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.
Niko
-
Content Count
800 -
Joined
-
Last visited
About Niko
-
So far I have found that 60% of the days in september are opening ranges that extend until 11:00 AM, almost all of them between 10 and 14 pts, not easy to trade, the other days (40%) offer trend opportunities between 10 and 30 pts, there are 50 to 100 pts days, but they are scarce.
-
Hey KP, sorry for the late reply, I will start posting as soon as I have something to post about, so far I have found that some of my hypotheses where wrong and that was leading me in the wrong path, but finding that has opened a lot of new things that I am implementing in the plan, not sure how others do it, but is taking more time that I initially expected, but that is OK, I will get there some time, thanks for the Douglas book again it has been a great read.
-
Hey Emini and G, here from Tibet, things look a lot better. I have been going through market history starting in 2010, is a ever improving and learning process, after 3 months of back testing the system, there is always 1 correction that requires me to go back and re test the whole thing from the beginning, but there is always 1 little detail I was missing that I am not missing anymore, so is an ever growing task. At first I was frustrated, but then I realized that that is necessary in order to know what to expect from the market and a lot of my early mistakes where explained and are continuously being found so I am happy with how things are going. I had to cash in on other investments in order to stay afloat, but I am still pushing forward with this. How are you guys doing.
-
Thank you, what I meant was that I need to finish the whole testing, I always started it but never got around it, so I will not make that same mistake again.
-
Will follow your path . Will post back when done or if I have a question, whatever comes first.
-
Yep, I cant thank you enough for all you have done, the fact that I cant actually get over my fears and trade the SLA is not the fault of the approach. Agreed I have to rethink my approach to trading so I will take a break for sometime to review my life. Thanks again.
-
You are correct, I am still working on a method and I need to keep on working on it. And I am also frustrated, thanks for your comments.
-
Well, it was very frustrating to find myself in the environment of late may and early june without understanding that this PA is not that unusual. As I went through the same period in other years I realize that is something to be expected. Db has always said that one should backtest at least one year of market data, and I skipped that step, therefore was not ready for the different environments that might come. I know I have been at this for too long, but I have been sorting out other issues in the way so I might have not paid attention to lots of important things that happened around me, and characterization is helping me with that. I have thought about this, like using my "full line" when conditions are favorable and going to the minimum when they are not. The thing I have not yet found out is how to discover this before the open, for example last two weeks have been very hard, but I still lack the understanding of how to detect preliminary conditions that can alert me that the morning will suck, I am looking for that kind of stuff during characterization. I am totally aware of this, but I think one must make up his mind and decide under which conditions one doesn't want to trade, for example a 10 PT TR might not be that interesting to mess with, but that is something I have to solve. What I had planned was to start trading live one strategy and keep on developing other ones in demo, but I need to make the first part of it work and given that the RET strategy is the one that I am more familiar with, it was the one to start with.
-
Boru and Game, thank you very much for your kind messages. I am aware of the road traveled and for that I thank Db and everyone who has been there to provide advice. This experiment of going live provided me with the possibility of actually testing my emotions and my physical response to them as well as my ability to keep my mind focused on price, I went through multiple conditions and they were good at the beginning, but fear kept me from realizing my whole potential, and then they sucked at the end and eagerness kept me from not losing money. So now is time to work on that and also dedicate some time to characterize a whole year so I can see the bigger picture and don't get surprised so often.
-
Today I realized that I am not ready for live trading, not only because of the way I feel regarding my trades, but because of the reason I feel like that. I still have not done my homework and trying to accelerate things don't seem like the right thing to do. I will then dedicate the next couple of weeks or months on getting my homework ready in order to give live trading a try again, but for now I am done. Thank you db for all your help and understanding and thanks to all the other members who have been there.
-
Now regarding plans for the day, I want to be able to keep my focus and avoid a range day, only enter when I see clarity regarding the trend and act decisively once that occurs, after 3 trades that go wrong, I see no reason for staying, first because they would occur because I was unable to detect the range and second because even if it isn't a range capital preservation is paramount in order to be able to start with focus the next day and take advantage of a better environment. But I will try to avoid trading if I cant see a clear trend forming.
-
So after struggling for a couple of days below 800, seems like buyers are finally saying "enough" this morning, from 4:00 price has been falling from the top of the range to the bottom at 82 and just during the last hour an exploration poke for sellers below 82 seem to have failed for the moment. If we manage to get below 82, the path through the 70s could require some effort, but below 72 there are not many trades all the way to 41, from there we would enter a new congestion area with an MP in 27 and a low in 15. The other course of action could be staying inside this range above 82 and try a trip to 800 and perhaps above.
-
Although I understand the message regarding that my focus should be in price and where traders are unable to find sellers in the context of a forming uptrend, I have not been able to find the exact location of the bounce at 12:45, sorry. Yes, thanks, I am doing, I actually started with june 2011, and I was noticing how similar that month was, several days of ranges in the first hour, mostly between 10 and 13 pts. I will keep on characterizing and I will take the time of year into account as by now is obvious that there is some sort of seasonality in PA.
-
Thanks for reading and for your kind comments. I am trading an uncharacterized environment that is very different from the one in which I learned the SLA and my scratching method. I am trying to solve that via characterization in order to include this kind of environment into the mix in order to either change trading strategy and take REVs or just avoid it in total. I am using an anticipated entry that tries to reduce the price risk/information risk trade off, I have already tried the break of LSH or LSL entry and it did not work much better, but thanks for your observation. As I said at the begining, thank you very much for your comments, I am trying to learn and apply SLA in order to reduce stress levels while trading and be more objective. In the future I will probably incorporate new stuff from my own recipe book or someone else´s but for now I am going to stick to SLA.
-
Yes, I know, today I let myself be drawn into trading, before the session I was looking at the daily chart and just wanted to hit myself in the head for missing all of the upmove, that must have set the mood for the session making me look for trades where there werent any. Last few days I had been able to fold as the market did not offer any good trend, and I plan on keep on folding. Ok, thanks, It was very frustrating and I have been in the path of keep the stop in the LSL or LSH and waiting for the best and I didnt want to go back there. Ok, I will do that. Note, for example, how price behaves after it bounces off the midpoint at 1245 and breaks the SL. Thereafter is a higher low. If one entered off that, price would come back 1.5pts after the entry. If he exited and took the next test 8m later, price would come back only a half point below his entry. In either case, the recoil would be shallow. The message is the higher low, not the extent of the recoil after entry. I am actually doing the research since last week, I am looking at info from 2011, doing the characterization according to apendix e. Just remember to do your research in the same quarter. Applying results from the first or third quarter to summer trading is not likely to provide any information that will be widely applicable. Yep, I realized that today errors would have been avoided if SLA chop detector was used as intended. I am getting more aware of that each day, I think I must prevent myself from trading as that is a critical step in my success. Thanks for your comments.