Hello Scataphagos, Yes, you nailed it. Our decision making with what to do about the counters is we will be 50% right and 50% wrong from the decision. And the times we right, the win most overcome 50% of the time when we were wrong.
Swing trading does not mean getting in and out of positions every few days. A lot of times, I am in my positions for weeks if the trend is strong. I think some traders are confused of what they are actually, doing with their trading. My attention is only on the candlesticks when they turn parabolic then, an exit might be warranted or when my mental stop loss is hit since, I trade options. Most of the time, I do not do anything. Sure, I watch my screen for my stock options to make sure none of my stop losses are hit since, it is mental stops. Other than that, it is pretty boring most days.
LOL, love reading all these posts. So many are wrong IMHO, scalping/day trading has proven to me to have greatest risk. Especially in scalping, in ES have to risk 8 ticks and targeting 3 ticks, doing 200-300 trades a day. Risk is huge compared to averaging less than a tick on average profit. Been fortunate to not been trading on last meltdown in 2010. Swinging like anything in trading is a calculated gamble, and risk can be reduced using TA properly and by learning how to hedge. Smallest time-frames require highest winning percentages, as time-frames increase normally winning percentages decrease and profits should increase greater than risk, if hedging correctly, risk decreased more. By time trading daily/weekly charts, risk very small and rewards should be huge cause winning percentages are far less unless one has learned hedging well. Holy Grails take enormous amount of time, money and perseverance. Have to think outside of reality actually, BUT one needs to listen to other traders on what they can't achieve and say can't be done. I read ET to discover where many lose consistently. Swinging options, wished I got more into them decades ago. By far options has largest winning percentages possible and I don't use the Greeks but do use TA. Have taught to one guy and he over 200 trades without a lose. And no NOT teaching it to others. But I got the idea from ET. Those who dream of huge wealth trading, it going to cost much, easier if you befriend a programmer to test ideas first than trade blindly. Starbucks time
I have held positions for years if they continue to move in my direction. The one rule I have is to not hold any losers in my portfolio.
Good call-note; another problem for me, my nerves try to get me waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay to early out of a good trend. So i ignore about 95%-99.999% of my nerves, in trading. But if my nerves+ $3k loss bothered me enough to post it; i would ignore my nerves again but not ignore the $3k ES loss. Easy to lose $3k on a super trend; i lost more than that on a super car[Strangely\ that was in last year's bear marketLOL] barchart has a 16% buy[mostly sell]on ES ; 40 %sell on SPXL ,LOL; 72% sell on SH. But like rich dennis said do your own research. I dont like any of those as of noon+/. Derivatives are not the problem; SH is mostly swaps.
Can scale the size of your swing trade vs account equity so it is exactly the amount of risk you want. You can have 0.10% risk per trade if you want. Now if you run ten swing trades simultaneously your risk is 0.10% x 10 = 1% of account eq. Any maybe your profit is in the range of 2-4% for these 10 positions.
Stop = 50-60 per day of expected hold. I would deleverage first and use SPY or MES until you work the bugs out. And you will work them out....