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I'll put it another way. 60% LT is the not have to worry level. In the 50-55% area, the greater the dependency on higher contract levels for the net gains to provide desirable levels of income. That's the razor's edge where there can be no mental / emotional breakdowns for very long.
I won't belabor it. Everyone has to find out for themselves. I am going by personal experience here. I immediately stopped within the first year of trading (coming up on 9 yrs ago) when I came across that page by Tharp. It might be interesting though (for me) to construct a spreadsheet to simulate it.
I think you are right, as far as hard $/math goes. Some type of all-in, all-out approach with a good edge provides the best results. I could care less though. I think we all have to find what works for us, as emotional beings, not machines trading edges. Personally, if I can get into a position, and scale out some of it to help manage risk, it puts me at ease and allows me to truly relax and remain objective for the remainder of the position trade. Plus I can scale in and out around that position trade.
Here's how I did that on my last trade today in ES:
Sure..... you could sit there and armchair-quarterback my personal trading.... that I should have bought all-in at 1540 and exited all out at 1549... but I won't even entertain that. I embrace the uncertainty, and my scale outs will limit my upside, but they will also limit my downside when I don't get the continued trend move such as I got today. I'm good with the pros and the cons of it.
Ok, done for today. Got some other things to take care of.
All ES trading today.
First trade was looking for the long term wedge, which we gapped down below, to hold price as we pulled back to it. (Although this was in conflict to my view that the massive gap down was an overreaction to news from such a small country. Come on, this type of action is not going to spread to "real" countries.) I made it "difficult" for the market to get to my stop, since it had to breach the wedge, a resistance level, and the overnight highs. Anyways, took a full 2pt stop loss.
Second Trade By now we've broken back into the wedge, above the o/n highs, and that resistance level. So I get long on the first pullback. No real sellers in sight. Scaled out of 2/6 for +2pts, add the 2 lots back on a pullback, scale them back off again, scale out a 2nd 2-lots at the next normal rotation up for +3.25pts, and took the remainder off at a hard target (which was the RTH lows from yesterday) for +5.5pts. Now I'm flat.
Third Trade The market soared through the hard target I had for the last exit (49.00) for a 6.25pt rotation, vs the normal 3pt rotations I was trading before... but we got a nice pullback to that 49 level, and I put on a full position. At this point (time of day, as well as satisfied with the profits) I had no real risk appetite. I took off 4/6 lots for +1pt. The last two lots were trailed out for -0.5pts.
That was it for me today. I glanced over at CL a few times, and was glad not to be a part of it.
I'm having to manually update my trade analyzer data, while I get my account funded at S5. Yuck!
Notice how much better my returns are compared to the amount of risk/heat I take for these ES results vs what I was doing in CL. It's quite significant.
I think it certainly has a merit, in a sence Van Tarp is talking about long term trading with scaling out based on gradual profit targets, like every 100 ticks or so. However if first scalping scale out used for example to finance your runner/swing portion, it certainly has a merit for a system that focuses on swinging. I think it makes no sense to talk about percentages without knowing what average MFE would be and target R:R. If you use this approach and your target is 10 times the risk and you can pull it off at least 2 times out of 10, then you will be in the money.
Thanks for your journal!
PS Van Tarp also mentions with regards to scalpers, I guess little or none scalpers use scaling out, because they target high win percentage and scalping entries bear little or no sense with regards to general sentiment and taking swing trades out of them is just gambling price will go your way and won't get you stopped before it does - very low odds bet. On opposite if you are taking a swing trade with larger stop and scale out on scalping porting to finance you runner, it does make sense.
Just to be clear, your "points per contract" view is not quite what it says it is--you are keeping a running total here of the average points made or loss per contract, per trade, right? Unless every trade has the same size, then the data will not be accurate (maybe it does, but one that does not will skew the data). For example, you can have Trade A be a 2 lot and make 2 handles per contract (for 4 total). Then you can have a 5 lot Trade B where you make 3 handles per contract (for 15 total). Your chart seems it would show a running average of 2.5, whereas in fact your average is 19/7 which is 2.71. Maybe I'm misinterpreting your data, but your chart type only works for ES points, not points per contract if I'm understanding what you're showing.
You're spot on Josh. Here's my rationale for why I have things the way they are.
- My plain ole' P/L numbers and equity chart will show me everything resulting from any fluctuations in size.
- My stats here, as they are calculated, show me a pure trading performance. This is in terms of.... ok.... Mr. Trader... what did you take from the market in terms of base units that the market fluctuates in... regardless of what size you traded... or anything else. It's a pure trader performance metric that can be 100% translateable to any other trader. Adjusting for other things, such as position size, muddies the waters and makes it impossible for us to look at each other's stats and measure pure performance.
This is absolutely my "soap box" issue for trading. I've preached it from day one here, but I'm certainly a minority. Most people use the method that you made 100 ticks if you traded a 100 lot and made a tick. See how that is totally crap metric of true performance? P/L can show that information, ticks should be a totally seperate, pure, animal.
First trade was a short on the breakdown of the opening swing. Stopped for -1.5
Next trade was a re-entry short once we double topped at the ONH. Once we came down to the lower end of the opening swing range, and made the feeble attempt up, it looked pretty tasty. Took a third off at +3 purely because it's the size of a normal rotation. A third off near the ONL and yesterday's VPOC for +4.25. The remainder off shortly thereafter since we'd traded into my main target of yesterday's VPOC and I expected some chop in the area.