optiontimer

And I'm still in that trade - It came within a few pips of my stop, and It is currently positive for the fourth or fifth time. I've been too busy with this market to try to day trade a sim account for a contest, so I took the one trade available to me that fits my usual set up, and I'm trading it large. Hey, its only money, and phony money at that! I have always said and will continue to maintain that the only drawdown limit should be the account's equity. My understanding is that any attempt to "add funds" would automatically disqualify the participant, so as long as any gains are made with dollars you start with, what's the problem? I see no reason for a Bloomberg Rule. Drawdown limits are for Nannies;)

I sent the request to join, but I do not see it listed as "pending." Let me know if I need to resubmit my join request.

Flipped a nickel and it came up tails for 7/23. Mystic, you might want to edit your initial post to include a list of the dates taken, and whether heads or tails.

I do not know dbphoenix's work as others do, so I can only assume that this is an accurate statement of his plan: That is as good a plan as any I have ever come across. Again, I have not followed the entire thread. But from what I have seen, you are looking for patterns to trade. The problem is this: First, you are looking at someone else's patterns. Yes, the patterns are there for all to see, but you are not seeing them with your understanding, just your eyes. Second, because you see them but do not understand what causes them, you are unable to exploit them. Ergo, you have no edge. And whether you are trading stocks or, as dbphoneix said, playing poker, if you have no edge, you will go broke. It is a mathematical certainty. You yourself said that you cannot tell whether a reversal or a continuation is more or less probable one from another when price reaches resistance. Well, then you have no business trading. To be clear, no one knows for sure what price is in fact going to do, but if you are going to trade, you had better have a good, solid, well-grounded reason for thinking it is more likely to do whatever it is you are placing your chips down and betting it will do. That should make clear what option you should take. You can work as hard as you like. But if you work hard at the same thing over and over, your are wasting your work. Its like I told my friend who I spoke of in my last post, "yes, you have worked hard, but you've done a different version of the same thing for seven years. Therefore, you think you have seven years experience trading. What you in fact have is one day's experience, and you done it now for over 2000 days. Now it is time for day 2." If I were you, I'd make sure that I put day 1 to rest today, and get on to day 2 as soon as I wake up tomorrow. By the way, you already are a statistic. You need a different plan from the one you've been on if you wish to move yourself from the one column to the other in the register of trading success and failure.

TradeRunner is not the most prolific poster, but when he posts, it is usually well worth the reading.:applaud: A couple of years ago, I started a thread here at TL that was in response to a PM I received from another TL member. Here is what it said: Hi Optiontimer I am not a good trader. I have good setups, and can make money for a while, but I don't handle all conditions too well - Still giving a fair bit of winnings back, and stopped live trading until I sort it out. I am trying new strategies all the time. I have many times thought of getting out of trading altogether, because it was not supposed to be like this. I was supposed to learn how to trade, and then make a gradual transition from shift work (nursing) to trading as I ease into retirement in about 4 or 5 years time. The reality for me is that it isn't happening. I have been doing this for 7 years now. It is not coming together. I am in touch with a trader who is doing well, and he is beginning to teach me to trade currencies on a futures platform, using Donchian Channels and Constant Volume Bars. I know I can do this - else I would have ditched the whole scene after a couple of years. But something is still eluding me, and I don't want to die without finding out what it is. If you could also offer any help that would steer me on the right track (if there is a "right track") that would be appreciated. I am not afraid of hard work, and I am not asking for the keys to the Cadillac. I just want my hard work to be in an area that will bear fruit. I created my thread to try to teach this individual how to grasp certain basics of psrice action, specifically, to make him sensitive to the presence or absence of trend, or more simply, is price going up, down, or is it stuck in a horizontal range. I am glad I did, because it did help a few traders move forward - not because of the particular system I presented there, but because they were able to grasp the general concept of a trend, and the benefit of entering a trade in the direction of the major trend but during a minor pullback or retracement against that trend. Unfortunately, I was unable to help the one trader who had originally asked me for help. He had initial success, and then the same difficulties arose, and so he moved on. He came back with a system that worked. Then it did not work well enough, so he gave that up. He spoke of quitting trading altogether. He may have done that, but I think, though it is not very clear to me, that he found another system, and that that he is now trying to make that work for him. He says that he finally understands what I was trying to get him to see about trends and pullbacks, etc. I hope he has. I really really hope he has. But, I have my doubts. I guess the point of all this is that the plight of that trader and humbled are very much alike. What each has tried repeatedly, and each time resulted in failure, to attempt to plug himself into a pre-fab system, an easily identified and repeatable pattern that requires nothing more than a "buy on green, sell on red" engagement with the market. More importantly, each disregarded advice that attempted to point them toward plugging themselves into the flow of the markets. It is an unfortunate thing that good advice, the advice that might actually give the trader a chance to succeed, is not at all the advice that the trader who is struggling wants to hear. I've not read this entire journal, but I did go through the discussion of the last few days. What interested me the most is that the posts I thought to be the most helpful, from TradeRunner, from Thales, from dbphoenix, went "unthanked" and "unliked" by the op, while others, the one's urging the op on, the one's taking issue with the good advice offered, were often "thanked" and "liked" by the op (to be fair, there were a couple of good posts from Steve46 that the op did acknowledge). Well, I don't know exactly why I felt moved to post this, other than I've read this book before, and I (and a few others) can see exactly how its going to end, even if the op and his entourage think it is still a work in progress. The best thing I can do is point out this passage from an "unthanked" and "unliked" dbphoenix post that says in a few lines what I have babbled on for several paragraphs and probably failed to communicate: In other words, the op needs to do something other than the same thing he has been doing. If it did not work the first 100 times, it is not going to work on the 101st.

