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Hey @snax ! I’m not 100% sure why he didn’t make bar-60 a reasonable short either. My guess is that there is a possibility of a 2 legged trap (2 legs down in a trading range)? I don’t like that sell because it makes my risk too much... and the 2 legged trap thing of course . But again, not sure.
I’d give your post one extra thanks if possible because of all the extra work you put into it. It’s got a little something for everyone!
Also...I like the Scrabble style avatar! It’s flat and geometric like modern art. Is it against good etiquette to ask about an avatar? If so, my apologies for the breach!
1) Ahh ok, I was thinking in terms of the "Marubozu"(?) or "shaved"-bar as Brooks calls it being a strong indicator of the downward trend, but like everything in trading its all context and I'm definitely missing some context. I thought since the bar was also following those 3 doji bars (but each had HH and HL) that might factor in as well. It would be a decent candidate but if you think of it like you said, as a "2-legged trap" then it makes more sense but I need to research 2-legged traps, I really like investigating his ideas, I'm always finding out about some new detail.
2) Hahaha, ask away @Salao!! It is a "glider" from Conway's Game of Life. At the risk of sounding cheesy, the idea for me is that a few simple "rules" or in my case "keys" since I don't really have rules, can set in motion results that are interesting and unanticipated and hopefully surpassing my expectations in a positive manner. And there is the whole "evolution" aspect which means something to me because I'm hoping to improve from this process. That's the TL;DR, I would be happy to discuss more at any time, I find it pretty fascinating! I'm also into computer science and that is where I originally found out about it.
P.S. This response feels to me like I'm being a bit lazy in my explanation due to being pretty tired, so believe me, I'm happy to discuss more, especially with a pint or two
<stickies>
REMEMBER: The skewed nature of trading. Good habits incrementally build your account block by block. Recklessness and going in "Hold my beer"-style will only take a fraction of that work to wipe out all those gains. There is no time for recklessness. Stay patient and stick to your plan.
Two Keys:
1 - Have multiple reasons to take a trade.
2 - Once in a trade, let it run its course, appropriate for the current market conditions.
***
Didn't get a chance to do much prep this morning due to work conflicts, but I saw the bulls come stompin' after the POTUS tweet.
Very strong impulse and didn't feel the right spot to jump in. I decided to wait for a decent pullback and had to work anyway.
At lunch my pullback to the midpoint of the initial impulse came to fruition, but it felt like a shadow of its potential glory. I did see good price-action to support my decision or so I thought.
@12:16PM CST - I open a long position in 1 /MESU9 contract because:
1) good pinbar @12:05PM
2) the following bar was a decent bull trend bar with a little bit of a wick that I attributed to lunch-time doldrums. This became my signal bar marked with the 'v'.
3) I've rarely seen a day where the /ES is up this much and has a drastic selloff unless news has changed
4) impulse-pullback-to-mid is a strategy I've just wanted to try.
None of these elements really stands on their own individually but I felt that the confluence of all these elements meant something.
I was correct, but I wanted to be smart and take a decent profit in case I was wrong because this really moved in slow-motion.
@1:02PM - I close out for a +10-tick gain. It took another 20+ mins for price to come back up and surpass this level so sure holding would have proven more beneficial but I can only gain control of my impatience with a lot of practice and I am watching the behavior to learn how it slowly went on to rise past the level where I closed. I liked this trade.
Cool little stepping-stone price-action turned up a bit later:
What I didn't like:
- Not much, I could have held out for a bigger trade in this slower market, but I will take 10-ticks over waiting for a push that may never come.
Goals for Tomorrow:
- Keep going, focus on my couple of keys, be focused and make good trades.
- Read more.
progress towards challenge goal
$600.00 total profit goal. +16-tick Daily goal.
$142.75 achieved.
$0.00 current drawdown
48 trades of 60 entered.
I need (457.25/12) = $38.10 per trade ~ +31-ticks per trade to hit my target.
current expectancy for cycle is 1.9576 ticks
<stickies>
REMEMBER: The skewed nature of trading. Good habits incrementally build your account block by block. Recklessness and going in "Hold my beer"-style will only take a fraction of that work to wipe out all those gains. There is no time for recklessness. Stay patient and stick to your plan.
Two Keys:
1 - Have multiple reasons to take a trade.
2 - Once in a trade, let it run its course, appropriate for the current market conditions.
***
@8:00AM CST - Looking at OAIR again today. FOMC announcement at 2:00PM ET/1:00PM CST.
OB through 10:30AM - ~*~*~ Barbed Wire Everywhere ~*~*~
I realized while staring at the market this morning that I have had a small bit of success recently in controlling some of the adverse behaviors which led to my deficit when I first started live trading earlier this year. Those behaviors are:
- Jumping in front of a driving trend and attempting to fade it.
- Chasing a trend/momentum.
- Revenge Trading.
- Rage Trading.
- Impulsive trades (of the "opportunity is everywhere just jump in"-type).
- Trading "Barbed Wire" (for the most part).
Then "FOMC MADNESS" started:
TL;DR my stops were a bit too narrow for the volatility.
What i liked:
- Traded aggressively, not the worst entries, but under-estimated the volatility a bit.
What I didn't like:
- In a self-sabotaging move, I jumped in as a "FOMC NOVICE" after the announcement and got beat up. My second trade got me back to within 1 tick of even for the day, but I couldn't just let it be, I jumped back in for another -16-tick banger.
- I got lucky yesterday with a trade that was right for the wrong reasons, I have subsequently learned about reading "Buying/Selling Delta", which unfortunately my current platform doesn't have. In yesterday's trade I was playing an "implulse-pullback-to-mid". It was slightly profitable but it was like slow-motion and I exited early with a 10-tick gain. the reason being the selling delta was higher (learned this through a video) which led to a continuation of the bearish trend after the potus/powell tweet/announcement. I've been operating under the rule that I don't need expensive platforms and data yet because there is more than enough improvement to be made with a basic platform. Once I feel I've "outgrown" the platform and I need a wider repertoire of tools and better data I am open to moving on up.
