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Trading: Oh what a tangled web I weave, When I want to take profits in trading
Frequency: Several times daily
Duration: Years
Posts: 1,757 since Nov 2014
Thanks Given: 3,497
Thanks Received: 3,059
Did you consider ETFs like SPY as a proxy for future? It's true that your commission is going to be higher but the educational value is priceless. Much better than trading sim or taking lot less fearful trades in the futures. I was skeptical when Mike suggested Microforex (similar logic) with much less potential for loss/profit but now I see the point.
I did trade ES with a 10k account last year and I know how you feel. Though my account size is 50k now, I am no longer trading ES and instead SPY ETF. I buy 100 shares, all in and then scale out at 25 x 4. Average ES move is 15 points. Even if I end with the worst trade, say 10 points move against me, that's 100 dollars a day. You can easily reduce the size to suit your risk tolerance. I genuinely have 'I don't care' attitude whilst trading now!
Obviously it's only for the beginning period. I have been trading SPY 100 lot for 2 weeks now. Next month, my goal is to increase the size to 200 and then 500 before I move to ES. I think long term success depends on scaling in/out multiple contracts and not 1 or 2 lots as I can clearly see with experienced traders like Mike, Tigertrader here.
I also agree with lancelottrader's view that beginners should focus on just one instrument.
You may very well be right. However, I have spent a considerable amount of time doing both, watching only one instrument and now watching many instruments. Truth be told, I don’t miss noticing many trade opportunities. This is not a boast. It is just that the criteria I use to qualify a trade opportunity, and the time spent in front of the screen makes it very easy to spot a potential set-up at a glance. Therefore, following multiple instruments is really not that hard the way I do it. I get 1 to 7 signals per day on each instrument depending on the volatility, and these signals are distributed throughout the day so that they don’t often overlap (due to the varied markets of the 6 instruments). This is not to say I would take each of these set-ups. The price action around the set-up is the final arbiter of whether to take a trade or not. This is the decision point where I often lose nerve and comfortably retreat so as not to put anything at risk. Yes, there are times when I am distracted and miss a good set-ups. However, for every missed opportunity, there are three others that appear, due to the nature of having more markets.
In addition, every day there are 1-3 instruments that are doing absolutely nothing, so they can be effectively ignored until they wake up. As I am not a fan anymore of trying to catch the first breakout of a snoozing market (been chopped up too many times), I am fine with letting these dogs lie until it’s feeding time. In short, I really enjoy trading multiple markets and feel this is the direction I would like to continue pursuing.
Now, it may very well be that I have not done an adequate job of honing my criteria for entry to increase my odds of success on any given set-up. Maybe I need to come up with a more refined way of determining which set-ups to take and which to pass. This is where the hesitation comes in. You use 2 range charts for entry and obviously have an even finer grained criteria for entry. Maybe that’s a direction I need to look to.
I have two questions:
1) Do you record your whole day or just the time around a trade?
2) Do you have any recordings in your thread of a live trade and what you are looking at in terms of price action in the moments before you click in?
I think I have a very good way of identifying a viable trade opportunity. I would be open to suggestions on how to better refine my decision making process around those opportunities.
Thank you for taking the time to write that. I think I understand now, far better why you look at multiple instruments. We all have our own styles and systems and there is no one "right" way. I was watching a while back three instruments at once..which were Gold, NQ, and CL. I liked these three because when they take off, they can make some big moves. I also have an indicator called tick strike that ticks loudly when order flow is extreme..so it is a great alert. But for me personally, I did better when watching primarily CL.. and then during the 9:30 equity open, also paying attention to NQ. The first hour of a market open is often when some of the best moves occur. So at 9am, that's when Cl is very active.. So between 9 and 9:30, I just watch CL. Then after 9:30 Cl and NQ.
To answer your questions, I do record the whole sessions, but when I review it, I just watch the parts right before and during the trade. One of my rules is I must verbally announce the type of setup I am seeing and I also do a quick verbal checklist of why the trade might be a bad idea. For example, I might say, "I see a double fail pullback setup occurring..if I enter my price will be this..and my stop will be at this. The reason I might not take the trade is too much resistance in the way of a target..market has been choppy and no momentum..etc." So depending on how many adverse conditions are in the way, I decide whether to enter or not. I like to say it out loud because this eliminates spontaneous, impulse trades..and I don't have to guess what I was thinking when I review my recording.
Here is a link to page 21 of my thread . The video from Oct 31st, at the very top of the page, shows the live recordings and explanations of entries.
Hi everyone. I'm new on here, but I thought I would make a post about my Trading style, since I feel it's fairly different than what I usually see out there. I have been trading about 6 years, mostly Forex, but have transitioned to Futures a few …
Thank you for taking your time to offer suggestions.
Just to be clear, my post was not a cry for help. Rather, it was me working through mental issues and documenting this process for posterity. I am fully aware of the precarious position a small account inhabits and I have considered many different options. It is why I have been very careful and deliberate. It doesn’t make for very good reading I am sure, as every day seems to be the same: “No trades”. But, this is how it must be until I have acquired a cushion. I am open to suggestions on how I might trade my current style better.
I have given considerable thought to trading ETFs instead of futures, and have listened to the arguments for and against. I have come to the conclusion that it is not the way for me for a variety of reasons.
A trader with a small account really has three choices: 1) Find a way to reduce the risk per trade. 2) Be ultra-discerning in trade selection. 3) Don’t trade at all. Option three is out.
As to reducing risk per trade, there are two choices that I can think of: Trade a smaller time frame, or trade an instrument that allows for smaller denominations.
