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Broker: Advantage, Trading Technologies, OptionsCity, IQ Feed
Trading: CL, NG
Posts: 1,038 since Jul 2010
Thanks Given: 1,713
Thanks Received: 3,863
I split it there as it was where the market changed its perception of value. The F period represented the breakout and gave me a clear level to define my risk. A stop below that tells me something has again changed and that perception is no longer valid. It also gave me a defined ledge between the two balance areas.
Once I had the new thought on my side (from Ben), that yesterday was a trend day, and then price came back into ETH VWAP, I thought, ok one more trade... targeted the prior high, and doubled my take for the day. Happy Memorial Day to me! Ben, hope it hits 95+.
Gary, I herniated 2 discs in 1999 and it completely transformed my life. (Among other things, I wouldn't now be a trader if it weren't for that event.) Having a strong academic background, I have done a great deal of research in this area, read well over a thousand pages of medical papers, and have consulted specialists and been to conferences in many countries. Only today I had a two-hour conversation with a danish research scientist who may be transforming our thinking about back pain.
I would strongly recommend that you do not rush into surgery, whatever a local surgeon (or even two) may suggest. I would also strongly recommend that you do the kind of independent work on this that you are willing to do on the markets.
When I found a video from this nut saying he was going to sue Big Mike Trading, that we are all freemasons, etc, I tried to leave a post supporting futures.io (formerly BMT). But he would not allow it.
So, I decided to just say hello.
"SuperFreak" would have been a better compliment, but I'll take what he offered. Pirates can't always be choosy.
Going over my numbers some tonight. I had a very fantastic week on the bottom line, but I see something that I think needs improvement. Overtrading. And the reason I say I "think" it does, is I am not completely sure.
I had one day I was up and gave it back, yes that overtrading is bad. But there are some days where my net P&L will ride between slightly up or slightly down, and as long as I don't max down I will take another opportunity. Or, I will have a loss, scalp some back or even scalp to a profit, and then go in again. And as long as I don't hit max down, and, as long as I take time to understand the day, in my head I see that as purely risk management combined with tenacity.
When I reach a certain point up I will usually quit. It is only when I am not there that I tend to trade more. Scalp more actually. But if I obey risk rules, and am not taking 200 trades, and if scalping is something that helps me remain profitable... Is it bad?
I am starting something new, which is where I will be in a trade, take some off, it pulls back I will add back in, it goes my direction I will take some off. Other times I might get out and back in again, but to me I still consider it the same trade. So from that standpoint I never know how to read the reported trade quantity anymore. I guess I could get in there and analyze every single enrty and exit and adjust the exported numbers, but I am not sure why. It is not like I don't spend enough time on trading as it is.
I reviewed my week two different ways. On the percentage of range it looks beautiful. That was my focus this week. But when I dig into the daily profit factor, I had two days that were not so pretty. One was up, the other down, but both showed a lot of indecision on my part, which lead to my question of overtrading.
I don't think of it in real time. I see it as I have between 9am and 2pm to find some edge. I initially "learned" to trade by paying for a scalping education, and I saw by year two that if I had a loss I could get back to breakeven by taking 2-3 ticks in ES. I can't begin to guess how many days I would be down a few hundred and then get back to breakeven $25 to $37.50 at a time. I consider that just another "edge", but am not sure that I should.
Confidence is a huge ingredient in trading succesfully. Being told by nearly everyone I know that trading succesfully over time is a myth has been a hard thing to overcome. And learning to trade on my own for the most part, I learned some things to survive that may "work" but still be "wrong".
So, even if I am making money, does that insure long term success? At previous points in every traders journey, the answer has been "no", but to continue we need to believe that "this time is different". (Another phrase that is said with sarcasm by the majority of the world.)
I read recently about Jim Dalton being told (quasi quote) "don't mess this guy up". Whatever he was doing worked, right or wrong. And there was some wisdom in what Jim was advised to do. Believing it works is a bigger part of trading than I think is given credit. How else do you stay in a trade? Come back from losses? Face uncertainty?
In an eat what you kill environment, priority number one is to eat.
How comes that this PhD with his academy moves to GB right now?
Normally this would be a enrichment to a country - but:
it looks like the FBI made this happen - after the 1'001st complaint about freemasons
GFIs1
Now the European FBI adequates has to deal with
Congrats on a great week .. Looks like you had a super week.
A couple of questions for you...
You mentioned that you have some past experience in scalping. Can you identify which of the trades you took were related to that technique? Also, what part of your trades or profits do you attribute to your MP methodology and which part to your scalping methodology? Is your scalping methodology a part of your overall trading plan or just something you are experimenting with in addition to MP(I recognize MP is just a framework and not a trading plan).
I mention these questions because I am dealing with these very same issues. I am a PA trader and have high interest in MP to help me identify key market structure, key market zones, market bias, and longer range(intraday) targets. I have a very complete scalping PA plan and am trying to integrate it with what I have learned from you, @Private Banker, and @greenr through all of your fantastic posts. Thanks for all of your insights and I appreciate any insight you may have into scalping integration into MP.