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Hey guys, had a busy weekend but finally getting around to posting some trades.
One thing I learned is this: Analyzing your trades every day is very important. I used to do this every day for my ES daytrading and that's when I became profitable. I then stopped doing it (cause I was profitable) and guess what? I hit a losing streak! I think it's very important, and if you do it might as well post it here to share with everyone else.
First image is my performance summary. It may not be impressive to you but it's the first time I finish above -$500 so I was very happy!
Second is a list of my trades.
Then there are charts of all my trades from 9am to noon.
ENTRIES:
I think entries are very straightforward, my only problem is I'm often getting a late entry. I'm on sim so the fills should be instanteous. Trading real money I'm worried that i might get an even worse fill. Even just 1-2 ticks can make a huge difference (getting stopped out or not, having a breakeven vs. loosing trading, etc.). Is it possible to anticipate the entry? Program it with a stop order? How can I get a better entry?
EXITS:
My biggest problem is exits. If I'm patient, I get stopped out. if I take 3-4 ticks, price goes on past 10 ticks. Overall it seems like I got out too soon more often than too late so I think I must be more patient. I'm curious if there are any guidelines here. Price almost always pulls back and I'm even considering waiting for a pullback to enter. Any ideas?
I took 20 trades. One only needs 3-4 per day to be successful. My idea is to find a way to pick out 3-4 trades with a high probabilty of winning. Any ideas?
I'm not using a higher timeframe (11range) chart yet. So far I haven't figured out how & what to use. In my automated testing I haven't found anything that helps results. We're really trading on very minute moves here so I'm not sure it really matters what the 11range moving average is. For example one of my trades was a counter trend that came after a big move down. price then went up 10 ticks. This could have been filtered out by a longer moving average.
Thanks in advance for any and all feedback. If you're practicing this method then I highly recommend doing an analysis and sharing it for the benefit of everyone. I'll be doing it as much as I can.
In a quick review I saw that you took a trade at 9:59. One minute before news..... Also, on Friday, Fed Chairman spoke at 10:00 am and its time to go to the beach and not to trade.
Did not see the MM lines on your charts. (price respect the lines very nicely)
If the color of the stepma does not change you may be able to stay in the trade and have the stepma line as a trailing stop. (open under/above)
4 range chart and the CL product if for VERY fast trading style.
Put your chart on 11 range and see the trades you took and did not take and see if there was any different with the end results.
1.
Looking at the charts, I noticed that there are many times that trades would have worked out well if you had waited until the consolidation dots stopped plotting before entering your trade. That is something you might want to consider.
2. You may want to consider changing your stepma tenth pip setting from 7 to 8. If you are using Stepma jog as an entry trigger, you may find that the 8 setting keeps the line flat during quick moves up and down. You may also want to look at 9 or 10 setting.
Did any of your indicators tell you to exit? If so, are these the right indicators to be using? Should you even use indicators at all?
If not (indicators did not say exit), did you exit in accordance with your trading plan and your money management plan, or did you exit by the seat of your pants based on your gut feeling/emotion?
I think the answers to almost everything can be covered by answering those questions and learning from it.
For example, exiting based on gut/emotion is a no no. Don't do it. If you do it, you are stupid. Find a way to not do it, or stop trading now and give me all your money.
Exiting based on money management and trading plan, regardless of any indicators, is acceptable. The rule would be to follow your plan. Measure yourself on how well you followed the plan, not by on the net profit of your trades. After some time, you'll be able to prove/disprove your plan as a good one or bad one based on actual profitability of it.
Exiting based on indicators might possibly make sense, but is an extremely dangerous game. Indicators are the devil to most inexperienced traders. They are trickery and illusion. You would do well not to use them at all until you are a profitable trader, then you can start adding them to further refine profits. Now if you are more disciplined than 95% of your peers, you can establish clear guidelines in your trading plan that are not necessarily about money management but instead about indicator values (rising, falling, over 80, below 20, that stuff). Then follow them. But for most people this won't work because they can't do it or they've chosen the wrong type of indicators. But mainly because they can't do it.
I agree about indicators. in my ES trading I only use one price-based indicator (sine wave). This is one reason I was interested in this CL strategy because I believed that one couldn't be successful trading off indicators but people were having success with it so I wanted to check it out.
I also agree about the importance of a trading plan. I have and use one for my ES trading. I see two ways to make a trading plan:
- play around with an idea to get an idea of what works and doesn't work and then when you get something that looks like it'll work, write out the rules and then test them and update them as necessary.
- write out a trading plan, trade it, and update it as necessary
I prefer the first method, which can be done with manual backtesting or trading real time on sim. It gets you familiar with everything before getting into the formal phase. It sounds like you prefer the second method. It would be interesting to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each method (in another thread) as I'm interested in the idea of writing the plan first.
In my experience, exits are the most difficult part of a system and are often the least discussed. People are quick to point out where one could get a good entry but then never mention where would be the best place to get out. That's ok, I like to find the best exit but it's through trial and error.
You are correct, exits are more important than entries. Afterall, only the exit will control the outcome of the entire trade, yet no one discusses them just like no one discusses money management. I believe the reasons for this are self-evident: people consumed by indicators are also consumed by entries (earlier, faster, quicker) and these same people make up the majority.
The majority of people trading lose money. And it is becoming more clear to me that regardless of how hard one tries to help or teach fellow traders how to not lose money, it is like most things in life where experience is the only real way to learn.
If you start a new thread to specifically discuss these theories, I look forward to it.