As for trading a smaller time frame, I believe, that with experience, one can come up with a viable trading methodology on just about any time frame, as long as size, slippage and commissions do not unduly hamper performance. One man’s noise is another man’s music so to speak. I have developed a trading style on about the smallest time frame that I am comfortable with at this time. Using regular futures instruments this means about $150 risk per trade (15 ticks in oil). Using mini instruments I can get it down to about $75 per trade. On a $3000 account this represents about 2.5% per trade. This is a bit higher than I am comfortable with but it's not horrible.
As for trading an instrument that allows for smaller denominations, there are again two choices that I can think of: trading stocks (ETFs) or trading micro forex. As for ETFs like SPY, a trader with a $3000 account who wants to reduce risk to 1% per trade could only risk $30 per trade, and they would be subject to the trade frequency limitations. Even if they took profits at an average of 2R a large chunk would be taken out in higher commissions. The commissions would also amplify losses. In addition, I do not buy the argument that a larger time frames means a better win rate. One can make just as bad of choices on longer times frames as shorter. So, just because a trader is swing trading doesn’t mean they should risk more per trade. In conclusion, I have spent thousands of hours of screen time developing my method. There would be little additional educational value in a switch to swing trading, and it would just be a needless detour at this time (though I will have to consider it when size gets to be an issue, praise that day!).
This leaves micro forex. Not a bad alternative, but I tried it once and was very uncomfortable with the whole spread thing on smaller time frames. Also, the volume tools I use do not apply as well. Unfortunately this foray into forex cost me about $7500 when PFG went under.
So that’s it, I’m stuck with trading futures intraday and being ultra-discerning in my trade selection. I am comfortable with this at this time.
You appear to enter a lot of trades with limit orders as its coming backwards, where I tend to let it find its full retracement and start heading back. You also have a lot more confidence in your trading than I do at this point. Hopefully I can get there soon.
Other than that, our trading styles and how we think about the trading business are pretty similar.
The following are the areas of focus for the week of 4/20/15 to 4/24/15:
-Write out goals and affirmations before the market open.
-Identify strong trends early and make an attempt to hop on board.
-Watch NQ at the open for the fake out move and look for a trade in the opposite direction.
-Watch for TL Breakout Failures (TL BO fail) for good trade opportunities.
-Watch for retests of the Opening Swing for trade opportunities.
-Watch for Cumulative Delta events
-Exercise patience. There are plenty of opportunities each week to reach goals.
No trades. Marker activity was excellent with 6 winners, 3 losers and 8 break even.
Really should have taken a couple of shots on NQ. Price action was pretty obvious. CL wasn’t bad either, giving a few good opps. 6E, ZN, NG, and GC were pretty quiet today.
Areas of focus scorecard:
-Wrote out goals and affirmations
-Successfully identified the NQ trend but failed to attempt to hop on board. Must develop the will power to change this tendency.
-I thought the NQ fake out might trap longs until 6:39 when it retested the opening swing and took off to the upside. This was really the best point to jump on board.
-Identified many TLBO failures. It is slowly becoming second nature.
-I still forget occasionally about the retests of the opening swing. They often happen well into the day and I get complacent. Need to be vigilant here. Not every instrument has a significant opening swing. CL, NG and NQ have the best action at the open. On the other instruments I’ll use 5:30 news as the beginning of the opening swing, even though technically they open at 5:20.
-Once again remained very patient and engaged. Marked many areas in real time with good success.
Trading: Oh what a tangled web I weave, When I want to take profits in trading
Frequency: Several times daily
Duration: Years
Posts: 1,757 since Nov 2014
Thanks Given: 3,497
Thanks Received: 3,059
It sounds like you thoroughly evaluated several options including ETF, microForex & bigger time frame trading in the past. I agree with you that the key to consistency and eventual success is being comfortable with our own methodology and I am glad that you feel that way now. I wish you good luck.
Please have a look at my journal too and I appreciate any feedback you may have. I am still trying to find my comfort zone and leaning towards Market Profile and Auction Market theory.
After reading some of your journal I have to walk back the bit I said about high commissions. I had no idea about the low commission structure at IB for stock trading. That makes it a lot more attractive to trade SPY and QQQ. I'm still going to stick with what I am doing but I can certainly see that as a viable option.
As for MP/VP I find the extended profiles the most useful for finding turning/stopping points.
Hi Tap,
I liked your observations in the cumulative delta thread. I have only been able to get a read on CDV using CL and found that for smaller timeframes that I can only use a short look back for accumulation or distribution.
In your chart 2015-04-21_1426 - Ruffcut's library the basing in CDV shows consistent absorption on those pullbacks. I also use on longer 2400 tick chart but does not seem to show as many opportunities. I also use both updown tick and bid ask CDV which help define who's trying to get in and with how much force.
Peter Davies of Jigsaw said he uses CDV on the ES. After researching the net I did not come up with other intuitive explanations. Lesson 8 - Practical Use Of [AUTOLINK]Cumulative Delta[/AUTOLINK] Charts - Jigsaw Trading.
Today's vig 2015-04-21_1447 - Ruffcut's library using CDV premarket.
As of late the Tuesday's in CL have been chopfest. Many here can't imagine trading without other charts time, tick, long and short. If anything I like with a 15 minute chart is to keep me out of trying to trade thru a mess. Today between open and noon est. the 15 minute is pins and needles, stems and stalks. Hopefully your one chart can give you the heads up on whether to get whipsawed or make a batch of hashbrowns and eggs. Sometimes, when I eat well I trade better from walking away. Just sayin. Trade well.
JD