What Really Turned My Trading Around

SimpleTrades · Dec 17, 2011

Quote from SteveH:

Starting with multiple contracts and peeling them off as the trade goes your way does not give you "versatility". It forces you to have higher winning pcts to compensate for the full all-out losses you take on the immediate stop-outs. You are putting yourself under a lot of pressure to perform well a majority of the time.

You are far better off to either go all-in / all-out or add as the trade goes you way. You want the market to catch you at your worst when you're holding your lowest level of risk, not your greatest.

If you add as the trade goes your way in a strong trend, you can be profitable with as little as 30% long-term winners. If you go all-in / all-out within either trend segments or range-bound price action then 45-50% long-term winners can produce consistent profits.

On the contrary, if you go below around a 60% long-term winning pct with a contract peeling approach, you will not make it. The desire of a trader to win a majority of the time is rooted in emotion/ego, not the math.

Fantasy Land: high winning pct combined with a 2:1+ avg win/loss ratio. Why? Because the two have an inverse relationship.

What you never emotionally want to do in the markets works best: ADD in strong trends. On the CL, on a DAY TRADE with a 5 min chart, using only 1 contract positions where your highest initial capital risk of loss is $150-$200, you can accumulate a 4-10 contract position spanning from 1 to 2.5 pts which can yield $2500 - $10,000 (within 30 mins to 3 hours exposure). You get 1-3 opportunities per day for these kinds of rewards. They're obvious moves with no more than a 20 ema to give you a point of reference.

Good luck.
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Great tip! Thanks.

trader198 · Dec 17, 2011

in the first chart, I saw two ifs
if it starts to drop back from the thrust ( I see possible resistance), I short, plan to cover at the thrust takoff level
if it shoots above that level 0.5 point more, I buy, then plan to sell recent former high

in the second chart, I saw two ifs ,
if it goes up to the thrust bar high, I buy
if it drops to the thrust bar takeoff level and more, I sell (typical recersal,chance is 50/50, I take it)

in the third chart, I saw two ifs,
if it goes up, then I put a stop sell at the cent low
if it goes up to the breakdown point, I buy (typical trend reversal, chance is 50/50, I take it)
if it bounced and started to drop from the breakdown point, I sell (trend down continues).

that is what I did this friday with Nasdaq NQ, I bought at 2250 (breakout), sold it at 2257.5 (double top) when it startes to fall.

shorted it at 2247.5 (trend reversal), and covered it 2231.5.

then buy support at 2233.5 and sell at 2239.75

Quote from chrh1234:

Trading has became so easy for me nowadays.

Yet looking back, it was a really hard journey. 4 years. Only a few did. What a journey. I wish to share my success with other traders, since I do not wish them to go through what I went through.

I started with FX. Got a few newbie runs with good profit, then thought I was god. And failed horribly. Got really scared. So, I decided to be a true student of the craft.

I tried everything I could find. Everything. The only thing I did not do is to pay for and attend a FX course, since Iâve always believed most of them are quite BS. I needed help, but I could not find the right person to help me. I didnât know who to look for at all. So, I had to work on my own.

Later, I met a few extremely successful traders who are willing to help. Some of them saw my work and are interested. I am indeed very grateful for their help, but I also knew I still had to work something out on my own. Itâs like a father teaching a son how to fish, but the son eventually, one day, has to go out there and stand up on his own.

The only advantage that I have is programming skills I attained as a software developer. So, with that, I started to work and research even more, creating many indicators. Not many survived the test of time.

I figured if I cannot even trade with small amounts with micro accounts, then I canât be qualified to trade larger amounts, so at the 2nd year, I went live, with $25. My basic goal is to keep the account alive and intact with $25 within the week. But I kept blowing it. So I reloaded and tried again. It was till I hit upon something. And that $25 account survived for the week. I was doing something right and I quickly set my heart onto identifying what is going on.

So I was lucky not to lose too much money. I am now almost hitting the black and into green in terms of my short but intense trading career. But certainly I am very happy to see my trading log today. Red red red green red red?. To green green green green green red green.

I no longer trade FX much nowadays, since I find trading Crude Oil and Gold much more attuned to my personality. But it doesnât mean the strategy / system that I have here will not work for FX. It does, since I started from FX and created this system from there.

I hope I did not to bore anyone with my story. So I am going to show some screenshots for my maiden thread here in this forum. Pictures speak for themselves and are indeed louder than words.

Please do post questions. Questions will help everyone to learn faster, since its more objective. Even stupid questions can actually bring about important issues we had never thought about. I do not believe in spoonfeeding, since most traders Iâve encountered seem to already have some idea of what they are doing. So questions are the better way.

What do you see in this chart? BTW, this is a Crude Oil trade entry of a recent trade, which I took profit off just now. Quite a routine one IMO, to take 400 pips profit off it eventually. It was worth the wait.

Yup, what do you see in this chart? Would love to know what do you guys see. I am still learning myself, but I know this system does work very well. But I would like some feedback too.

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chrh1234 · Dec 17, 2011

Quote from trader198:

in the first chart, I saw two ifs
if it starts to drop back from the thrust ( I see possible resistance), I short, plan to cover at the thrust takoff level
if it shoots above that level 0.5 point more, I buy, then plan to sell recent former high

in the second chart, I saw two ifs ,
if it goes up to the thrust bar high, I buy
if it drops to the thrust bar takeoff level and more, I sell (typical recersal,chance is 50/50, I take it)

in the third chart, I saw two ifs,
if it goes up, then I put a stop sell at the cent low
if it goes up to the breakdown point, I buy (typical trend reversal, chance is 50/50, I take it)
if it bounced and started to drop from the breakdown point, I sell (trend down continues).

that is what I did this friday with Nasdaq NQ, I bought at 2250 (breakout), sold it at 2257.5 (double top) when it startes to fall.

shorted it at 2247.5 (trend reversal), and covered it 2231.5.

then buy support at 2233.5 and sell at 2239.75
More...

Nice. Although the more important chart is the 1st one. Do you think it can help you make decisions faster during live trading? Like, do those lines tell you the story of price better? Or the lines are actually distracting you? Would love your take. Thanks.

masterm1ne · Dec 17, 2011

I'm probably the only one here who sees here a bunch of illusions that create a false sense of security....

chrh1234 · Dec 18, 2011

Not bad. The position survived over the weekend and even earned abit of Carry Trade interest. Lets see what happens. Its been 4 days and counting (including weekend).

chrh1234 · Dec 20, 2011

I came home with a surprise. Should I take profit? HMMMM!

Nah. I have time to sit.

chrh1234 · Dec 20, 2011

chrh1234 · Dec 20, 2011

All right. Enough play. Taking the profit =>

Appleseed · Dec 20, 2011

Quote from masterm1ne:

I'm probably the only one here who sees here a bunch of illusions that create a false sense of security....
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

+1

For some it comes sooner for others it comes later or maybe
never

Cheers
john

chrh1234 · Dec 21, 2011

Trying to short gold live now. Gold is :
+ at the daily high
+ retraced a certain amount
+ trying to bounce off a line in the sand my indicator drew automatically
+ try to return from an oversold position to the quarterly trend channel my indicator drew automatically (again)

Pretty fun. Sometimes I wonder if I should release this indicator and everyone will be starting to rob the banks? Or it is just me, the trader that is making the difference? Or both? Is it luck? I don't know sometimes. Really.