thalestrader

I could say the same thing tonight as last night, so I'll let the above quote stand. Based on the daily charts, I anticipate high prices for equities and gold, lower dollar. Going back to the coin standing on its edge analogy, the equities and gold coin started to lean slightly to the bull side today, while the dollar finishes still pearched stock still upon its edge. Best Wishes, Thales

It was getting ready to rally. But for how long? Who knows? But you got to be in it to win it ... Best Wishes, Thales

Today the DJ-30 chalked up an upside breakout on volume greater than the prior down day. However, the BO would be more convincing had volume exceeded that of Tuesday. Best Wishes, Thales

Actually, stick this one in your notebook, and the next time you get stopped by a tick or two that immediately resumes a favorable direction, sell the next new low if you were short or buy the next new high if you were long. Your stop is a tick above the high/below the low of the reaction that got you stopped out of your original position. Best Wishes, Thales

You know what they say, "If trading were easy, everybody would do it." Does it make you feel any better to know that that very thing happens to me at least once each week? Welcome to the club, TradeRunner! Best Wishes, Thales

Good share ... Thank you, Marko! Best Wishes, Thales

Thank you, Cory. That made for an excellent post! You may not have noticed, but I have this thing for charts - we ought to have a rule perhaps - No Chart - No Post! What do you think? I'll start it off by posting the current view og the Gold ETF daily chart: Best Wishes, Thales

Hi Folks, EURUSD/6E broke below our chop zone noted earlier, and it is now in the process of either kissing it goodbye or begging its forgiveness ... Best Wishes, Thales

We should try to post charts with our comments. Without charts, this thread may as well be twitter, or even worse ... ET ...wouldn't you agree? Here's my current view of the weekly USDJPY ... Best Wishes, Thales EDIT: Ok, I see your chart in the previous post, my apologies, Cory. Though a chart detailing what you meant by "less compelling" would have been welcome, nonetheless.

My post had nothing to do with the frequency or lack thereof of your posts. I was responding only to your post that you were feeling disappointed and embarrassed. You have nothing to prove to anyone but yourself. You can post every trade, a weekly update, or log out and never return to TL or any forum. You do not need a forum to trade. My best progress was during an 18 month period where I didn't once visit any internet trading forum. If TL is a distraction, cut it down to the point where it is again a benefit and not a harm to your trading. I think enough folks here at TL have taken an interest in you that if your posts dropped to an end of day or even end of week summary, you'd still receive comments when appropriate. Best Wishes, Thales

My daughter had this order in her account last night, and the long never triggered. However, the EURJPY did provide a decent short opportunity as this sequence occurred after a test of the upper regions of its recent sideways range. Best Wishes, Thales

Stopped out of the 6E for -1R: I'll be looking for long sequences only in the vicinity of the lower blue line, and short sequences only in the vicinity of the upper blue line. Of course, long on a break and hold above the upper line, and short on break and hold below the lower line. No more playing in this chop for me until price moves to or breaks one of the extremes of the range. Best Wishes, Thales

Current look at the EURJPY ... that's about 160 pips of risk against a 500 pip profit target. I would obviously choose a higher swing low for my stop were I to trade this. Best Wishes, Thales

Cognizant of it rather than concerned, I'd say. I'll go to break even should price trade to 1.3840-3850. Best Wishes, Thales

Current look at the EURUSD/6E ... Best Wishes, Thales

Gold also looks as though it may be setting itself up for a rally ... Best Wishes, Thales

No change with the US Dollar either ... If the dollar continues to a new high, then I think he odds favor that the recent uptrend does represent a change in the Dollar's intermediate to long term prospects. This new uptrend high could occur tomorrow, or after a deeper correction of the recent rally. Should a correction break and hold below 76.60, then the odds increase that the recent rally was itself counter trend, and the down trend may be resuming. Best Wishes, Thales

I'm looking forward to watching your trades, Jon. I consider myself primarily a breakout rader, but in my sim CL trading, I've done a bit of S/R fading myself. The nice thing about CL is you usually get a decent enough reaction at S/R to let fade it and just exit gracefully at BE or better if there is no folow through to the reaction. Best Wishes, Thales

Nothing has changed ... small decline off yesterday's close, on diminishing volume. A quick look around the 'net and seems like everywhere no matter what the Dow does, the interpretation is that there is more down trending to come. Maybe. But as MidK says, there are two sides of any coin, and right now, the coin is balanced on its edge. It will fall, but right now, I see no reason why it must come up Bears rather than Bulls. It seems to me it can go either way at this point. Best Wishes, Thales

