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I put my view of the market(6E) yesterday in chart below.
In my view quite a boring day, only 1 small trade. ( 11.40u) which would yielded 8 pips ( 1 contract ). But becasue I do not take TST and/or BOFs into account, the best setups on sideways days like yesterday this would be underperformance.
Feel free to comment/discuss/see improvements/mistakes please.
v. interesting to see what you do. By comparison, I overtrade by a factor of about 10! At least it's only in hindsight / perfect trading.
The thing that I mentioned once before - you disregard the Asian session high and low. That for me always generates setups. Mostly BOFs today though which you say you don't like.
What did you think at 1.4083 @10:27 my time? I thought that was a key break-out if you used the previous swing low. I figure at that point it looked as if it was just going to ignore the big-assed bar and carry on upwards in that channel. You can also hang that Support onto the highs @08:00.
I'm not saying I could have spotted and traded that, but it would have been good for you? Or are you strictly a with-trend trader?
I also have an intraday low from yesterday @1.4037 where price showed interaction, e.g. @14:45.
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
Here's Tuesday's. A day late but I got seriously stuck with my analysis - not because of the pyrotechnic displays thanks for the SNB, but just a bit of normal market action that caused almost total analysis paralysis and required a good long read of selected training material. (that was about 09:30 on the chart)
Chart attached - caveat emptor - this is my learning process, not reality.
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
Hey Adamus,
Good what you say about the asian high and low, I never look at them in particular. From now on I will mark them daily to see how price interacts with them.
About the TST and BOFs, well I did the testing and simulating period like lance describe in his book. But I recognized I had a natural atraction to trades which “ almost immediately show their hands”. By this I mean that e.g. within 1 3-min candle you can see if your trade is oke and you can either close the trade ( for a loss) or put your stoploss to entry. I found with TST and BOFs price often grinds the bounderies and more patience is needed.
In this period I made some “ guidelines” which pullbacks work and which don’t. ( I can put them here if you want but it won’t serve you I think, you have to “discover” your own rules through testing & analyzing ). The rules are about price reducing in momentum and clustering, it can be the same as put some indicators under the chart, but I don’t like indicators and like to train my eyse to this happening. Next how I must handle the trades after entry ( trademanagement). I think, by watching the past 4 months price action these have positive NPV. But the problem is that last week would have yielded about 30$ ( whole week ) but this week about 900$ ( all using 1 contract, simple all in all out approach ) so results are somewhat dispersed. And..this is not really a reliable database..
So because my confidence in my rules must be inforced, I made the plan to scan the past 6 months of data and see how the trades would work, and journalizing the trades in excel. This gives an idea if NPV is really positive ( because your mind can easily fool you, “forgetting” the bad trades). I also will see what % will work, will not work, give gains etc. This is because I think most trades will yield small profits and small losses, and the real positive NPV must come from mayby 5-10% of trades which hand over the bigger profits. So back to testing this weekend.
So maybe my mind has fooled me by believing the trades have positive NPV. But that is what testing is all about, gaining confidence in your setups.
BTW you see a lot setups, you also look intrabar for setups i see.
Below charts how I could traded this week with current rules.
No big winnings, only tuesday was big winday.
Btw just posting and marking up your charts is a good excercise for yourself, even if nobody looks at it. I think this is why Mike advices us to make a journal.
Zwaen, 2 more questions - don't you keep a trade log? the one that Lance recommends is third party, costs I think $200 but looks like it takes care of absolutely everything you would ever want to know about your trade history and stats. I assume there are cheaper and even shareware equivalents.
Are you only trading with-trend? Is that why you have the MA on your chart?
Third question too : what do you mean by your observation that it looks like I take intra-bar setups? Do you mean whether I use the lower timeframe? Yes I incorporate that part of the analysis but at the moment what I am doing is marking up all the setups, potential setups as well as ones that would profit and ones that would lose. For identifying the setups though I only look at the 3 min chart, and then I drop down into the 1 min chart to see the bar formation there, to get experience how it pans out, looking for stalls, candlestick patterns, etc.
Sometimes when I'm trying to process the chart quickly I don't bother - it's all just 3 min bars.
PS looks like you're doing fine with your trading so far
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
Zwaen, 2 more questions - don't you keep a trade log? the one that Lance recommends is third party, costs I think $200 but looks like it takes care of absolutely everything you would ever want to know about your trade history and stats. I assume there are cheaper and even shareware equivalents.
Yes and no. Just like you I finished the “ program” lance advices in volume 5. Like looking at old charts, marking setups, next looking how you should trade them etc. Next I went simming. Wow what was I making mistakes in the beginning, did not expected that. I also journalized everything and when the day was over I looked for analysis. This was THE ONE THING why I only did progress. So I think this is absolutely a must. Among other things( named in the manual) at the end of each simming-day I asked myself:
-were the trades according to plan? If not, why? -> then I found out emotions really distort you
-did I missed entries? Why?
-which setups were mostly profitable, which were not etc
Since my primor job was risk manager at pension company I do know excel and made a sheet myself for analyzing. I think if you buy one it will probably be better than mine, but I think mine is sufficient. I think it is really the the reasons why you acted a certain way are the most important “ statistics”. The last 4 weeks I stopped doing this ( lack of discipline). Not good, I start doing it again.
Are you only trading with-trend? Is that why you have the MA on your chart?
The ema20 is just for reference, I just copied the chart of lance to look like the charts in his manual
Yes I only try to trade the PB,CPB and BPB, which are, to me, a lot of the same. But sometimes the market just falls and falls, never giving a good retracement on the 3 min chart. Thats why I looked on the 1 min chart and try to take a retracement on that timeframe ( Brooks also advices this). Basically just same setup, but smaller timeframe.
But I think in the environment for the last 4 weeks the TST and BOF’s are much better setups. I will certainly investigate these in the future.
Third question too : what do you mean by your observation that it looks like I take intra-bar setups? Do you mean whether I use the lower timeframe? Yes I incorporate that part of the analysis but at the moment what I am doing is marking up all the setups, potential setups as well as ones that would profit and ones that would lose. For identifying the setups though I only look at the 3 min chart, and then I drop down into the 1 min chart to see the bar formation there, to get experience how it pans out, looking for stalls, candlestick patterns, etc.
Yes I mean you look at 3/5 min charts, but also at 1min charts. I think you do this very good, it will certainly add your chartreading skills. Btw I also do it, thats why I sometimes try to take a pullback on 1 min chart. In chart below is example of what I mean.
Sometimes when I'm trying to process the chart quickly I don't bother - it's all just 3 min bars.
PS looks like you're doing fine with your trading so far [IMG]file:///C:/Users/W/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image001.gif[/IMG]
Thanks
btw1 excuse for typos/bad grammar, also on charts
btw2 just curious, why is the" level" ( under avatar ) constantly changing( also decreasing)?
If you asked me which one area of your trading was most obviously better than mine, I would say that it is your patience in waiting for the right setups that suit you. So now you ask me how to identify more setups! It's slightly ironic.
Looking at your charts, I would have got the pull-back at 09:15 without reference to the lower time frame - why didn't you take it?
In terms of other setups apart from Lance, Brooks has a couple that appeal to me for getting into the trend. There's the slower method where you wait (in a sell-off) for a higher low, and that's your pull-back. You wait until the next lower low, and enter on the break below that candle.
The fast method is just to enter on a break of the higher low, or more conservatively, the lowest low.
But they're pretty primitive and probably programmed by HFT firms for catching the failures, so they might not trade well. I backtested the first above on a year of data and found it offered no edge, even when only with-trend.
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.