If the market stalls, get out, as you can get back in anytime! Prob more up, but so what, as profit banked and it is going to keep moving up and down! J_S
Keeping losses small is if no use if you don't perfect your timing, otherwise you will just bleed more slowly. You must sit back and look at what price is doing, in relation to all the timeframes, with more emphasis on the lower timeframe, obviously! Is it sideways, testing recent high or low, just broken up or down, at a major support or resistance? If you don't know where price is at, then how can you time your trades better! J_S See what I mean, if you don't double check, you will either get caught out, or miss out. This time I missed out, but it is always better to miss out than get caught out! You need to be in control, otherwise you are trading nilly willy! Watch what will probably happen next! J_S
About the obvious and the not so ... I will try to add some thing of value here as it is a sore topic all round. As they say it's the trader that makes trading hard, I for one will admit that. But each year that passes I ask myself what would I have done differently knowing what I know now. It comes down to the one thing and that's "waiting" Waiting for the right market conditions to take your trades. I use to think it was knowing your trading signals but signals on their own only give so much probability. Coupling your signals with the right M conditions is the GO. The following might sound like a bit of a rant but being human, here it goes ... I have entered on good signals only to find that it moves immediately against me time after time !! "Like WTF again ??" We all lose money here and there but what gets me is when I take small positions I do well and when I increase size it never fails, I take a bigger loss. Unbelievable. However when we were heavily trending down I was short but not as big as I should have been. That's another thing I learned, you have to get big when everyone is moving in ONE direction. This is what I mean by knowing market conditions, if it's directional get big in that direction. Yes I sound like a crazy trader but this is a game of opportunity and if you snooze you loose. You have to know when to break your own rules. I'm sure there will be some that misinterpret what I mean but this is the best I can do with text. "Times of the year" "signals on longer time frames" "getting into trends and HOLDING" these are other things I've started incorporating as opposed to my old approach of day trading. (yes it works for some just for me it's not worth the time spent at the monitors if you do the math) The main thing is being able to wait and let me tell you it's the hardest thing to do, if you can do that you are a very good candidate for success or at least one big step ahead of the rest.
DR, most can relate to most of what you said, and waiting is the same thing as getting your timing right. However, as timing is based on charts, then the "signals" you were using were only bad signals because of the way you interpreted the charts, as price is price. You need to be one serious person to overcome the small size versus large size, but if you can't do it with small size first, as in make money, then for anyone to think they can do it with large size, is, well let's just say, foolish. In order to make money, you must first have money, and if you have to rely on margin to trade (daytrading the only exception to allow access to highly priced stocks), then the odds of one making it are very slim due to the emotional aspects associated with losing and winning. Anyone can do it, but very few will actually do what is required to do it, and that is the big difference. J_S
Yes it takes a serious person to overcome these things, in with moving forward I will wait for market conditions and my longer term signals to line up. This way the odds will be seriously in my favour. Just to add to my orig post, the other thing that helps is waiting for momentum to present before entering. Know when price action is lack luster. Stay out
That's because the market knows how much you've risked and conspires to punish you. Obviously I'm joking. It shouldn't matter what size you bet but, for some reason, profitability seems to be inversely correlated with size.
These two - though they may seem worlds apart - stem from the same source Not having created an A&M =============== Do we really wait for the right mkt conditions..., or do we contextualize what the mkt is giving - then trade within that Using the correct signals Setting the correct SL & PT Correct for the current context - which is correct for (built on) the current PA environment ================== A&M.., by its very nature..., defines our process A to Z RN