Congratulations Nico! Hardwork and discipline can and do pay off. The next piece of hardwork is maintaining the hard won discipline! Maybe I'll try the next contest as see if I can give you a run for your currency Good Work!

Ingot, I wish you well, I wish you success, and I wish I could help you. You've come along way since June 2011 when first I met you here. I have often wondered whether you might not have found the results you were hoping for had you chosen to trade futures based on daily and weekly trends rather than spot forex on intraday trends. If you are at the end of your rope, might it not be worth taking shot at it? Just a thought ... be well, friend, OT

Congratulations on having found an approach that works so well for you, Ingot. I'm proud of you - not only for the success you are now enjoying but also because you have put yourself forward to share your work with others. Good for you! Now, I'm too old a dog to learn these new tricks, but I am looking forward to following along, nonetheless. I take it that the "template" you are using is for MT4 software. From what I understand, every individual bucket shop feeds its own quotes through the platform; so would you mind sharing which broker you will be using for the screen shots you will be posting to demonstrate your method? Is it Oanda, by any chance? Thank you, and good luck with both your trading and your thread! -OT

I love the numbers I see getting put up ... especialy from you, Ingot!

Ingot has the Holy Grail!? And he's holding out on us!? I guess he's waiting to get his paypal payments set up ...

Divergence, as it is typically defined, has no part in what I described here in this thread. Divergence is typically understood as a situation where price behavior and indicator behavior are going in different directions, hence, divergence, as in "at this point, our interest have diverged." Positive divergence: Price is making lower lows, but the indicator is making a higher low. This is often interpreted as being positive for rice, i.e. indicating the decline is losing momentum and higher prices are ahead. Negative divergence: Price is making higher highs, but the ndicator is making lower highs. This is often seen as negative for price as it indicates that the rally is losing momentum and lower prices may be ahead. In this system, we want the indicator to turn with price. If price is in a downtrend, we want to see price rally. The indicator will move up with price (that is what indicators do, after all). We then wait for the indicator to hit an overbought level and then rurn down, with price, from over bought. If you use this method long enough, eventually you will not need the MA's or the indicator. You will see what you need to see by watching price alone. You will ultimatley be able to determine without the ndicators what is significant price action that demands a decision. The system is designed to use the indicators to highlight those significant moments. This does not mean you should be in a hurry to abandon the indicators. There is no reason to move away from them at all. You could use this system with these indicators until the end of western civilisation as we know it, and you will do quite well. What this does mean is that in addition to watching the indicators, watch price as well. When the indicator is flasjing a set-up, look at the price action at that point. Be one with your chart! Here is a recent short sale signal on Herbalife (HLF) that I mentioned in MadMarketScientist's HLF thread a few days ago. The area higlighted by the elipse shows price making a high with the indicator overbought on Tuesday, January 15th. The next day, Wednesday January 16th, price made a slightly higher high, but closed down, which caused the indicator to turn down from extreme overbought. This is the set up bar or signal bar, and the low is 44.05. The next day is the entry bar. For stocks I usually use a dime as the stop level, so a short position would have been entered at $43.95. Do not bring anything into this other than trend, counter-trend, trend resumption. There is no need to bring the concept of divergence into this method. As for the EUR/CHF chart above, there was really no trend/counter-trend. Price had rallied and then fell into a prolonged tight range. A breakout trade, not a pullback trae. This method is primarily a pullback method. As of today (2/5), the EUR/CHF looks like it is putting in a possible buy signal, with a buy stop approx. 123.50, and a 100 pip stop loss.

