Welcome to the new Traders Laboratory! Please bear with us as we finish the migration over the next few days. If you find any issues, want to leave feedback, get in touch with us, or offer suggestions please post to the Support forum here.
brownsfan019
-
Content Count
4271 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Everything posted by brownsfan019
-
Bill, Before you even think about where to trade, learn WHAT you are trading. http://cmegroup.com/education/ Good luck and have fun!
-
pop's right - many things that can be done in EL can be transported to OEC. Might require a little leg work but if you really want it, you can give it a shot.
-
Crashed right through. Never got any bullish signal, so that is good. Didn't stay above that 20 EMA for long though. Interesting to see how this will play out.
-
Quick look at the daily. A couple nice shorts that were discussed in the thread and now currently we have some closes above the 20 EMA.
-
It's not easy, but once you have convinced yourself that you have a good way to trade, you then have to follow it. Of course getting to that point is not easy, but once there, you have to believe in the work that you've done up to that point. Today's trading was much easier on the stomach and the result was a little better than yesterday. The key today was a lot less trades (esp on the ES) and a smoother equity curve. All 3 markets contributed about the same to the P&L. -
In this post, I explained to the OP that following your system when things are not looking good is easier said than done sometimes and thought I'd explain further. Today (Dec 12) was one of those days where if I told you the end result of my P&L you might say, nice day. Ending P&L: $779.89/ct after commissions Not the greatest, but acceptable. Now, allow me to take you through how this day progressed and you can see why it's easier said than done to follow your system 100% and not lose faith. I am currently focusing on 3 markets to trade - ES, EC/6E and ZN. The main reason being that I am trying to be more particular in my setups and instead of forcing on the ES only, I find it easier to be patient using 3 markets. ES trades for Dec 12: +1.25, -2.25, -2, -2, -1.5, -1.75, -1.5, +5.75 = -4.00 on Day EC trades for Dec 12: -13, -12, +26, -9, -9, +6, +36 = +25 on Day ZN trades for Dec 12: +21, -4, +19, +10 = +46 on Day As you can see, not the easiest path to get from point A to point B. We know that the shortest distance between 2 points is a straight line and while it's much easier having a day where you start at 0.00 to +1,000 with no losses, that's not entirely realistic IMO. But if you were to look at starting at 0.00 and ending at $779.89, it'd be hard to argue that was a bad day. I posted this b/c in the other thread the OP is showing some solid faith in his system and following it. Once you know that your system makes money, then it's a little easier to do this. Of course you need to get there, but once there, you can do it. In the end this business is first about knowing that your system makes money over time and then doing it while minimizing emotional impact. I still get frustrated at times but days like today remind me of how important it is to keep doing it. I had no idea going into the day that the ES would be so rough today. I had no idea that the EC would make money, but only after a few losses. And I had no idea that the ZN would be like taking candy from a baby. And I have no idea what tomorrow will hold. I just have the faith that I can do the job and follow the plan. As soon as I stray from that, then I am subject to P&L fluctuations not planned for.
-
This is good for your progress. Anyone can be a great trader when it seems you can't be wrong, what separates those that continuously make money are the ones that realize there will be down days and it's just part of doing business. I'll give you an example from today from my personal trading - the day started off rough w/ the EC giving me some losses (start trading it around 8am EST). And then the ES proceeded to give me 6 losers in a row. Ouch. The EC then proceeded to provide some nice winners to end the day +287; the ES ended down -$221 and my saving grace today was the ZN at +713. While not the best day by any stretch, to end the day up at $779/ct, I'll take it. But the ONLY reason why this worked in the end was that I didn't give up after 6 ES losses (as the last ES traded provided +5.75), the EC ended up positive and the 'easy' market today happened to be the ZN for me. It's funny how the mind operates as it's easy to look at the end result of +779/ct for the day and be happy, but it wasn't anything but easy... Keep it up and stay focused. ========= Side question - have you considered trading multiple markets that are not identical to the NQ? As I mentioned, the EC (Euro) and ZN (bonds) are good options to consider in the mix. Sometimes putting all your eggs in one market can be dangerous if that one market is just not working for you.
-
^^^ WTF is all that DB? Any reason why shown twice?
-
Daily Goals: System or Dollars?