Goals for Tomorrow:
- Patiently get back to profitability for June
progress towards challenge goal
$600.00 total profit goal. +16-tick Daily goal.
$121.50 achieved.
-$21.25 current drawdown
51 trades of 60 entered.
I need (478.50/9) = $53.16 per trade ~ +43-ticks per trade to hit my target.
current expectancy for cycle is 1.5099 ticks
<stickies>
REMEMBER: The skewed nature of trading. Good habits incrementally build your account block by block. Recklessness and going in "Hold my beer"-style will only take a fraction of that work to wipe out all those gains. There is no time for recklessness. Stay patient and stick to your plan.
Two Keys:
1 - Have multiple reasons to take a trade.
2 - Once in a trade, let it run its course, appropriate for the current market conditions.
***
Well I made an attempt at a late rally to reach my goal for the cycle and came up short
Could have been worse, the loss in the /ES stung a little but honestly I'm trading the micros so much these days so they've really taken most of the pain away.
I'm pretty wiped out so this journal entry is a bit short.
What i liked:
- hung in there and battled, but over-traded and over-extended myself
What I didn't like:
- Over-traded. Forgot my keys and tried to push too aggressively towards profitability.
- Allowed myself to get frustrated.
- I still haven't really figured out stop-loss depth.
Goals for Tomorrow:
- Patiently get back to basics
- Begin planning for next cycle.
progress towards challenge goal
$600.00 total profit goal. +16-tick Daily goal.
$109.00 achieved.
-$33.75 current drawdown
57 trades of 60 entered.
I need (491.00/3) = $163.67 per trade ~ +131-ticks per trade to hit my target.
current expectancy for cycle is 1.1764 ticks
<stickies>
REMEMBER: The skewed nature of trading. Good habits incrementally build your account block by block. Recklessness and going in "Hold my beer"-style will only take a fraction of that work to wipe out all those gains. There is no time for recklessness. Stay patient and stick to your plan.
Two Keys:
1 - Have multiple reasons to take a trade.
2 - Once in a trade, let it run its course, appropriate for the current market conditions.
***
Today I finished cycle-000004 and over-all it was my best cycle. I made a good first couple trades today and for my 60th and last trade of cycle-000004 I handed the keys over to my ego and fell flat on my face
Instead of resetting and ending on a high note if/when a smart /MES trading opportunity presented itself, I got hyper-aggressive instead and went for the /ES Gatling-Gun first chance I could find to try and blast my way to glory
I jumped into a tricky price-action setup that:
1) I probably would have avoided had I been patient (I don't really understand the setup that I jumped into, the outside bar just looked "good enough" but I am not yet holding much actionable knowledge about outside bars (or their surrounding contextual elements) in my mind yet).
2) and not gotten greedy (I wanted to slam home an exclamation-point with a big trade in /ESU9 to finish the cycle because I'm too aggressive, I let my ego step in when I had a chance for probably my best day of live-trading so far).
I need to stop, breathe, and reset after each and every trade.
I will now have 3 keys (and no more than 3 keys at any one time) for next cycle, they will be:
Three Keys:
1 - Have multiple reasons to take a trade.
2 - Once in a trade, let it run its course, appropriate for the current market conditions.
3 - After exiting a trade, stop, breathe, and reset before engaging the market again.
Scene of the Battle!
See above for reference:
Trade 1: At ~10:00AM CST, went long on bar 19 @2959.50 (not sure that bar 18 was the best signal bar) and set a 3-point target which I hit, closing out for a +12-tick gain.
Trade 2: At 10:05 I stayed with the momentum of the prior bull trend bar and opened another long position on bar 20 at 1-tick above the close of bar 19 @2963.00. This time did not set a target and managed my protective-stop up instead, trapping a 14-tick gain before being closed out.
Trade 3: Opened a long position on bar 26, one tick above the close of bar 25. This setup was not so good as I had no real experience with this setup to justify it as I explained above. I thought we had a bull flag setting up with the potential to drive the trend up to all time highs and got a little crazy. the outside bar seemed to come after some buying push underneath bar 24, but I forgot about the resistance shown as bar 20 had closed out. Just NOT a focused, smart trade. It was /ES too so that stung a little.
EDIT: I think bar 20 could be considered some variant of a "failed breakout" and therefore I should have expected to look to go short. I don't think "failed breakout" is the correct term here since we already had many points to the uptrend, maybe "exhaustion" would be a better term, looking forward to my copies of "trends" and "trading ranges" to arrive hopefully tomorrow.
Obviously skewed to the losing side due to the /ESU9 stop-out.
What i liked:
- traded really well beginning of the day (first two trades), I think my plan and keys were really coming together, I felt like I was sharp.
What I didn't like:
- Not going to get to where I want to be over-night -- way too aggressive.
- Not my time yet, just to re-iterate, I shouldn't be jumping back into the big contracts yet.
You got that right @Zachary Standley! Thank you for calling that out! I'm staying away from the ES for now.
Next cycle I am only allowing myself MES and MNQ, everything else is off-limits.
I don't really know yet what level of consistency I'll need to see before I try again so I'm not even going to worry about it, for now the micros are my world
Just be careful that you’re not too results focussed, it’s an easy trap to fall into. Every winning trade is great, every loser a terrible mistake. Perhaps you were lucky on the first two and unlucky on the third? The question is, are you confident in your analysis? I didn’t see strong reasoning for the trades in your descriptions or details of where your stops and targets were.