You're down 3.37R, which at 2%/trade means you are down 6.75%. So what? At least you aren't trading 5% R-units which would have you down 16.85%. I trade 2%/trade. So I was down 7.74% from my (prior) equity peak for the month. Don't sweat the money. And for crying out loud, don't be embarrassed and don't be disappointed. Instead, get on with figuring out if you are down because your trading plan is flawed, your method is flawed, or your emotions and mind are causing error. You had better get used to draw down. Even if you manage to achieve a 60% win rate over the course of, say, every 100 trades, and even though the chance of 4 consecutive losses with a 60% win rate is only about 2.5%, it is going to happen over the course of 100 trades. Trust me. If you cannot trade through such occasions, you will have a rough time. And for now, starting out, do you expect to win 60% of your trades? Probably not. At best, you are a 50/50 player at this point. So out of 10 trades, you'll likely lose 5. Funny thing though: a 50/50 player only wins exactly 50% of his trades about 23% of the time. In reality, you will be will win 4-6 out of every ten trades about 65% of the time. If you are trading at a level where you may only win 4/10 trades during any sequence of trades, then what is there to prevent you from losing 6 trades in a row? Nothing. And, you will. Trust me. What you have going for you is this: It does not matter! Any given trade is a 2% bet. So stop caring if this particular trade is a winner or not. Stop caring if the last two were losses. Focus on learning your craft, and applying it with sound money management. Believe me, most of the folks who frequent trading forums, including this one, have not done 5% of the work and preparation that you have. You have nothing to be embarrassed about. And you've only been doing this for a few months. So pull yourself together and get back at it. Best Wishes, Thales

The purpose of the Van Tharp readings were to try to influence the direction of the thread towards money management and viewing one's performance through the lens of Units of Risk or R-multiples. Those readings, unfortunately, though perhaps not surprisingly, were among the least popular of the Weekend Readings (rating as low as the Elliot Wave stuff!). Of course, it makes sense that the most important element of trading successis the one that folks least wish to examine. For example, most folks wish to avoid losses. As a result, a favorite metric of the uninitiated is the win/loss ratio, or the winning percentage. Winning percentage means nothing outside of the context of a trader's R status. Yesterday I gave the example of one trader with a 1.4 avg R and a 60% winning percentage compared to a trader with a 6R avg win and only a 33% winning percentage. Who would you rather be? Well, measured by nominal $'s won, you'd want to be the trader with the 6R average, even if it meant most of your trades would be losses. As of today, (I am done 'til Tokyo, anyway) I am up +16.13R for the first 8 trading days of February. My largest win this month was 5.06R, my largest loss was 1.06R (commissions and slippage don't you know). My avg R actually slipped a hair today to 1.42, down from 1.44 yesterday. My average loss for the month dropped, interestingly enough, from about .73R to .64R after today and my winning percentage today was just over 50%, but I added 3.87R to my MTD profits. Not a bad day, if I say so myself, but I over traded like crazy, everything turning into a scalp. Also, for those who think I have special powers, looking back over the month, I see that at one point last week I had a draw down of -3.87 R, which is nearly the equivalent of four consecutive full-on stops. It happens. You just keep taking your swings, and eventually the ship rights itself. By "right itself," I do not mean that I was doing anything wrong and that I had to change to get things right. I was fine. I did everything right during that draw down. More importantly, I did everything right since that draw down. You cannot let yourself worry about a bad trade, a bad day, or even a bad week. If you get to the end of the month, however, and things are bad, then it is time to stop, re-evaluate, paper trade, diagnose, etc. By focusing on money management and risk, you will be able to identify and isolate any problems quickly. There is no other way to trade for infinite yield while avoiding ruin other than to focus upon your RISK and a money management approach that wishes to avoid RISK and its pernicious effects as much as possible. An R unit of my futures account is 2% of equity, which means I double my account at 50R. It took me years to double my first account. Let me tell you how much more manageable a task that is if you have proper money management. One last thought on this for now: If you are interested in reading about a trader who really understands risk and knows how to manage it, read the Larry Hite's interview in Market Wizards. If you haven't read the Tharp articles, search the thread and read them. I've said it here before and i will say it again - position sizing is the closest thing to the Holy Grail of trading as you are likely to find. Best Wishes, Thales

Out with +29 ticks on this one ... Best Wishes, Thales

Initial stop was -34 ticks, current stop is +29 ticks, profit target is +100 ticks. So, worst case on this trade is a profit a shade under 1R. Best Wishes, Thales

It's not going so well for the trend line, which is precisely what you want to see when you are short against it. Best Wishes, Thales

Price, meet Trendline. Trendline, meet Price. Best Wishes, Thales