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Geez, it's almost 11pm and I haven't gotten any studying in today. Watched some of Al Brooks price action video in the webinars section. He is a genius. I love him.
Today my 11+ long FINALLY hit it's profit target (which I had moved waaaay down). I really wanted out of that trade. I made almost $500 profit, I know it is not real money. It is hard because everytime I make a good trade, I think to myself, this could be growing a live account, but with this last trade I know it wouldn't have been possible. Theres no way I could sit on a trade for 3-5 days.
"Judge yourself not by the outcome, but by your process."
made a $5 trade this morning!! assuming I'm using a $500 account this is really awesome. I haven't made any bad trades in a while (stops haven't been hit) although came really close this time. I would have made more, but I was trying to move my stop closer up (was going long) and I swear it was 10 ticks away from the average price and got filled!! omg... somehow I lost $3.19 on that one. Most of my errors are difficulty using/understanding why things happen. Makes no sense to me because that one sold right away, but the average price was hovering 1 tick above my stop and it wasn't selling. I'm thinking I have too much technical knowledge, and not enough basic understanding. Reminds me of when I first started playing poker, and didn't know what "suicide kings" or "pocket rockets" or "dead man's hand" were etc.
Anyways my strategy was the Turtle strategy, new 20 day high, go long (most people would go short). It worked! It was also many other factors, I looked at the chart, it seemed like a "bull day" and plenty of bulls were buying driving the price up, also price was above the EMA20, so seemed like a good idea. Once the price had started dipping below the EMA20 and I thought about selling, but also saw a 2 or 3 leg pattern, and that gave me confidence to stick with the trade and not reverse.
"Judge yourself not by the outcome, but by your process."
The Turtle thing is a trend-following strategy; it will do well in trending markets, but markets don't only trend. In rangy markets and shorter trends it will have trouble.
So it is always good to try to decide on whether markets are ranging or trending. In this case, the other stuff you were looking at was part of that, at least in deciding to stay with a trending trade, and it looks like it was helpful.
So, congrats on a working trade, and, more importantly, on trying out different things to improve your own assessment of the market. No two people will ever trade alike, at least not successfully. Your own way is something you have to find.
Bob.
When one door closes, another opens.
-- Cervantes, Don Quixote
Ok yes, but isn't that our one and total goal to trade with the trend? I'm not advocating the turtle strategy (for many reasons I can see why it is not consistent and doesn't work just look at their P/L numbers).
"Judge yourself not by the outcome, but by your process."
Sure, but then the question is what is "the" trend.
There are long ones and short ones. Plus, the market is sometimes trending and sometimes moving just in short spurts that reverse quickly. So you have the difference between trading a trend and trading in a range.
If the day (or week or month or whatever) is simply not trending, you will get chopped to pieces if you only use methods that work for longer trends. The Turtle method, if I remember, says that you buy when price exceeds the range of a certain period of time, or something like that. That's great, if it keeps on going, but not so great otherwise.
Trend trading is when you get on board and hold; range trading is when you look for price to reverse as it reaches what has been the top or bottom of the range. There are both types of price action.
So sure, if you identify a trend and it really is one, that's good. But if the market is ranging in the timeframe you are looking at, you need to identify that also, and either trade it differently or wait for a trend.
If you only trade one way, and if you apply it to all market conditions without distinction, you may find that it doesn't work out that well.
Lots of journals and webinars here and elsewhere grapple with this; I would read more and try out ideas to see what works for you.
Bob.
When one door closes, another opens.
-- Cervantes, Don Quixote
Today I made $50 dollars in M6E 2 contracts, and $25 in M6B 1 contract. The 2 contracts was purely by accident, should have been 1. I set this up really quickly before leaving for work today. When I came home, these were the totals after I flattened everything. My strategy? I was testing out a new indicator thingy, and it said to go long. I probably would have sat there watching the screen for a while before deciding what to do. Also, I got lucky.
/BEGIN RANT
I happened to be in the right place at the right time. I went long as a test, then I changed a diaper, got my baby girls clothes on for day care and when I came back the market was shooting upward. Then I got dressed and the market was still goin up. It just kept going up and up and up. Makes me wonder what is going on in the world that causes it to skyrocket like that. Now I am testing a new indicator, but I mostly dislike them. I think most indicators just are full of crap. I don't need an indicator to tell me something is overbought or oversold, and I don't care about volume really. I have been very fond of EMA for a few weeks now, but it's mostly just for confirmation. This new one looks promising, it combines 3 different EMA's to spot a trend. The old one I used this morning was a simple MACD crossover, it was pretty amazing, but while I was at work I kept thinking, what if I didn't have this indicator I'd be lost?? So I will try to keep it simple and if I can't write or at least understand the full workings of an indicator I won't use it. If I find one I like I will reverse engineer it to find out what makes it tick. Other than that I will just use the EMA and look for legs and keep following the 5 min charts. I really want al brooks new books. watched another webinar from him last night and it was incredibly good. The concepts have really opened up my mind to a new state of being. I just curse myself for not having my notepad/journal with me. I should have been taking notes. Thank god the slides for his powerpoint presentation were available for download. I used to hate the thought that big institutional computers were trading huge volumes, but now I like the idea because it provides liquidity. I really don't mind the thought of automation at all anymore. I don't think a computer could calculate as much as a human brain can, and it would be way to many variables to program. I learned C++ 15 years ago, I guess now it's C#. I will see about learning it later, to preoccupied with charts right now.
/END RANT
"Judge yourself not by the outcome, but by your process."