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Neither inventive nor helpful nor funny what you said. (wink, wink)
But for the sake of Truth, here is my Real (non substance induced) paranoia: Look at that image; if i or anybody wanted to aim for it would not be so precise. And you are telling me its not Manipulated?
Of course, we know squizes, fake rallies, fake breakouts, etc... But this is something else. It is like being watched, by a precise AI bot, that knows what thousands small participators are doing at the same time, and calculates what's the most optimal way to squeeze all of them, to deprive them opportunity to get out, or to alltogether capitulate them: all within a frame of certain time. I even averaged this so my price became 22- yet 22 was barely touched- the Bot had to tend to other needs as well, even though it "took care" of me. Of course, retail Brokers must work with in partnership with those Big House AI's bots to disclose accounts, saldo, positions- all realtime. Now that, if it is true- should be Regulated to become Illegal, if it is not already.
Listen: I was trading Forex- had the same feeling of Being Watched (please make no unsavory jokes of that silly expression- not because it hurts me, but dilutes attention from the Subject- or maybe that's what you want- if you are a retail broker or somebody that works for them). Then, few years later, there was a Law suit against the Vagrants Or Bandits (something like that was called their internal Group made of International Traders. Banks paid Billions in damages, I got some reimbursement as well. If it is Money, people will find a way around. It's almost given. But I want to see those same traders without the fat accounts or IA Bots or the Life Data from retail brokers. I do not mind even the AI bots or fat accounts; the disclosure of our miniscule accounts without retail knowledge or permission is what Bothers me. If not illegal already, should be Regulated ASAP.
There is no way statistically to achieve such pinpoint accuracy any other way, but by being watched, realtime calculated and optimized as to what and how to inflict optimal damage.
I wrote letter to our political Reps, to find out what is permissible and what not.
This is Dog-eat-dog game, but the ground game and context must be Transparent.
Let the strong or smart or lucky or tough or nimble dog win. But do not poison your gloves or terrain on which i step, while boxing against me, without prior disclosure. Why hide then?
Is this too much to ask?
I also want to thank [most of the members] for giving their [honest] opinion and view!
You know who you are!
What a coincidence ... here is my execution for that same period:
Since I sold almost exactly when you bought, what does it mean? Am I manipulating you? Well, not directly, but yes, my goal was to take the money (by selling to you) from people like you who bought there.
Why did I sell there at 27 when you bought?
I've lived on the other side of the squeeze, and I know what pain feels like. I've figuratively given my blood, sweat, and tears to the market through experience, so it's unmistakable. I could feel it, and thought it was time to sell there.
I know that late shorts who missed the initial push down have sold lower and can't take a 10 point squeeze, and they are bailing.
I know that hopeful bottom pickers who should have bought when it was hard to do so but didn't, are feeling FOMO right about there and they are certain that it will break back above 30, and they are positioning for it. On such a strong down day, it's not advisable to buy so far off the low while the shorts are still active.
I suggest you turn your attention away from politicians with your complaints, and look inward at the real enemy -- your ego. You are so certain that the market is "manipulated" that you can't bear the thought that you are just the sucker at the time who bought the high. It happens to all of us. Get over it.
If you look at my buys at 3017, you'll see that I also got washed out at 3013 like you did. If I had been you, I would have immediately written a letter to my local politicians. But instead, I hypothesized that the market was still a buy there, and I bought, and was positive on that sequence.
To get better, you need to ask yourself: "why did I buy there?" and "why did I sell there?" The key is that Y O U bought, and Y O U sold. Every time you look for the boogeyman when you have a losing trade, it's that much more time you could instead be focusing on the real problem -- your ego.
I have had the experience, even in sim, of buying at the exact top, and selling at the exact bottom, and relatively often. Since it was sim, there was no order sent anywhere, no one knew about my trade (since it only existed on my computer) and no one was picking off my trade. There wasn't a trade, just a trader, myself, buying at the point of maximum hope, optimism and fear of missing out. Along with a whole bunch of other traders acting on the exact same motivations, which is part of why it was a top: the buyers were all bought up, but there were plenty of sellers left.
This is somewhat like swimming toward the sharks. And it works perfectly when I am on sim and there is no one involved but me. Me reading the chart and the action wrong, as well as succumbing to my emotional trading urges. Funny, when I stopped trading that way, I stopped trading at the tops (and the lows, too) any more. (Well, not to give myself too much credit, not as much as before. )
I don't mean to make light of your experience, your loss and your pain. I have been there in live trading too, and the money lost is truly gone and it hurts, emotionally and often financially. I have lost money I simply couldn't afford to lose, but it was lost and I couldn't understand why. But I would have lost in sim too, trading the same way, for the same reasons, and have.
Who is manipulating the markets? Me, and you, and all the other traders who pile on at the same time, for the same reasons, and leave the market with no buyers left and so with only one way to go -- down. It's an everyday occurrence and is what separates traders into winners and losers. Naturally, we're sometimes one and sometimes the other. Some of us (and this has included me) find we're in the wrong group too often, and decide the world is against us. (I don't seem to end up in the right group as often, somehow. But I think it really has something to do with me, as a wild guess. )
I don't know if I have convinced you of anything, but I did want to tell you about my near-identical experiences I have had while in sim, where no one but me knew what my "trade" was, and it didn't make any difference. Now, if a person wanted to insist anyway that the sharks were out, they could easily say that the sharks were getting all the other small traders who were live and who were running along with me, and they didn't need my small contribution to know when it was time to attack.
