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Thanks for cheering up, guys! Profitable trading according to plan is indeed boring But here is a phrase I heard from someone: "Treat your trading as a hobby and it will pay like a hobby". So trading is not a hobby for me, I have my hobbies elsewhere. I have a lot of them, in fact.
Market is dozy today. Even if gold was almost 300 ticks up on a day the move happened early, before 1 AM CST when you aren't allowed to trade gold in a Combine, and I don't like to be trading in these hours anyways, even if it is 8 AM for me. So far only 1 trade today, +10 ticks and market did not offered much more and reversed in 2 minutes. I stalked one setup for a while as breaking the support could trigger stop liquidation, but the sellers did not have enough force to push through and market went up again. I am trading 4 cars today as per my plan so I am +380 net on the day so far. I hope to do another good trade or two but likely only after Comex open. Even if I stay with this one today only I am fine with it. I will get few large wins eventually and they will make my Combine target, this is the plan.
Frustrating day today. Low volatility, but it's Friday so I should walk away after my first win of 10 ticks. But but but I thought I could work something there. Only to get next trade at BE slipped -1 tick on stop, wrong trade - I did put channel on chart earlier but as time passed channel disappeared and this trade happened to be right into the channel line. I was assuming it broke out already marginally. Next trade was a more legitimate, but I put stop market entry too far away to get past wicks hoping on stop run move. It did move and even printed some 4-5 ticks or profit but quickly moved back and stalled. I reduced the risk to -6 ticks hoping on continuation but it stopped me out and went down. Bad thing is it held me for almost 2 minutes and thus badly affected my statistics. I need to get finally some good runners to fix both balance and metrics. Another attempt, break even plus one tick. And a final trade for +4 ticks.
I had some potential trades and some trades I should have been in but I was unable to relax mentally and should have called a day after the first break even. All market on the chart below.
Marginally profitable day, but impacted metrics in a bad way. Low volatility and volume, Friday. You name it. There were few potentials but no any single really good trade. All chop and mincing.
Today my lengthy loss screwed up my holding time metrics. I have a plan for next week, just a very slight tweak to my trading plan to capitalize on single long candles, since I can't see really much classic scale-in opportunities. I am going to use trailing stop always from now on and will not screw with them manually. It will of course give an odd loser or two but that should be offset by not missing some nice winners. Also I will try scale-in based not on close of a next candle but on setting up next entry with stop market order 15-20 ticks apart from the original entry, with a trailing stop, a strong candle can take me in several times and by the time next entry is filled previous one should be protected. I know T4 trailing stop works in a funny way but it is more less rapid so it should be secure enough. In any case I have a good enough cushion built (4500 original Max DD and 2300 profits) to start going for the targeted profit and I need these scale-ins and need to capitalize on the moves.
I am back to the markets for another week at practicing my method, patience and planning with Combine. I had a great weekend, spent Sunday at racetrack riding my Yamaha R1 race bike, all went just well and I enjoyed it alot.
So far Monday wasn't any better than last Friday. I did 4 trades, all pretty much break evens more or less. I missed one upthrust based on stop cluster liquidation above daily high and a swing high from last week, but with mismatched highs in the area I wanted some pressure to build up first there before setting a trap. All slow price action a huge move came and took my plans for a good setup out to the window. I tried another move and it could be moderately successful if I would let it work. It was slow. My plan with 10 ticks trailing stop is good for fast market but not for todays market. I will bite a bullet and set my stop to 20 ticks trailing, due to the fact I trade with the flow and sentiment and rarely my trades are wrong on direction, just that a fast momentum maybe not materializing and it takes time. So I will try another trade management approach allowing more space for rotations and leaning on the flow direction and sentiment. My entry signals are the same: either big candle in a right direction with small wick or a strong level of S/R with anticipated stop cluster behind it.
I am trading today with 4 contracts like on Friday since I did not lose on Friday to reduce me to 3 cars nor won any meaningful to qualify for 5 cars.
So far I am +360 on day day less commissions on 4 trades, i.e. +280
Ok, I had got a big headache after the post so I took my bycicle and took advantage of summer weather we are having, spent 2 hours on the road and had a meal at village road cafe. Came back, saw I average quality setup missed. But got into another one based on stop run. Did ok. At the end +680 on the day, less 100 commissions, 580. Improved my winner holding time. No losers today.