jonbig04

lol sometimes trading cracks me up. Another bad day, but some interesting trades to tell of. 1st trade: horrible entry here. I was late and wrong. Tried a short 1236, was quickly stopped out. 2nd trade. This one is funny. I went long at 8:27@1233. You might be thinking "hey, that was a good trade because the market rallied 30 points right after that. Too bad it dropped EXACTLY 4 points below my entry before it sky rocketed. Had my entry been better by ONE TICK this would have been a +17/avg trade (one car would have been break even). Damnit. 3rd Had to buy the support this time, it had already given its best though and I was stopped out when I went long at 1235. Here is where I really screwed up. I stopped trading. I was so frustrated that I just walked away instead of realizing that a streak of losers, is just a streak. What a loser I am. I should stay disciplined. Keep trading. My rules are tested. They WILL work if I improve my entries and stay there and TAKE THE TRADES. Scanning back through I would have shorted at around 1200 and gotten stopped out ( I also placed blue arrows at these entry points). But I also would have caught the long at the end of the day at 1200 and that trade would have been a +25Avg. What I learned today was to take my stops like a man, just keep trading and dont go on tilt when things dont go my way. If my rules arent working, its not my concern during the day. Thats for after hours and weekend analysis. My only job during the day is to execute those trades via my rules. Thats it. I also need to work on my entry and I have a very good idea how to do that. These things alone cost me 42/avg points today. So instead of being up 25 or so for the day, Im down 12. At least I can see my rules are working! Work on making entries a little more precise. Never go on tilt.

Weds. 10/22 The trades I lost on weren't that big of a deal. One was +11 before it stopped me out, but thats ok. The only frustrating thing was the morning. One thing about me, I may be a shitty trader, and my rules might suck hairy balls, but I dont break them. Example: The first blue arrow is where I had my finger on the short button, but my rules stipulate how much a point can be broke by along with other circumstances and without getting into it, this move up was too much by 1 tick!! one lousy tick! I wanted to short anyway. But i didnt break my rules. Bastard dropped 25+ points. haha. Then it came back up and (the second blue arrow), without getting into my rules, the test wasn't good enough by 2 ticks! I wanted to short again, but still I didnt break my rules. Sucker went down 20+ points (past my target). Oh well. 1st trade -4,-4,-4 second, -4, -4, -4 -8 avg

TUESDAY 10/21 I slept 30 minute late and missed the most obvious trade. It was the exact same trade I took yesterday and there is no doubt I would have taken it again had I not woken up 30 min late.Long at 1322 at 7:40ish Lesson learned. That cost me 20 points easy. Stupid. It sucks, but at least I know my rules when have demanded another very profitable trade, even I fucked it up by not being awake. Took 2 more trades, both stop outs. No big deal on these, just was wrong. Stupid oversleeping :evil: That wont happen again. 1st trade -4, -4, -4 second, -4,-4, -4 -8 avg

Finally have a system up, will post performance here. Sim is done with 3 cars. I will post the point totals for each car then average them. to catch up. MONDAY 10/20 Tried to short at 8:54 (my time) but price wasnt nice enough for me to get a good entry so I ended up not getting it at all. Too bad because it would have been a nice gain. 1st trade short @ 1322, went about 9 points before coming back and stopping me out. 2nd trade I hated this trade because I knew i was a whipsaw, the chop just happened to meet my criteria. But I do not under and circumstance break my rules (ie not trading when entrance requirements are met). So I went long at 1318.75. Was stopped out after being up around 4 points (makes a guy want to scalp) 3rd trade YES! Finally. Went long at 1321.75. I was up around 15 points and went all the way back to plus 2, then all the way back up again. Had to hold this thing for like an hour and a half. 1st trade= -4, -4, -4 second trade= -4, -4, -4 Third trade= +22, +22, +33 +17 avg

Haha that is definitely an edge.

True. I'm at the screen all day of course but my system gives me probably 8-12 trades per week. It can be frustrating waiting and waiting. I've learned that patience is a virtue in trading. My risk reward is 1/10 or higher, but accuracy leaves something to be desired. I always risk very little and my targets are high and I do not exit until the target is met. My rules prevent me from exiting at +14 just because it feels nice. It hurts watching a +14 or +18 go to break even (i move my stop to BE after a certain point) but thats the way it goes. My biggest thing is this : Do not break rules. Ever. Not even if Bernanke calls and tell you he's going to drop rates a full point in twenty minutes. This way emotions don't become an issue, and won't become an issue as long as I stay true to that.

Sorry I am way behind One thing I am doing differently than everybody it seems is that I'm gearing my rules to make me a certain number of points per week. I'm not trying to make 50 nq points a day (even though it seems everybody but me can do that). I have a weekly points goal thats in the low double digits. i want my rules to be able to generate that consistently. When it does I will just start upping the cars. No point in trying to make 100 points with little capital when you can make modest points with larger capital. Discipline is paramount of course.