The stoch is for OB/OS against the trend only. The hook, as you call it, is only to be used as a sort of "training wheels" to tip you off that the main trend is getting ready to resume. I never recommended that you use it to exit a with-trend position. Once you are in a position, get rid of the stoch until price pulls back to the MA's. Then you can put it back on your chart to help you determine whether and where a good spot to add-on to your with-trend position would be. It is not an entry and exit indicator. Its only use, as I've described it, is to identify an oversold pullback in an uptrend or an overbought rally in a downtrend. That is it! I have no max drawdown level. If you start sitting out signals, especially after a series of losses, you will undoubtedly sit out the trade that would have won back your all of your losses and then some. So long as you are taking the trades as your set up defines them, you must take them all. You will harm your long-term results if you place a restriction on your market activity that has nothing to do with the market.

'Tis truly the key to untold wealth. That method is the easiest way I know to make a lot of money in a little bit of time, and it doesn't cost you anything except a few hours of studying that thread. A little time and then the discipline/work ethic to employ it and you wil be on your way. Yes. Do not assume that yesterday's correlations will hold tomorrow. You ought to enlarge that, print it out, and paste it everywhere so that you will never, ever, forget those words. While so many are out chasing for the holy grail hoping to figure out a way to get "one or two es points a day," you go and post the actual grail right there in your humble post. 1) Look for the strongest trend 2) Wait for the pullback 3) Jump in big (but not recklessly) when price signals the pullback may be over and the trend is likely resuming. 4) Use open trade equity as additional margin to pyramid, i.e. "snowball" your position. As for your stop, trail behind recent reactions. Assume the trend will continue until it reverses and stops you out. I would recomend studying Victor Sperandeo's books, and perhaps incorporate his 1-2-3's and break of properly drawn trendlines to help you. Finally, not all of your campaigns will not all be homeruns. In my own accounts, I am up over 170% for January. December I was up over 40%. But November was not a full of opportunity, and I managed only 15%. I do not have many negative months, but I did finish down about 2.5% in June of 2012. There will mostly be singles and doubles, a few triples, even fewer homeruns, and then the occassional grandslam. You will also sometimes strikeout. But the way you managed that 89% is exactly how I trade, whether I am day trading or position trading. I know most here won't believe my numbers, and I don't care. If nothing else, my performance month after month in these contests ought to be enough to make some people think "Hey, maybe there is something to this system. Maybe I should go look at the OT project thread." Think about this: I finished the contest +40%. But if you recall, I actually dropped to -50% because I inadvertently failed to place a stop loss on one trade. From that -50%, left me a balance of 45K, I hit the same pair you did, and traded it the same way you did, and I managed to take that 45K back to 140K in a month. Had it not been for that one mistake, my two month return for the contest would have likely exceeded 200%. And one last thing - you mentioned "luck." Absolutely! Most traders overestimate the amount of control they have and underestimate the role of luck. You cannot control when and where the market will go on a tear, or tread sideways for a seeming eternity, or when a perfectly good signal to hop aboard a trend is suddenly reversed by price action, with an unhealthy dose of negative slippage to boot. We only control whether or not we are ready to be the beneficiaries of these trends. We cannot control when luck will strike, only that we are ready to get lucky when it does. You seem to have had a breakthrough in your understanding of what I have been trying to communicate here. Kuokam likewise sems to be on the cusp of a breakthrough. I wish the both of you the determination and perseverence and discipline to benefit fully from your burgeoning insights.

Those puts could have been had that day at $4. Last trade was $9.90 with a $10x$10.30 market at Friday's close. Now if only I had a crystal ball to tell me whether $25 was in the cards before Feb expiration.

I'm liking the Feb 45 puts here with the stock at $44.00. The 40's do not look bad but they are tough to get right now for the right price.