there is no noise in markets...just trades.one mans noise is another mans music.the difference ..knowledge. it is quite possible to use 5 pips stops and get stopped out 1 in 20 trades.stop placement is relevative to market skills nothing else. mark j
I use 15 min to look for trade setups and 5 min bars to time my entries. the 10 handle stop came from collecting data on my stop outs over many months and works well in the intra-day timeframe I trade. For longer multi-day swings I don't keep stops. I don't doubt the veracity of those blotters. I've been testing some stock scans and intraday setups and been doing ok thus far. with a very large account that has access to massive BP, the numbers posted on those blotters can be achieved. eg. you shoot at 20 stocks at the open, 10 close lower eod, 10 close higher. As long as you have an efficient mechanism to stop out the 10 that close lower eod, the gains in the other 10 more than compensate for the stop out losses.
Problem is, it is 2500 to hold overnite. I will only fund my account with 2,000 *the minimum*. Now from the looks of things on how I'm doing. I should be able to average around 75 at an extreme minimum per day. I like looking at the charts, and it seems like that is a very small goal to accomplish. I'm only PaperTrading, and unfortunately, there are very few brokers that allow you to do this. I have been doing papertrading with proactivefutures.com with TradeMaven. My real broker is greenstreet. I have a 15 inch monitor. I don't know about you guys, but it is a huge pain to trade with this. My very first goal, is to make enough money to buy a dual, tri, or even quad monitor set-up, could send me up to the $1,500, to $2,000 range, so I'm looking to make enough while i'm in school, so before I get out of school *i'm graduating first semester, and graduate in January*, I will be set-up and ready to go. I use eSignal for charts. I consider it the best, and my mentor uses it. He shows me his charts while he is trading by using gotomeeting.com, and he can show me his screen and it is very useful as he helps me and others identify support and resistance. I am either going to end up using CQG Trader or TradeMaven. I like TradeMaven, so I might stick with that. I costs $50 a month to use it from Greenstreet, but i'll see if I can handle CQG since I haven't been able to test mini-dow trading with that. As for some hints. There are no technical indicators like MACD, RSI, Moving Averages, or Fibonnaci *spelling* Retracement and stuff like that. It's all about price. It's all about finding support and resistance. Support and Resistance, I have found with help through my mentor is the ONLY thing you need to be a successful trader. If you can trade from the ONE thing that is really important in trading *Volume is also important in equities*, then in my opinion, you have already beat out others who rely on MACD and RSI. RSI and MACD are only deviations of price, that is all they are, some people swear by them, and to be honest, I did too. I used MACD all the time, but I wasn't successful. If you can identify support and resistance, you are already halfway there in my mind. When I first started trading, I overlooked this subject. Books pointed it out, but they didn't make it sound important. I didn't even think it was important. I don't know if I could never identify, so I just ignored it, or if I just wanted something that I didn't need to do any work to figure out, just look at MACD. But I am just astounded at how simple it really is. I have been given a gift that I cannot repay to my mentor and he has just helped me more than what seems 2 years of experience of trying on my own might have done. He also introduced me to Futures. With equities, in order to be successful daytrading, you need 25k, that is it. I had 2k. With forex.... Support and Resistance are there, but there are many breakouts, and i got on the wrong side of them, but that was before I met my mentor, and I haven't tried Forex that much lately, but I would be a lot better doing it now. It's just amazing how hard I made it seem when I first started. It really is simple to increase your chances greatly of where a price reversal will occur and such. Just absolutely amazing. I never would have thought it would be so simple. Now I just use eSignal's tick replay to test myself on identifying suport and resistance throughout the day and I know that the money would flow in if I could actually trade what I identify, and would be low risk trades if I executed them at the right times *close to support and resistance for example* I can not confirm if this would work on Equities, or Forex for 100%, but for Futures, and what I have done these past few weeks with my mentor, and even one of his students pulled in 1k on the first day of trading. I have yet to do that, but I have yet to trade the full market. So, I'm just very greatful. I don't come from a wealthy family, I don't have much, but I have the determination to try. And I already know it will pay off, that is why I'm so ready for these next 2 weeks, so I can finally open my account and I may not make 1000's of dollars like other members on here one day. But I am very confident that I will be able to pull in a very nice profit from a day to day basis after getting adjusted to only being limited to the last hour of the market *Which isn't ideal for trading, so it gets a little more complicated, but I am greatful to even have that* So advice to all newbies that really want to try trading Futures. Forget books. I realize that books were a waste of time. The best book I read was the very first one that explained stock markets, and bid ask, how trading takes place. After that, I realize the rest was all useless, except for books that explain to you how much more mentally it is. The only thing that could prevent me from being unsucessful now, is emotions, and that is exactly what I will be testing 2 weeks from now. I will admit I was click happy and jumpy when I first started trading. But now, it's a whole new story. It's just hard for me to think sometimes how much time and effort I put into trading, and how simple it turned out to be to identify good trades.
