VST trading and under volume, the price is always trying to go someway and all you are trying to do is to catch that train for a few seconds/minutes for something like 5-15 tics in the case of the ES. It is your job to find these moments before the price takes off so your profits are fast and your risk is very low. In short you need to cease viewing the charts as charts. You need to cease bouncing from one instrument to another. You need to cease tracking your worries concerning your discipline as it is distracting your focus. In any case you lost money on a day when your discipline was high, so obviously it is not the principal problem. Now here is the fun part.... You need to become the price. Your mind and the price need to be one, with no gaps existing between you. And when you reach this state you will relax into this game and haul out a steady stream of tics every day. IndexS, I could rabbit on all day about trading ES each day. I love it and I look forward to it each day. It is like greeting an old friend every morning. But it is a very demanding friend beyond anything that most people can imagine. And it demands respect. regards f9
You know,,,, after some reflection on the topic of discipline --- I would suggest that the lack of discpline, when it occurs, is due to a fundamental lack of confidence in the strategy I find as I gain confidence in my particular methods --- it is easier to stay on the wagon but you gotta be convinced you are on the right wagon - and you need to know why
Now you have got it. Keep this up and you run the grave risk of becoming successful day after day after...... regards f9
This is turning into one of the best threads around here ... I sincerely hope the OP is profiting from this knowledge sharing the way everyone else is.
To IndexScalper...an interesting question is...what is your schedule, job, profession that allows you to trade the ES fulltime...obviously you are not living off off your small gains...just very curious...must have a job (self-employed) where you can stop in and trade 1 ES contract like 27 times per day...great trading to you!
after reading thru all this, i don't think indexscalper is that far off from from becoming profitable. he seems to have mastered his strategy and is somewhat consistent. and consistancy is key, else everything would just be a flip of the coin. all he needs to do is tweak it a little. he needs to adjust his method to one similar to the George Costanza method of trading. because he is consistent, adopting the GC method should show instant positive results.