The answer to your last question is yes. In my very limited experience price action is all that matters. Focus only on that and get those dreaded lagging indicators off of your screen if you haven't already. Just my advice and its worth the price you paid for it

Still plugging along. I have a set of rules. I follow them to a T, then I tweak...this has been the routine for a while now. I follow them when they work, and I follow them even when I know they wont work. Hopefully at some point...they will work! haha. I actually had to re-write the whole dang thing today. They are now very simply which I'm not sure is bad or good. I suppose I will find out.

I think I know what you mean. Like a run on the stops. I swear sometimes its intentional haha

Thats true. Thats what I meant about being right way less than 50% . However I do believe being right second to being profitable.

ha I'm right WAY less than that!!:rofl: But I'm sure there is no "correct" way, different personalities for different methods etc. However my R/R is what I keep in check so being wrong doesn't bother me.

The very successful traders I know are "right" about 30% of the time. Its about profit via R/R. Being right is pointless. IMO

Sorry about the miss-placed question. I have been thinking about this for a while, and I would like to better understand why S and R occur. I don't mean ultra-specifically, of course everyone has different reasons for why they by and sell. But why does price become S? Why does it become R? To me S and R are just price levels that, for whatever reason(s), are important to people. What I'm curious about is why S and R form, and why R often turns to S and vice ver

Also you would need to define exactly what a retracement is. if it retraces 15 points and then comes back, was that a 15 trend, or a 15 point retracement? Its all subjective based on your time frame, risk tolerance etc.

Honestly not much. By bigger picture I meant larger time frame, months, weeks, etc and a million other things haha.

I'm just starting, but if I may I would have to see the bigger picture but it looks to me like A is a retracement of the down move. Look at the vol, steadily decreasing until sell pressure come back in. A reversal means a change in trend, or a change in pressure (eg, selling pressure is greater than buying pressure then buying pressure is greater than selling pressure), does it look to you that buying pressure is now overwhelming selling pressure in the context of the over all trend? It looks to me that sellers have simply taken a quick break, and the pressure hasn't necessarily reversed. EDIT: this is just a quick observation. For example if this occurred at a major S level, i would be more inclined to think that in may be a reversal. What i said above was just a quick picture in time, kind of thing. EDIT again: That and price made a lower low even with the little kick up in buying pressure.

A generous soul. I lucked out somehow.

Honestly I believe there is subjectivity to all methods, but I'm being mentored and it's not MY decision, thats all.

I really don't want to sound like an ass, because I've learned SO much from you all and this website, but it's an interesting situation and I can't share exactly what I'm doing, but its all PA. I'm not using indicators or anything like that, I promise. However I would like to continue sharing my progress (or lack thereof) with you guys. I've really been working my ass off and one thing I did learn is you have to sleep, you HAVE to. Otherwise your trading will suffer. I pushed the limits of no sleep and the result was bad trading haha.

Got a little behind on my journal. Honestly its because I've been working too damn hard in trading. Sucking up everything, even my journal time haha. Anyways I'm trying to learn a system and traded for 3 days this week. Results: 4 trades, +6.75. I'll do better next week hopefully, but the point is I'm learning a system. Thats the goal, not necessarily points. Sounds counterintuitive I know, but the more mistakes I make (providing I learned from them) the faster I learn, and yea those mistakes cost points.

I never thought of doing that. That makes perfect sense though, this way you don't leave or forget any past lines that may be applicable. Thanks

I'm looking those up right now. Interesting. The problem I'm running into is when I draw the S/R lines on say a 15 min chart from mon-weds let say on thursday price make new potential S, do I draw that line and keep all the other ones? Do I ever erase the lines if they haven't been active in a while? If not wouldn't I end up with 75 lines on my chart eventually? How do I do when to erase them?

Thats a good example. IMHO: Developing that trading strategy is going to be difficult (at least it is for me). It will require you to look at chart after chart, read constantly and then test what you find, only to realize you were all wrong and now have to start over. Most people won't, or don't want to do this. Most people want to simply jump in and trade. That would surely wipe you out. Therefor if you're not disciplined enough to do the work and come up with the strategy, you won't make it. You have to modify your behavior into what will work. You have to make yourself into the kind of person who sits down and creates a proven and tested method. This may only be true for me, but I'm not the kind of person who likes to sit and analyze charts as the market hours go by. I want to be in the market, hands on. However I've realized from DB and other traders that this will not work. I'm therefor changing myself into what I need to become to be a good trader and right now what I need to become is someone who sits down and creates a method that works. That's what I mean about behavior modification, and I'm sure this won't be the only way in which I have to change myself.

Quick question: I know a lot of you use larger time frame charts to spot potential S/R for intraday trading, which larger time frames do you use?