Then define each (another component of your trading plan (TP) ) Then use the appropriate tools (another TP component) to contextualize / quantify what PA is doing on each of your chart(s) (additional TP component) All based directly and objectively on PA RN
Had a short bias going into today, but since we opened about 6 points below the ONH, I was prepared for a test up first. Entered a short once we dropped below the opening low just a few seconds after the open. It works for about 3 points, but comes back up so exit is BE +1 tick. I started to monitor a swing high that was put in as possible R, and once we bounced off here a second time, it made this swing point into more of a level I'd be watching. Once we bounced off a third time, I could have gone short but didn't. After going down almost 10 points, we had a quick rally all the way back up to within 1 point of this level, but since this isn't an important/prominent level... do I risk shorting here after such a strong up move? Price only comes within 1 point, so a short entry would be chasing, but price does drop nicely. There is this range from the drop overnight that forms around 4422, and sure enough, price now takes a pause here again, but I don't plan to do much with this since its all in the middle of the overnight range so I'm just observing. Sucks to not make any money from this move when I was prepared for it and I was already initially in. I have trouble with re-entries.
Curiously, had I just left my first trade on without the stop being moved to BE+1 but with my 2 point stop and 10 point profit as is my preset, I would have gotten my 10 points.
Why not take note of the trades each day and see if they hit stop loss or target first. Put them in excel for a few weeks, and I'd say you hit target enough times to more than pay for the losses.
Mostly because this is the smart thing to do and I'm stupid. And also mostly because I like to have excuses. So my excuse this time is that ever since March, I've been doing things differently, perhaps even end of March. So I feel as if all my trade data from earlier would be useless. Going forward now, I absolutely agree that this would be the best thing to do. I'm purposefully making this take longer, I must is some way enjoy the suffering, because I guess I'm waiting for my brain to slowly see this, which it eventually will, even though doing the stats would produce this number much sooner and the realization that hitting that 10 point target will more than likely happen at least one out of every 5 times that I would hit the 2 point stop. Its just like ND said the other day where she was sure that a setup had an 80% failure rate, and yet when she ran the numbers, it was less than 50%. The other excuse is, and this one is a little better, not all trades are the same, yet because I'm not using exact setups, I'm not even sure how I would categorize them yet. Some are based on solid or long term S/R and a reversal from that point. Some I do take as a tiny little RET on a 5 sec chart. I also think that taking into account the previous day range or overnight range would/might impact how wide of a range we have the next day. (ie. If the overnight range is only 10 points, perhaps the swings that day will be small, hence hitting a 10 point target might be harder, but if the overnight range was huge, like 40 points, then perhaps hitting 10 point target that day will be easy in only minutes). So I'm not sure how I would compile all this information yet. But I guess I could just throw it all out, and just clump every trade into one category and see what I get as a start.
That's the easiest. Just write down all the trades you actually took onto one list. If the list is profitable, who cares what sub-group they come from.
I'm crawling my way to this realization. With a 2 point stop, this certainly makes it much easier to do and much easier to accept the loss a few times during the trading session.
I do believe that with enough careful analysis, you can see which trades require a bigger stop, and how to actually increase not exactly your win rate, but just max profits. High win rate and small profits per trade are almost the exact opposite strategy of low win rate but a high profit per trade. So to be really good at this, I think its important to know what to do when. But for sure right now, I don't need to dig this deep yet.