I don't know what everyone else does, but my mentor helped me identify low risk trades that really make things easy for me. These are the trades that I would have taken *I tested with replay data and not knowing the chart beforehand... so just know this realize is what I would have done*, if I had been able to do real trading and participate on the market on the 15th. I annotated it very well to show exactly what is happening from my perspective and how two simple lines, make all the difference. So, this is how I do it, I might have people object to it, I might have people get some ideas from it. But, either way, It can be done with price, and support and resistance lines. For the 15th, I only needed 2 lines to trade the whole day successfully with the potential to take no losses *but probably wouldn't have happened, but if it did, they would be very minimal* if I waited for trades that were more defined from when I saw them. Here is the image: http://img388.imageshack.us/img388/38/snapshot2kt.png So again... it is possible to make great trades with support and resistance only. The only questionable variable in the whole thing, is if the person behind the computer can control himself to execute.
And to throw in some extra... for today, the 16th, it was almost the same exact case, 2 lines, and successful trades would have been made if I could have been home to make them. So I'm interested in feedback. As I hope most people will realize on elite trader, that there is no holy grail. There might be systems that work, there might be automated systems that work, but they are not a sure thing and they can not adapt to changing markets. Until we have artificial intelligence that is possibly capable of such a thing. The KISS (Keep it simple stupid) approach, is really amazing. So, I hope that some of you take something away from this. I gain nothing except the fact that I hopefully helped a few people who are struggling like I once was, but realized how simple it really could be if you have someone help you. If you liked the chart. I wouldn't mind making up some more. It is fun for me to help people, even though I'm still new at this, I enjoy it.
You're on the right track JM. Although I doubt you'll last long with such a small account size. Have you thought of joining a futures prop firm and getting a paying job in the weekends? In your situation that's what I would be doing. I noticed you were bullish EOD yesterday. Good for you, the demand was there, just needed to prove itself. The gap above 10605 was a very good long signal to wait for a long entry on the dips. Blackguard must be very happy with his great entry. http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=842870#post842870
I looked at a prop firm. Bright Futures I think it was, not sure, but it is located here in Virginia. I don't know anything about it. I know I'm underfunded, I have been, that is why Equities was a lost battle. I am enjoying Futures. It is the first vehicle that I have been able to actively trade with having smaller amounts. If I traded 2 contracts a day instead of one, then the possibility for profit could raise 75% to 100% more *I might exit earlier with another contract to be safe, and let the other one ride* So, I am pretty confident that I can do this. I'm not... "cocky" confident. But just confident in the fact that so much has clicked for me these past few weeks, and it has me very excited. I thought for sure I might not be able to do this, but it is just a relief to know that there are a few people out there willing to sacrifice time & profit to help others. I want to do the same when I get older and mentor traders that really want to trade because they love it. I can't afford to do that right now, but once I can, I'd love to try. ------------------------------ Here is one more chart I just annotated. I didn't write all the text and such, but hopefully people get an idea. http://img304.imageshack.us/img304/8425/snapshot20ir.png Very rough estimate of a possible $1,000 profit if trades were executed perfectly. But more realistically, I'd say around $600 - 900$ profit with one contract. I will trade one contract until I'm comfortable, and then move to two contracts. I see the benefit of having two contracts, to be able to exit 1 contract while making sure to take profit, and let the other one see if it will go higher. If not, it's fine, I still take profit, just not as much as the other... but if it continues, then I didn't miss out on potential profits from being too cautious. So, I just hope that all the newbies don't try searching for systems that guarantee success, when you can experiment on your own and figure it out yourself.
excellent marked up charts. I was trying to explain this exact same senario you wrote up in your chart when I posted the following ............... If the price is far away from major support and close to a major resistance I'll wait. and see what happens at the resistance area. Demand will mean a new consolidation at the R area which turns into a new short term support, so I'll go long with less contacts. http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=844125#post844125 I'm sure you'll do very well when you do go live. Another suggestion I would like to venture is that you look for others who might want to front you a trading stake for a % of your profits. As for the newbies you seem to be wanting to help, I suggest they look up posts by Lefty62151 whose posts are/were very well written on the subject at hand.
Wow, like JM's mentor, I too mainly use support and resistance when entering ands exiting trades. I also use 9 and 18 day ma and watch for divergence and crossovers. My stop today at 10651 agrees completely with JM's annotates chart that shows if 10650 is broke then Ym goes much higher.
JM, have you traded any YM live ? FWIW paper trading and real trading will not produce the same results if you can't detach yourself emotionally from the money.