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It is not going to come quickly, just as if you were 400 pounds and wanted to get down to 175. One day at a time, learn something each day.
Keep in mind, as complex as it can get, there are only two choices; up, or down. All of the things you may study will give some insight as to where and when and how far, but ultimately there is no complete guide book, you have to fill in the blanks for yourself, and that takes dedication and experience.
If you are wanting to get your "degree" in trading, there are many courses you can choose, but you have to get your required hours in, with a good balanced education in several key areas. Some I would recommend;
1) Wave Structure
2) Value Structure
3) Volume
4) Risk vs Reward
5) Probability
6) Psychology
I'm going to give you some very simple examples, feel free to make up your own versions.
In simulation, assuming you will trade crude, set an ATM stop to 15 ticks and profit target to 15 ticks. Practice making entries until your percenatge wins rises to at least 65%.
In simulation, practice changing your definition of "confirmation". Let the prior day's action determine the direection you are looking to trade in, and then wait for a pullback. Or, find an area where a market has pushed too far and enter on a break in the unexpected direction. Learn from what works for you. Your mind will interpret the "correct" points in a way that may need to be altered.
Markets often turn at anticipated areas. Learn to expect support or resistance (Market Profile, Wave Structure, Stop Placement). become very familiar with volume, what it looks like where the turns occur. A volume ladder or a 1m volume chart will work. I also use Time & Sales to gauge the speed of the tape.
And it will need to be, for some time. Relax, be open to it.
@Patrick S, here's a chart of Thursday's CL trade. Can you use a drawing tool and highlight what you visually think are the most fair prices ("most fair" meaning, where you think the bulk, however you want to define it, of trading occurred)?
Secondly, from your charts I normally see, you are very zoomed in. Try taking a 10 minute chart, use the crude pit session only (get rid of everything but 9am to 2:30pm), and zoom out to where you can see the last 12 trading days, and use an aspect ratio that is not too squashed. Put a vertical line between the sessions so each day is visible. Post that chart if you will.
@GaryD, tell me if you want me to discuss this offline, this is your turf.
@Patrick S, take advantage of this. Succesful traders are not always here for you to ride on. We cannot be, because ego plays a big role in success.
@josh, I had a thread about me, this one is about whatever, but there is reason it is on futures.io (formerly BMT). If this thread could be anything, why not a breeding ground?
I am not a profitable trader, so my comments don't mean very much, but this is what I'm slowly (very, very slowly) coming to realize. There are no magic bar patterns to enter off of, there are only areas to enter with risk management. Better traders can use volume, order flow, the foot print chart, or whatever as a secondary confirmation, but they only do that at an area that they want to put a trade on in.
My background is in the hard sciences and engineering, so I'm a very black and white kind of cat. I love to calculate and quantify. This stuff is the exact opposite. It's very difficult for me, because I, like you, want an entry pattern. A go/no go signal. Something to take the uncertainty away. The frustration level is very high because it all looks so easy in hind sight.
I feel fortunate that these guys (GaryD, Josh, GreenR, Private Banker, and others) post their trades, comment from time to time on the trades I post, and are willing to answer questions.
This was still written on my chart from Thursday. I did not add these lines or words b4 I posted this.
Yes @josh the screen shots I show in my journal of the trades I took are scrunched up. However.... I do take a top down approach every morning and draw my lines in on the charts. For instance.
60 min view. Lines are drawn based on high volume s/r.
Another 60m view
5min view
@greenr trade Friday morning. This was I was looking at.
I see your point though.. Yeah I draw in those lines but I think I still lose that perspective when I am only looking at a 3hour stretch.
I need to do a better job of looking at the bigger picture.
If you always do what you have always done you will always get what you have always gotten.
Celebrate because you executed your edge. Not because you won.
I was a real estate developer and used spreadsheets for every decision I made. A sample condo deal is attached, just to show what I was used to working with in terms of planning and management.
I cannot tell you how many hours I spent running backtests, exporting to Excel, organizing data... I have literally hundreds of spreadsheets saved in my computer. I grabbed a handful and zip foldered here for fun. And that is about all they were. They did help me as a trader, but only because I did them enough to be over it.
We try to "engineer" a profit. We want a black and white world, something tangible to hang onto. Trading does not offer that, exactly. What it does offer is manageable, to some degree, but not necessarily by spreadsheets of concrete rules.
Getting your mind comfortable with the concept of uncertanity, learning to trust yourself because you have proven to yourself that you should, accepting the fact that you will never know what the outcome will be, not measuring the success in dollars but in how comfortable you feel with it... those are deceptively difficult tasks.
Some wise trader once said to me, "There are no magic bar patterns to enter off of, there are only areas to enter with risk management. Better traders can use volume, order flow, the foot print chart, or whatever as a secondary confirmation, but they only do that at an area that they want to put a trade on in."
That sounds worse today than when I wrote it. You'll have to excuse my rough edges. I'd work on them, but with my schedule of work and trading, something has to give.
"... not always here for you to ride on." - Really meaning, here was one that was willing to take the time to look over your trades and charts and give advice. Ride that! See if the advice he gives makes sense to you, emulate his trades in simulation and see if your numbers improve.
"We cannot be, because ego plays a big role in success." - Or rather, the detachment from ego. It is hard to try to tell someone else what they should and should not do very often, because most of the time we don't know either. But we learn not to be bothered so much by that fact. In fact, I think it is critical that we accept that we know nothing about the future outcome, and act accordingly.