brownsfan019

Good stuff Nick! See, you just did it and now you got a journal started. My suggestions: 1) Document ALL trades on your chart, with annotation if possible. I recommend SnagIt for doing this easily. I think this is really, really important. I also document ALL trades and whether I took them or not and why. 2) I think it's good that you are tracking what you DID make and what you SHOULD have made. For me, this reinforces doing your job and doing it the right way. 3) From there, you can start some sort of tracking mechanism - either Word or Excel will suffice. This way, come Fri, you can easily look at your results and say: A. I did my job B. I kinda did my job C. I wasn't close to doing my job Of course, you can then also see how your trading methodology is holding up over time as well. It's way too easy for one or two bad days to make you rethink your entire trading plan... We've all been there. But, if you have documented proof that over the last month you are up XX%, that's a little easier to work with.

Nick - your analysis is not as important as just getting your thoughts/ideas on paper for future reference. There's many different ways to do this, so do a google search and maybe some can post some samples here. I'll see what I can post later this week. Just start something and you'll be amazed at where it morphs into later. There's no right answer here, so just do it!!

This is an easy one - Futures and/or Forex. Futures Forum: http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/f32/ Forex Forum: http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/f24/ I recommend the e-mini's (ES, YM, NQ, ER2). More info:http:// http://www.cme.com/trading/prd/equity/ http://www.cbot.com/cbot/pub/page/0,3181,1063,00.html

Excellent post Cooter! Here's how I see it - when daytrading the US index futures markets you have a limited window of opportunity each day. And of those days you are going to lose on some of them. You simply cannot eliminate the good days b/c you took time off or WHATEVER reason (excuse). I'm glad james agrees with my sentiment b/c as he said, this will be a lesson learned - good or bad. Either way he's going to realize something. What that something is will be found on Friday. Just trade this week james as you would any other week and you'll be fine. Do NOT let taking time off be a hindrance to you as you will then program your brain to think that taking time off is bad and costly. That's a slippery slope to go down b/c then you will feel like you can never take time off or if you do, you are doomed when you come back. Not a fun game to play with your brain in my opinion.

I'm going to go in the other direction here - so you took a week off, big deal. :o I say get back on the horse Monday morning and do your job. If trading was a 'job' that someone else was paying you to do, you could not sit on your hands all week b/c you are 'lost'. In all seriousness, it just sounds like an excuse to not trade and/or laying the groundwork for any possible losses next week on something other than you. Sorry if that's not as sugar coated as other replies here, but if you are running a serious business, then there's no question what you do Monday morning. If this a casual hobby for you, take the rest of the week, month or year off then!

I don't think data feeds are that expensive... In other words, I would not trade a contract purely based on saving 100 bucks a month (emini package thru DTN).

Nick - been there, done that. Looking to 'move up' the alcohol consumption chain if you will. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing like a cold, fresh draft Bud Light in a chilled glass at the right time. Gone are the times of massive beer and jager bond consumption. Cheers! :beer:

I'm looking forward to it as well James. It's getting mixed reviews in the US, but I take those lightly since I don't agree with these critics often.

James - along the lines of identifying vendors in the registration, it would be helpful if then there was some sort of unique identifier in their screenname that would tell everyone real quick this is a vendor. That could eliminate threads turning into a debate. If everyone easily knows (w/o having to click their profile and read thru it), that could help minimize concerns. It doesn't need to be gaudy, just a small icon or something that would symbolize this person is some sort of trading vendor.

Good points guys. No easy solution I suppose. You don't want to turn away a potential contributing member to the board and we also don't want to turn this into a trading sales forum either.

tin - we won't always know every vendor on the site, but I think the concern was what the real motive behind posting. If Joe and/or James provided a brief disclaimer that while Joe is a vendor he is here to contribute, or he is here to market, that makes things easier. Of course it's easy for a vendor to say they are just here to participate when in reality they are here to market. I would guess that most reservations us 'regular' guys have with vendors on a board is that all of us have seen few (if any) that actually just want to be a 'regular' guy on a board. Of course, if that's what they wanted, they could just make an anonymous screen name....

James - I would suggest that any time a new vendor is posting on TL - whether by request of you or not - you introduce them to the forum. In this thread - http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/f37/afraid-of-failure-1993.html - I can see where the concern would come from when there's a new thread by a vendor, in this case Joe Ross. The immediate concern by many traders is what is the motive of this person posting here. It's a fine line obviously, but as TL grows, many more vendors will want in on the action. Not too mention, from your biz perspective, you should be monitoring all activities by such vendors on your forum. This site is not free to run, so if someone wants to 'advertise' here (directly or not) you should be compensated. I would suggest some sort of intro from you regarding the vendor to the forum to help avoid threads becoming a discussion of what motive(s) this vendor may have, even if those motives are commercial. Let's just put the cards on the table and not create a smoke and mirrors environment.

