TraderFoo

thanks to everyone for the thoughtful posts. much more advice and helpful info than i expected.

I mostly trade ES, 1-2 contracts on usually 500 tick or 2 minute charts during the first 2 and last 1 hour of the regular hours. I usually run a 2-3 point stop and trade gaps and pullbacks to pivots. i think sevensa pretty much hit it on the head though. regardless of the feedback i got, it would not have been as bad if i was following a plan instead of chasing, moving stops, and not just shutting down the computer after consecutive bad trades. (if that were part of my plan) usually i have a lot more discipline, but i think doing so well last week that i let it get to my head. last week i had my best day, today i had my worst day. it's a great lesson. i need to find some good parameters/limits for a trading plan on a smaller account. ($5k) and more importantly, then, i need to follow it.

great point, thanks .. i have a trading plan template here on my computer... but never did anything with it. playing it by ear as i learn has only got me under/over/and back to break-even on my account, so a trading plan sounds like the perfect next step.

I got chopped out of almost every trade today. Stopped out by 1 tick, made my stops bigger, got stopped out by 1 tick again .. and so on :crap: So hindsight being 100%, I still don't know what the best approach would have been. Maybe there's not a great answer to this post .. and in that case it will just serve as me venting :frustrated:

Are there any good contracts to trade after hours? I've generally haven't done well on the mini s&p and dow during that time, so I stay away.

thank you very much ... and even a little more to make this post 20 characters so i can click submit

Are there any great services, free or not, that nicely preset upcoming market announcements? i.e. earnings, job numbers, etc...

you sure it's not disabled? .. if you right click on the chart and select format strategy, make sure the status is on.

i actually got this figured out over the weekend. variables yesterdaysHigh(0); // if time is 10am if Time = 1530 then yesterdaysHigh = High; if Time = 1000 then // do something with yesterdaysHigh

Hello, ... first post here. I just started using Tradestation and EL today. I'm working on a very simple strategy for the sake of understanding the basics. I'm trying to figure out 2 things: 1. How can I get the high of a bar at a specific time 2. How can I run a piece of logic at a specific time? For example: At 10:30am, I'd like to get the high of the 3:30 bar yesterday to compare, and place a buy order based on the results. Makes no sense, but just trying to understand how to work with bar times.