brownsfan019 replied to evolved trader's topic in Trading Psychology
It's interesting to me that the more things change, the more they stay the same... Meaning, great question which has been discussed in lengths on TL before. Some good discussions somewhere around here. I'll just say that it depends on you, your trading system, risk tolerance and ability to focus all day. YOU: Can you handle trading all day? Trading all day will have ups/downs and plenty of days where stopping might have been better. Can you accept that? SYSTEM: Can your system make money trading all day? Some systems do very well in the AM (good movements typically) and some systems can crank out profits all day. RISK TOLERANCE: Can you handle any intra-day drawdowns you might have? While you may make more money at the end of the day trading all day, there's a chance that you will have some losses getting there. FOCUS: Even if the system makes money all day, can you do it all day? Make no mistake, trading all day is not easy IMO. Again, while the system may make money had you been trading all day, that assumes you are trading all day and not stopping when tired, wore down or going through a intra-day drawdown. -
Ryan, My suggestion is that you continue to paper trade until you KNOW your system makes money. Based on your responses here, sounds like you are lacking faith in your system which then creates fear of loss and being wrong which then causes that immediate cancellation; ESPECIALLY if you've already lost money. Getting into trading and doing it the 'first' time is easy. But once you get your teeth kicked in, your immediate response is to go defensive and try to prevent that from happening again. It's taught to us as little children - touch that hot stove and you will get burnt. Do it once to learn to never do it again. Losing money is kinda the same feeling - lose once and you never want to do that again. IMO the only real way around this (and I've been where you are) is to believe in your system. You have to believe w/o hesitation that you can make money. That's easier said than done b/c not only do you have to believe, but you have to put those other emotions aside. This is very difficult and will not be solved over night or from a self help book. My suggestions at this point would be to: 1) Paper trade and do your best to convince yourself it's real. 2) Backtest as much as possible, even if by hand. 3) If you want to see how it runs in real-time with a close to life feel, try using something like Collective2 to run it. It won't replace real money trading, but you can at least get an unbiased view of it and you might even make some money on subscriptions too! 4) If you really want a critique, post here what your system is and let some persons that know nothing about you or the system try to trade it or dissect it. For all you know you might be right there, but one small tweak can push you over the edge. But you may never get there yourself. I realize there's the 'I don't want to share my grail system' (I am this way) but if it can't make you any money, mind as well see if anyone else can make money at it and then hopefully you can learn from them and/or get that confidence that you need. If someone was making good money daily using your ideas, that might be the swift kick in the butt that you need!
-
I had no idea what you were talking about James until I scrolled all the way to the bottom. Don't mean to rain on the parade, but who's looking down there?
-
Ryan, We've all been there at some point, but I have a few questions that may help to see if this is an execution issue or a real fear factor: How much are you risking per trade in comparison to your account size? How much is in the account total? Can you afford to lose all of it and not have your life change? What are you trading? Do you have any backtesting and/or paper trading to support your analysis? You may see where I am going w/ this, but humor me.
-
My bad, I didn't realize you wanted a free e-book that was also going to provide you the holy grail of trading. I think I have one around though, let me see if I can find it. :doh:
-
http://www.surinotes.com/ I recently picked up Suri's book and if you are looking for a place to start, that's a great one IMO.
-
Introduce Yourself Here - Don't Be Shy!!
brownsfan019 replied to trading4life's topic in Beginners Forum
It's not market profile, but if you are new, I would order Suri's book today and start reading. Will put you ahead of the curve IMO. http://www.surinotes.com/ -
Why don't you post some examples so everyone knows what you are talking about?
-
Ok great!! Thanks!! :rofl:
-
I recently picked up Suri's book and it has very little indicator talk in it. Highly recommend if looking to trade patterns, price action or whatever you want to call it. http://www.surinotes.com/
-
Personally I just stopped visiting so much. To log on and see 70+ new posts and at least 50 of them are new people trying to reach a quota, I am immediately turned off. I really don't have the desire to click the unread posts to find 1 or 2 threads maybe that I might be interested in when there are 70+ on my unread list.
-
The best methodology for trading depends on you, your risk tolerance and your risk capital. So, start learning and see what you like - lots of good stuff around here, plenty of books on trading via Amazon.com. Make no mistake, this takes thousands of dollars and countless hours to get to the point of creating a reliable stream of income. Attached is a PDF I made awhile back of the trading books that I would recommend. Amazon.com Embedded into Tiny URL's.pdf
-
http://www.openecry.com A few of us around here use them.
-
Introduce Yourself Here - Don't Be Shy!!
brownsfan019 replied to trading4life's topic in Beginners Forum
:doh: Was that 2 full days of papertrading or half days? Word to the wise - takes a little longer than 2 days to master any trading platform, let alone even begin to make money. -
http://www.surinotes.com/ Get his book and start there. It will save you a ton of time.
-
Here's what you need to know about ANY moving average system: 1) Will do well in a trending market 2) Will get slaughtered in a non-trending market And your screenshots prove just that - you found some trending days and a non-trending day. From there, it's money/risk management as to whether the idea will work in real-time or not.
-
There was a thread at ET talking about board games that pertain to the markets and thought I'd post here to see if anyone has any other ideas. The ones offered I think are your standard monopoly type boring games IMO. My personal favorite is PIT DELUXE. What a fun game. If you are looking for a way to kinda show people what you do or need a different gift, check that game out. What I like is what you can literally know nothing about trading and get into the game. Afterwards you can say - that's kinda what I do every day. Note to the analytics - this is not a perfect representation of trading by any stretch, but it can at least make it fun trying to explain. I know during the holidays having a good game to go to is nice, so share your favorites if you know of any others that can deal w/ the markets. An oldie but goodie is Monopoly as well. Which is now electronic. I feel old now. I did a general Stock Market Games search on Amazon and there's actually more than I expected.