Welcome to the board unleashed. I've never traded at IB but have heard mixed results, mainly b/c of what you have seen with the charting. You may want to consider getting an independent, 3rd party for charting. I personally don't like having all my eggs in 1 basket. I would recommend MultiCharts. TradeStation is also good. Just about every decent chart service has a free trial, so I would start there.

winfred gives some additional options; however, I would suggest any new trader stick to the ES, YM, NQ or ER2. The reasons are for what Winfred quoted - other markets have much lower volume, which can lead to wild spikes, lock downs, etc. You are not going to see lock downs in the main US equity index products. The last thing a new trader's account can withstand is a huge loss in a low volume product. Don't make the mistake of thinking that just b/c it's electronic, all things are equal. There's a reason why the US indexes are some of the most heavily traded futures contracts daily.

And that my friend is what will determine if a trader is able to make money utilizing your setups. And an important consideration in my opinion. Of course, the next question is - how do you determine the type of day we may have and how successful is that methodology in determining the type of day?

http://www.cme.com/trading/prd/equity/emini-russell2000.html http://www.cme.com/trading/prd/equity/emini-russell2000_FCS.html

Walter - just one question for you - are you trading some, all, or none of these trade setups in real-time you have on the forum? Reason I ask is that we get a new Walter trade setup, which is great for newbies, but I am looking at some of these threads wondering how a scalper could possibly trade so many variations at the same time... I'm just wondering how you decipher in real-time as a scalper the differences of the setups you have on the forum b/c it seems you have trend following setups, counter-trend setups, boring/zzzz day setups... And the setups have a lot of similarities, it's a matter of how the movement is interrupted. Are you able to keep things simple as your sig says? If so, how?!?!? I've never had much luck with many variants of a trading plan, so I keep mine pretty simple with candlestick analysis. And to me, that's very cut and dry, not many variants there. I'd love to know how/if you are performing this analysis in real-time and how you decide what variant is being used in real-time. Thanks Walter!

Nick - Here's how I would view the ES in terms of scalping: + Able to drop a decent amount of contracts with no problem. + If you can do it right, 12.50/tick will work for you. - To exit a position, it's safe to assume the price must be traded through when using limit orders. Ex: if you are trying to take 2 ticks from your entry, you will actually need it to move +3 in your favor as the 'line' to get filled on the ES is rather large. - If you thrive on more 'wild' spikes (like ER2), you won't see them on the ES nearly as often. Again, if you need those type of moves, the ES will be hard to trade. If you don't want some wild spikes, like myself, then the ES is a more 'smooth' market in comparison. I'd suggest testing your ideas out on a simulator, but you need to find one that is realistic to how the ES actually trades. There's too many that assume you get filled if your exit price is just touched. Not so in real-time.

alan - welcome to the site. Good luck with your endeavors and let us know how it goes. I'm not a big fan of papertrading either, so I can understand that concern. While you don't want to rush it, it's hard to stay on the sideline trading fake money in my opinion. I think the learning process is drastically sped up when trading real money b/c so much more goes on when real money is on the line. Of course you have to be able to take the losses and an account large enough to withstand that. It's a catch 22, but I would take the training wheels off as soon as you think you are ready. Just trade a very small lot, but trade it w/ real money. You've been here already, so I would not be concerned with papertrading too terribly long. That's what I would suggest at least!

Cooter has a good idea there - if you want to get your feet wet, the YM could be a good place to start and then go to the NQ and finally the ES. Nick - I've always liked trading the ES if nothing else b/c size is not an issue. I like the fact that trading a 50 lot does not mean much to those looking for 'red flags' or the infamous 'stop hunting'. And I like the 12.50/tick. With that, I can make ONE tick and cover all commissions and still make money. Just one tick. It doesn't sound like much, but when you need to exit a trade at +1 tick, you at least made money on the trade. With the NQ/YM, you'll need 2-3 ticks to do the same thing. Just something that works better for me.