But I will tell you that if you can look at the trades and see what you could have legitimately done differently, for example the way @josh was thinking, suddenly and amazingly the sharks will stop coming for you. There are no sharks.
(By the way, I see from your example that you were closed on a margin call, after a long, long losing period, so I infer you did not have a stop, or moved it, or otherwise were not willing to just take the loss when it was small and when your trade wasn't working out. I also see that your forced closeout was at a low, which you find as evidence that the market was being manipulated because "They" knew how much capital was in your account, and were gunning for you and you alone, and moved the market just to get your account, I suppose. No. You (and I) are just not all that important. And you should use a stop next time, too. You would still have most of the money you lost and could trade again.)
I know you said earlier that you had been doing well and then it changed, and you think that it's the sharks who are waiting for you. No one is successful all the time, so look for something that has changed in what you are doing. It's there somewhere. Believe me, every single trader in the world who has been at this very long has had this experience, and some have pulled out because they found whatever it was, or perhaps sometimes because they got lucky and things changed back to what they had or were doing before. But looking for the cause in someone who is getting information on you and trading against you is not going to help you.
Remember that they can get me while I'm on sim and there's nothing happening out there at all. That's because they aren't there, it's all me, all the time.
Bob.
When one door closes, another opens.
-- Cervantes, Don Quixote
Good point. When you're margin called on a 14 handle ES loss, if means you're pretty well near the max allowable margin for your account; it's trading about 1 ES per $1000. Way too much leverage.
By the way @lamass, I'd like to share a post I made on this site 9 years ago, that shows how much I was frustrated by exactly the same thing as you were. I didn't know how to trade, but thought I did, I'm sure. I was pissed and blamed "them" too. It was on sim, but I assure you that I had exponentially more frustrating moments later, with real money, with much more loss of control, plenty of tears shed, and all the messy psychological stuff that comes with it. Note the passive-aggressive, self-pity, woe-is-me, boo hoo "not for me" attitude.
I post this to demonstrate how we've all been there before. And I can assure you that I haven't had my last "sell the bottom" or "buy the top" ... it will happen again, and it won't be fun, but it's part of the game.
As a great trader said, "attitude is everything." If you read my post above, you can't imagine that a winning trader would ever talk that way. The attitude has to change first.
If one was happy with their trading results then they would have no reservations with showing their results to others. In this case I'd be satisfied with just stats or an equity curve.
Technical edge is self destructing. The market discovers the inefficiency and arbitrages it away. So it's not uncommon for a retail trader to think they've discovered a technical edge only to see it destroyed later. The most common trick they'll play on you is taking on excessive risk. Risking a stop much farther than the target. This can show positive results over long periods of time, but in practice will eventually "blow up".
Which is why when I encounter such claims I'll always ask for results. The real trades either don't exist or don't show what the trader thinks they do.
From his post you quoted (#20), it is clear that he won't be posting his results for your satisfaction.
The fact Big Mike thanked his post saying that he isn't selling anything and won't be posting his results shows that Mike and the moderator's are quite happy also.
I haven't seen any forum rule that requires members to post their trading results and prove themselves if or whenever anybody else demands they do so. Have you?
(I'm obviously not a moderator in any way shape or form, just bored of seeing people who even suggests they are making a profit being met with demands to prove it as if any value or interest in what they have said can only be judged as worthy or worthless against that yardstick. Moderators please delete this post if it breaks a forum rule)
You do not win as a trader, you just get to play again the next day. If that game doesn’t appeal to you then you should not trade. Gary Norden
It's probably best to go back to the thread's topic anyway, which is not whether trading based on technical analysis works or not but whether one's feeling of being 'watched' by other market players can be considered reasonable or not.
Not much to add to "is the Market watching", other than after making a trade that becomes a loss if I study it later, Ill see where I faulted. I can't remember studying a loser trade and not seeing how it was me that was the one who made the mistake (based of of Price Action and a 21 EMA).
What I really wanted to say is this has been a very insightful post, love hearing how other traders are thinking.
Well I guess the point here is how would you know the difference? Market participants are constantly seeking inefficiencies in the market to arbitrage out of the market. How could you know if it's just a meta shift or if someone was specifically watching and trading against you? The end market behavior would be the same. What worked before would suddenly not work very well.
We only know that it's being caused by meta shifts because we know how the algorithms work, and we know that technical analysis is generally self defeating reducing the expectancy of edges over time as more participants discover them.
Yeah if you buy the exact top as shown in the chart you posted OP, then your loss is 100% your fault as you held the drawdown to the max. Nobody is looking for your 1 contract trade to snipe off. There are some sniper/sniffer algos that will target large amounts of liquidity once they become available and sitting on the limit order book. That type of algo only trades when visible liquidity is available.
If you have a losing streak, it means you're getting cold and need to be patient on your entries. A lot of other people have already said to simply wait for where you'd place your stop and then enter there. I will also add, trade small in the micros and trade at where your stop would have been, and be able to scale in a few more contracts, as that will create some "wiggle" room. It's really easy to say "let the market come to you" but try to practice it as much as possible.
We feel like someone is "watching" because we are out of sync with the market. Anytime I feel like this, I know to slow down or stop trading and look at my levels from another angle.
Don't trade Mini size on a small account, you'll shoot yourself in the foot doing that.