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You mentioned trading cleaner, I ve been searching for this sorta. I understand what you mean with cleaner but how do you go about detecting chop or tight ranges so you keep your losses down. This is my killer, I still pull my stop up when I see that Im in it but Im still taking a loss. This bugs me greatly, maybe its in the eyes and will come eventually. Thoughts
Personally, screen time has trained me to look for certain patterns in breakout, retrace and change of speed of bars. All of them occuring simultaneously. And the ability to scale in positions helps tremendously. The best trades for me have been ones where I patiently build a position (sometimes over several hours for a single intraday swing idea).
Spot Euro had a lovely setup today. Look at a naked spot chart of 5M and 120M simultaneously. See if you can spot George Lindsay's 3 pushes swing. It is there on spot and CL as well (small frames on CL). Do not use any indicator.
You ditched the future for spot forex? That's the first time I've heard of anyone going that direction before. What signals do you use then? I have to admit I've never even watched the future.
re stuff from Ziad - I wasn't criticising it - I was literally just saying I've read it a lot and having read it just again, I have to either leave it a long time to forget the words, so I can read it again fresh, or I have to read each sentence phrase by phrase to take on board what he's saying.
Thanks for the info.
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
I'm thinking of two trades yesterday where the swing I was waiting for started but then stalled for 3 or 4 bars, and then moved backwards onto my stops. Both times I just watched it happen and only realised my blindness when reviewing the day's trades.
Thanks for the sleep info. I'm doing all of those DON'Ts! No wonder I can't get to sleep.
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
You ditched the future for spot forex? That's the first time I've heard of anyone going that direction before. What signals do you use then? I have to admit I've never even watched the future.
re stuff from Ziad - I wasn't criticising it - I was literally just saying I've read it a lot and having read it just again, I have to either leave it a long time to forget the words, so I can read it again fresh, or I have to read each sentence phrase by phrase to take on board what he's saying.
Thanks for the info.
First time - ? I compared 3 FX feeds for spot with 6E feed from DTN, PFG and Rithmic - on every feed across the board, to my naked eye - I found more spikes and tails on both tick charts and time charts for 6E. Rather than spot. To make it more interesting, I found more "bodies" on candles on spot, less whippy action to boot. I am as surprised as you are. I cannot ignore this data.
Going from 5M charts to 240M charts, including ticks and range bars. I have to try this. Epecially since I don't have too much reliance on any indicator. As I construct my market context, all it takes for me to execute is certain patterns and EW cyle waves. Spot is proving cleaner, for now. Additionally, the trillion dollar market is spot, not 6E. Spot has gotten a bad rep (for very good reason). But trading for me is a very visual business, and I must go where my eyes take me. We'll see how time proves or disproves this.
Stops are still causing an issue re placement. Wondering if paying relatively big commissions on each trade affects my stop placement. I pay $7.50 comm on a trade that makes $2 per pip per part / $4 per pip total at the start with both parts on.
I don't want another $15 loss so I put the stop closer. If I was paying less % comm, would I feel easier about the correct stops?
Another question: why can't I tell what the correct stop is and use it, instead of letting some kind of emotion affect me?
You are in the same boat with us all. There is no 'correct', just the one that you learn to profit from and feel ok with. (My opinion, not an expert yet...)
No, it's worse than that. Despite trying this morning, I did the same thing again with my stops. See this little run here, as the market inches higher - it whipsawed me completely. 3 of those entries were trying to go long and if I'd just had the guts to put my stop a little bit further out first time round, I'd still be in the trade and about 20 pips better off.
I think I've got:
1) Fear of a big loss - it's obviously less nasty to me to get stopped out for a 5 to 8 pip loss than it is to risk a 10 pip loss to win the trade
2) Permanent underestimation of how far it's going to retrace
3) Indecision whether I'm going for an immediate move where I bail if it doesn't happen, or more of a swing trade which should tolerate a moderate retrace - am I a scalper or a swing trader? I think according to the YTC PAT, I'm half-way between. Need to think on this one.
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
First time - ? I compared 3 FX feeds for spot with 6E feed from DTN, PFG and Rithmic - on every feed across the board, to my naked eye - I found more spikes and tails on both tick charts and time charts for 6E. Rather than spot. To make it more interesting, I found more "bodies" on candles on spot, less whippy action to boot. I am as surprised as you are. I cannot ignore this data.
Going from 5M charts to 240M charts, including ticks and range bars. I have to try this. Epecially since I don't have too much reliance on any indicator. As I construct my market context, all it takes for me to execute is certain patterns and EW cyle waves. Spot is proving cleaner, for now. Additionally, the trillion dollar market is spot, not 6E. Spot has gotten a bad rep (for very good reason). But trading for me is a very visual business, and I must go where my eyes take me. We'll see how time proves or disproves this.
Good luck. Personally I hate the idea of a network of various trading engines compared to a central exchange, but I am also suspect of the non-RTH liquidity of 6E compared to the totally 24hour nature of spot.
PS it would be great to come up with some sort of quality index for data - I compared IQ, IB & MBT, before settling with IB. I also have stacks of historical forex data going back to 2003 for mechanical systems development, so quality is really important there too if I want my backtests to be anything like real time results for a system.
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
Since it was basically a difficult day, basically stuck in a range and not really respecting the S/R, I could have used some brain power which just wasn't there today. I should have taken a kip for an hour before I traded but the issue of having enough time in my day has been bugging me so I thought I'd push through the fatigue. Performance really suffered.
Didn't follow my procedures and made some poor decisions, overtrading when in hindsight I probably wouldn't have made any trades at all. That was partly due to watching the 1min chart way too much instead of switching back to the 3min chart after the break-out. And that in turn was partly due to my imagination, thinking that the break-outs around 1.2900 were just stalling and stalling for ever.
I was aware that I was missing something in the big picture but I still not sure I recognise it - at least not without hindsight.
I should have taken the unending 'stalls' after the break-outs as a sign not to trade but instead I just got whipsawed, if I wasn't getting bashed by my own stupid errors.
Sometimes it can work OK if I take the price action after a break-out as a stall when it's not, treating it as some sort of super-sized stall, but when it happens more than once or twice, no no - bad news.
Good practice for exits I guess, but I could have used random entries.
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
Another rotten day. Just like yesterday. Didn't make many trades but traded like a 3 year old child.
Totally emotional. I wanted to trade, so I did, regardless of the fact that I'd told myself not to trade unless the market started to show more useful interaction at S/R levels.
Didn't even bother on some of the trades to do due process and go through my procedures. Not sure why I failed to manage myself. It was stupid. Not even the excuse that I had yesterday of fatigue.
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
Another rotten day. Just like yesterday. Didn't make many trades but traded like a 3 year old child.
Totally emotional. I wanted to trade, so I did, regardless of the fact that I'd told myself not to trade unless the market started to show more useful interaction at S/R levels.
Didn't even bother on some of the trades to do due process and go through my procedures. Not sure why I failed to manage myself. It was stupid. Not even the excuse that I had yesterday of fatigue.
Realise now it's patience that I was lacking. Impatience combined with distraction was a killer. I was distracted Thursday and Friday, I have to admit it - trying to do other stuff and trade - even just minor stuff that requires a bit of concentration. Don't do it, dumbo. Had a bit too much ego thinking I can easily spare some brain cells for something else when I'm meant to be trading.
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.