MidKnight

Howdy Doody! I haven't been here in years. Dre gave me a nudge about your post otherwise I would never have Known... I'm keen to catch up will PM you and get in touch with Kiwi Trading Hang Seng Futures. Mostly very short-term combined with index option swing trades. With kind regards, MK

Jpenny, Ignore the crap that oily posts. The concept of "optimum" when it comes to trading is hindsight talk and oily does that sort of talk better than most. Professionals make mistakes all the time and often are not as professional as we are led to believe. How many banks and hedge funds have been decimated over the years due to "professionals".....many. With kind regards, MK

I somewhat agree and disagree with your article. While I have made heavy use of scaling-in for my Hang Seng trading in the past, I do it very rarely nowadays for the following reasons: the practice shifts the methodology focus from being right rather than towards expectancy ego can become covertly intertwined with ones trade ideas because the focus is on being right as mentioned, if it only fills partial size and goes to targets you only get small profits. This is a big problem for a couple of reasons. First, one needs to track which happens more often. If it is quite common to fill your first entry and then go to target this will really hurt your bottom line. Secondly, it covertly teases the mind to want to be filled on your subsequent entries so you are at full size for a good pay day. This can be a huge risk to your trading mentality. to me, it isn't really following the market. The entries are out of blind faith. Yes doing a scale-in approach can give an extremely nice win%, but in my personal trading it produces less money than a much lower win% method. Readers need to do the work and assess it for themselves within their own method. With kind regards, MK

No matter how you say it, he's a top bloke. Those were good days on this forum back then. Who says all good things must come to an end???? With kind regards, MK

Despite all the entrants, few participated. Good job for all the entrants that did participate for following through on their intentions. Congratulations to MysticForex for topping the tables again!

My dear Uncle F* Siuya - I agree that daytraders are focused on the intraday trends rather than the larger trends. As I'm sure you know, part of that focus comes down to wanting to combine the effects of leverage and frequency to enhance gains. As a daytrader that tries to utilize the big picture within my trade ideas, I have at times missed fought great intraday trends as I'm trying to get into the big picture trends. When this happens, I start to question how much value the big picture has in day trading and maybe its best just to focus on reading the flow. After all, if one could read the general intraday sentiment then they would align with the big picture when the time was right. All sounds good, but I so far, have failed to find a way to stay in alignment with the current intraday sentiment in a timely manner. I still explore though. With kind regards, MK

Yes, I have some other ideas but it probably depends on your market. If your question is towards a stock index, then I'd strongly suggest adding some breadth: tick, vix, prem, custom breadths are some examples that are worthy of exploration. I think JPennyBags comments really depends on the market one is trading and I personally hate the advice of only trading with the trend as it is too vague and general a comment that does not transfer well to all markets or timeframes that the trader may be trading. Over my early couple years I subscribed heavily to "trade with the trend" and it did more harm than good for me. It wasn't until the subprime high volatility era and my switch to fading extremes that I started to actually turn consistently profitable. Now I don't trade like that much anymore today, but my point is just that conventional "wisdom" may not be so wise for you, in your market, and in your timeframe. If your study shows conter-trend scalping from extremes is good, then by all means do it. I can scalp very well fading extremes WHEN volatility is high on the Hang Seng Futures, but if volatility is low I get destroyed. That is my own short coming and your mileage on your timeframe and in your market may vary. Do the study. It takes time so be patient. With kind regards, MK

Focus on what you are doing right, and do more of it. Spend more time learning from your best trades than focusing so heavily on your mistakes. We all lament our errors and sometimes wallow in our regret to continue our theme of self abuse. Move past that. Acknowledge your errors and study them, but put more emphasis on what you are doing right. Over time, you will develop a sense of what your best trades look like and how they should/could look after entry. Kiwi was persisting with me in our small private chatroom to read the book 'The Playbook' by Mike Bellafiore. Having read heaps of trading books and being a stubborn mule, I was making up excuses not to read it. "Is there anything new in it???" "Give me a summary :)" etc etc. In essence, the author is very wordy and babbles a bit but if you can get past that, the book has great content on reviewing trades and focusing on what you are doing right. Highly recommend it. Do more of what you are doing right. Yep, exactly. All trading is a craft that takes time to develop. Even system traders, learning how to develop systems is a craft that involves discretion.

Give yourself TIME. Exploring markets, timeframes, methodologies, developing and refining a plan are all going to take time. Keep your expectations on how long it will take realistic and it will reduce the pressure you put on yourself. I've never met a self taught retail trader yet that didn't take some years before starting to turn profitable. Myself took 4 years. Everyone is different. Be patient with yourself, and give yourself enough TIME.

Develop a plan. As one goes on their trading development journey and they are exploring a variety of markets, timeframes, and methodolgies - you'll need to develop a plan. The plan doesn't have to be some objective extremely specific set of rules. It can be a loose set of guidelines that makes sense to you that gets refined over time with your experience. The goal is to start acting consistently so you can get consistent results. There will probably be times that you violate the plan for whatever reason and I think that is normal, especially for more discretionary plans. But the key is to consciously violate it rather than getting lost in the throws of the market or in ones emotions. If you are consciously violating the plan you will note it in your daily review and over time you will collect enough data that may or may not indicate that the violation improves your plan. Develop a plan today.

Find your niche. Steenbarger talked about this lots in his "Enhancing Trader Performance" book and I think its important. Different markets are more favourable to different timeframes and methodologies. You need to blend them into an approach that suits you. Exploring this will take time but will be worth it in the long term. Be patient in your exploration. With kind regards, MK

Relentless review. Be honest in your review and try to put yourself back in the past. Visualize it as if its real-time. Review every day at the end of the day. Review every week on the weekend (trade log and your charts). Review your accurate trade log at the end of the month. Be sure to note what you did right as well as where you could improve. With kind regards, MK

Hiya, Your put a lot of effort into that post and even more effort into your research :applaud: Quite a lot of what you wrote is beyond me .... :doh: I personally would not want to, but that is because I'm looking to trade for the duration of the high vola cycle and sit through the cycles. I'm just a short-term day trader though. My risk is defined by the structure on the chart and as a result, that is adapting to the current volatility. I know you are swing trading, so risk management is probably quite a different beast. Many thanks for the in depth post. With kind regards for the new years, MK

My first deposit was ~8000 USD with tradestation but quickly closed that and moved to Interactive Brokers because their Forex offering 9 years ago was pathetic and their customer service was useless. They didn't even offer Eurex data back then. IB had it all and was cheaper. Happy new years, MK

That would be ideal, but in the real world I'd probably just run the system on something like zulutrade or myfxbook and solicit followers until the strategy blows up :haha: But seriously...if people under leverage themselves you can just add to your positions forever and enjoy a 100% win strategy. However it will probably make less money than a real edge with a small initial risk using leverage in your positions. The original posters wants to be right and not rich. With kind regards, MK