Good Morning volpri, I love it and thank you very much for showing some trades and delivering simple practical ways to make money in the markets. One of things I struggle with and I think a lot of traders (I think @padutrader struggle as well ) struggle with, wanting certainty before trading. In other words, I use to want and seek proof of concept (trading method) before I take action. And expect profits instantly. Or seeking certainty in how I am trading. But I recall someone (I think Al Brooks) saying "Traders always swim in a sea of uncertainty everyday". I removed the need of uncertainty and just simply fail in love with ES price movements day to day, just simply do my best rather I win, lose or stay in drawdown for X days/weeks. I had to realize that there is no secrets, there is no setups, there is no nothing that is going to guarantee me money in my bank account other then myself, not doing stupid crap, and having fun guessing day to day with ES. My experience, My XX clicks/trades per day with price and predicting how price will behave within the next 5 seconds to 60 minutes is my only faith or Edge for making money in the ES markets. ES Futures Market is a Blessing from God.
I took your advice to heart. Thanks @volpri. Paper traded on TOS from July to Oct 2023, then live for 3 months, and back to paper from Jan 2024 to now. Also took someone else's advice, started to paper trade butterflies, both regular and BWB.
Here is my last trade for a bit has I have to run to town and do some errands. I moved around some of my annotations of the earlier 3 trades so as to make some room for this annotation for trade #4. See once price starts a TR then I must change techniques. Since price is usually in a sideways move around 70% of the time in a session these TR can be quite profitable by fading tops and bottoms of them. Many traders will not trade them as they deem it noise. My posture is that there is no noise in the markets. Only movement. Techniques must be developed to capitalize on those movements. There are a few rules and things I look at while trading TRs. 1) 20 bars sideways to down in a bull market. sideways to up in a bear market. When I say market I am talking about the context of the previous trend (if any). 2) The range must be broad enough for at least a min scalp which I consider 1 point. This is explained in the next two concepts. 3) Not only must #2 be true but most of the bars in the TR must be at least the size of a min scalp. 4) The range must be at least 3x as broad and most of the bars (i.e.) the average size bar. 5) I have other techniques for trading TRs but if using the technique of fading the tops and bottoms of the TR then I will begin entries in the upper or lower 1/3 of the TR. That is: Shorting in the top 1/3 and going long in the bottom 1/3. 6) I want to see doji's and overlapping bars in the range as that indicates two-sided trading taking place. I prefer to see moves up and down within the TR. 7) When fading tops I will often scale in and exit on any move towards the center line of the range. Remember I am scalping (what some call noise LOL) and am not in it for a big homerun. Just look at this 4th trade. After my last exit it went on down through the center line of the TR but I was out with my profit. Sure I could have held for more but it could just as easy have turned up after my last exit. Besides if it goes on down which it did after my last exit will I short more? No! not without a very good reason like (like very strong mom). Instead, I am out with a profit and since it continued down I will now look to go long in bottom 1/3. I could have done so the very next 2 bars after my last exit and made more as it moved up and through the center line. But I didn't take that trade as I was too busy typing up this pretty chart LOL. 8) I will continue fading tops and bottoms scaling in when appropriate until there is a successful BO of the TR. What constitutes a successful BO is already in my journal if I recall. If you like scalping 1 to 8 points in ES then this may interest you. Good luck! Henry Ford once said: "the harder I work the luckier I get!" Put in the work! Take the time to learn trading first on a SIM then live. If you can't make it work on a SIM it certainly won't work live. Note: Notice my three scaled in short entries fading the top of the TR and my 3 scaled out exit as price moves towards center of the range. Grab those profits! (I am being nice here using palatable talk when saying "scaled in" ...it really is "averaging down" LOL the one rule drilled into us from the infancy of our trading experience as the one thing NOT to do.) I also watch the bar timer ...orange box top right as bar are forming. I like to how price is doing towards the last few seconds of the bar. It tells me who wins that bar, bears or bulls, and I can be johnny on the spot to execute a trade right at or after the close of the bar.
I have never traded options. Just not my thing. But keep up the paper trading. If you make it work there you can make it work live. At least the odds will be in your favor.
Thanks. Your homework assignment for paper trading is hard work! So far, paper trades are net positive. I have about 9 months' statistics, daily, about 60% of scalps are winners, 3 out of 4 days are profitable and every month is profitable. However, average daily profitability is only ~0.13% or annualized to about 30%. It is a lot of work for 30%? I am mainly an options trader, so training to get better at trading butterflies is another one of my homework assignments.
If you have $5k account daytrading EuroFX Futures your notional value of capital is ~$1.1mil at 15-20%pa as a professional trader, there will be one or two people on this site that have experience of those numbers, the rest are trading leverage based on physical brokerage balance which the markets snack on. It's why people say if you can trade X% per day or week or month you will become a billionaire, their inexperience discounts the fact that as capital increases you discount notional value of capital towards 1:1 with physical capital, very few can join the two points together, this is efficient-market hypothesis.
Hello ironchef, Please do not feel bad, I was in SIM for 4 years trying to increase my skills. Now I am an ES master trying to make a Million dollars within 3 years from now. Follow @volpri and myself keep it simple. There is no other way but stare at the chart all day and click it. For one week I took 500 trades for 2 months straight, trying to be the ES master and rich. Yes, my eyes and head was hurting everyday, but this is the only way if you want to be ES master and Rich. All other ways is a Lie. Anyone that tell you there is another way to be the ES Master is a Liar.