Dale - welcome to the board. Here's my 2 cents on pivots and just about any other indicator out there - sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. My only suggestion is to not use them blindly or at least understand that sometimes the pivots are not going to be accurate. Other times they will peg each move and it will seem too easy. The end result being that you need to exploit the times it works well and not take a bath on days they don't. Again, this can be said of most/all indicators.

bf - I can sympathize here. I think a secondary question (perhaps new thread) is - how many setups can you 'miss' or decide not to take, before you just have to call it a day and walk away. B/c as you've seen, it's a terribly difficult game to win when you are playing these games w/ yourself. Only you can really answer this, but it may need to added to your general rule book to help prevent days like you described. I've been there many times before... you see setup 1 and say no thanks for whatever reason (maybe the doc can help with that) and of course, this trade goes for a nice profit. You then get mad and upset that you saw the trade in real-time, did nothing, and you SHOULD have made money... sound familiar? I would offer two suggestions: 1) As I mentioned, see if there's a correlation between missing your winning trades and then taking later trades. In other words, if you see looking back that as soon as you miss 2 or 3 that the odds are you are going to lose when you do go live, you gotta walk away after that 2nd missed trade. It's not easy, but it may be necessary depending on just how different your results are when trades are missed. 2) Just take 'em all. :p I know, easier said than done, but if your setup is as good as you know it is, you NEED to take all the setups or you will go insane. Literally, you could lead yourself down a path to the Traders Insane Laboratory. One idea that a good friend gave me was that if you can take a step back and act like you are just trading someone else's system for them as a hired employee, that can help in the mental battle. Basically, you go into work with the thinking that you are simply doing your job which is to look for the XYZ pattern and then act. That's it. No regard for wins or losses. Good luck bf, but understand we've all been there. Eventually you'll get to the point where you have to take the trades or you will drive yourself into insanity. We all know trading is hard enough as it is, but when you have an edge and are unable/unwilling to exploit it when it's there is worse than having a losing system in my opinion. One last idea is that if you really, really want the setup critiqued, post it here. I'm not saying you need to do this as I have never fully disclosed how I trade, although most of it is here, maybe you have a confidence issue with the setup. My above comments work under the assumption that you know the trade setup works. Maybe you aren't fully on board yet. That could be the problem and it would be very easy to see why. The fear of losing is a strong motivator. Again, just an idea, but if you post the setup and ask for critiques, I'm sure you'll get some here.

coyote - I'm not familiar with this service, but if you want to get some discussion going, giving a reader's digest version may help. Just b/c someone has not read the book or watched the DVD does not mean they cannot discuss the ideas with you. Just an idea.

Little update here on the WRB front (6/30/07) - in my goal of keeping things simple and after chasing a few different ideas here, I'm back to a very simplified chart setup -- one 5 minute ES candle chart. That's it. :p No moving averages, lines, pivots, fibs, etc. etc. All that stuff can work for the right trader I am sure, but for me, there was too much to think about on a quick decision basis. Back to the WRB thing - my thinking at this point is that on a minute chart format the WRB may be more powerful than on a constant volume chart. Part of the reason is that not many WRB's appear on a constant volume chart, unless there's a substantial push of volume quickly. Of course that says something, but the question I constantly came back to (as mentioned in this thread) is what to do when a WRB does not appear. I would also argue that a WRB is more likely the higher the timeframe you go, although a 5 minute chart works well for me - stops are very reasonable and I can get plenty of setups throughout the day. So my current WRB use is rather simple - on a 5 minute chart (b/c a lot can happen in 5 minutes) and a WRB appears, the position is flattened. I am still just using 'visual' WRB's, but they are clear as day on a 5 minute chart; whereas on the constant volume chart there were times when I would think - is that really a WRB or not? That's a losing game no matter what. Are WRB's giving me perfect exits every time? No. Are my exits a touch better with WRB's in the analysis? Yes. Now, I have a Plan B in place as well for when a WRB does not show. This plan B is simple as well - trail stop when another pattern appears in the same direction of the current trade OR trade stops out. I don't have a way currently to screen WRB's based on whether it is an exit WRB or a continuation WRB as nothing has jumped out at me that works consistently. I have no desire to dive into VSA or any other trading methodology for purposes of WRB exits, so for now, this will have to do - just a visual WRB coupled with a possible trailing stop. It worked well this week. One other note, on a separate topic, by going to a 5 minute chart I am getting less signals, but staying in trades longer. I don't think any way is 'right' but this is a drastic change to my other thread about taking 50+ trades per day. That was on constant volume charts going for small pops. There's no doubt in my mind that it could work well over time, but doing it each day, all day is brutal on your psyche to say the least. And to be perfectly honest, it was not a good match for my personality. I enjoy trading and taking 'enough' trades each day, but 50+ was pushing that edge. Again, I think it could work well for the right person, so I would consider constant volume charts (esp a low setting) for the person that wants to take many trades per day going for smaller moves.

I am having issues every few days trying to get into the site after the 'upgrade'. I'm just kiddin here James, I just think it's ironic that after many software 'upgrades' things get worse (not just TL, in general). Recently TimeWarner (cable internet provider) did an 'upgrade' and my internet stability became worse... I'm just wondering how these IT guys call something an upgrade that makes matters worse. Sounds more like a downgrade.