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Mixed feelings about today. The result was good and most of the trading was good but a few of my mistakes are bothering me as I review my session.
Trade Analysis:
Trade 1:
-Gapped down and moved lower from the open, trading sideways for the first 45 minutes. I felt that the market was oversold and needed to move higher before legging down to new lows.
-As soon as we broke the Open(high of day), my hypothesis for a move higher seemed to gain strength. It was then that I decided to enter on the first pullback.
-Took only 2 cents of heat. (Nailed the entry accuracy)
-We double topped and then sold off some which did have me concerned. When we came back up to test these highs I took 1/3 off and tightened up my stop to eliminate risk.
-I then took another 1/3 off at my typical 1st target.
-I failed to note the overnight swing high which price violently rejected off of. Had I noted that level I would have been more likely to trail my last 1/3 aggressively.
-Last 1/3 taken off trailing the previous swing.
Price traded lower but did not exceed the low of day. Then traded up to retrace approx 60% of the previous swing. I passed on this trade because I felt that I would be shorting directly into lows that had held all morning. Market did not care about these lows and shot straight through them. We broke the previous long term swing low (Easy to see on a daily chart) and shot down violently. I believed we had another leg down in the tank and wanted to be short.
Trade 2:
-To enter where I usually would, my stop would have been very large.
-I zoomed in to a smaller time frame and entered based off of that instead.
-Stop was taken out by one cent and then I watched price drop efficiently to my target. OH WELL! Serves me right for deviating from the plan!
Trade 3:
-Entry-wise this was the same reasoning as trade 1.
-Captured reasonably close to the entire swing.
Results:
2 wins
1 loss
+1.5R
Additional Notes:
Felt that I did not hesitate pulling the trigger today. Pleased with the two trades that met my conditions. Vexed by trade 2 - it will never be fun getting stopped out right before the anticipated move but it is just part of the business I need to accept. The more accurate my analysis, the less frequently it will happen.
is the "entry" chart. As such there are no "levels" displayed. Just the final "trigger" before I'll trade the ES.
Just pointing out divergences, to see how they line up with whatever you had on SPY today BUT of course I chopped off the time on the horizontal axis.
Thank you for sharing, divergences would have worked very well yesterday for getting in at the bottom and out at the top. I’m sure combining divergence with areas of interest increases the accuracy. What indicator are you using and is it open-source?
Yes, I was trying to suggest a confirming rationale that could be used as a trigger when price is at a level thought to be important. That chart shows Klinger Volume Oscillator. I am certain that someone from the forum made a NT version for me.
Again unsolicited: I believe you will benefit if you expand your time frame. It is fine to have a "target" but IMO one of the important keys is to let winners run.
One of the very difficult things for me to learn was that I do not have to be on every trade anymore. As a market maker that is part of the game, to be on every trade, to get the volume transactions on your ledger. We can be selective now and TRY to take only the best trades, the ones we think have legs.
The first bullish divergence didn’t line up with any level I had drawn. The bearish divergence at 10:30 EST was right at the overnight swing high. And the second bullish divergence around 11 EST I also did not have marked.
Nothing for me today. Saw one potential trade but believed that the trade "didn't have legs." I was correct. Trade was a winner albeit a small one. Not worth taking.
Trade 1
This was an aggressive entry, with a somewhat lower probability of success. Trade initially moved against me and then in my favor. Failed to achieve my first target so I tightened my stop up and was taken out for a 1/2R loss. Price moved higher and would have jumped right through my original stop. This was good trade management as I saved myself 1/2R.
Trade 2
This was my second attempt at fading the rally. This trade setup had a much higher probability of success and because we had moved higher from my first attempt, I recognized that we had farther to fall. This is a trade setup that has "legs!"
-Entered with a 1/2 position because I had cold feet after the first trade. Bad!
-Price immediately moved in my favor and I added up to an equivalent full position on the next pullback while simultaneously tightening my stop to my first entry.
-Price moved lackadaisically to my first target where I was thankful to lock in some profits. I further tightened my stop to my second entry at this point.
-My third target was the halfway back of the day. (50%) This happened to be where both the Daily Open and VWAP both were as well. This confluence had me feeling fairly confident that price would not move much lower if at all.
-Closed my position. It was past my trading time for the day so I closed the screen instead of looking for a long.
Results:
1 win
1 loss
+1.38 R
What I did well:
-Analysis
-Entered positions without hesitation
-Did not cut my winner short but did cut my loser quickly.
What I could do better:
-Enter with full positions always.
-Only take setups with high probabilities. Better to miss a trade than take a loser.
Total Wins: 29 (45%) Total Losses: 27 (42%) Total Break-Evens: 8 (13%)
Avg Win/Avg Loss: 1.23 Expectancy: 13.35R/100 trades Max DD: 10.8R Total Return: 4.73R (.21R/Day - .07R/Trade)
Thoughts:
-First profitable month! Woo hoo! Still a lot of work to do.
-Win rate for the month sucked because the first two weeks were subpar performance. Win rate from 5.20 thru now has been 50% to a loss rate of 33% (17% break-even rate). I like those stats much more and intend on retaining and improving on those stats in the month of June.
-Too many break-even trades that should have been winners. This is a result of managing trades too aggressively and not allowing any breathing room. of the 8 break-even trades, 6 would have been winners. These odds are all I need to see to remind me not to choke out my trades in the future!
-While these results do produce a positive expectancy, the margin for error is thin and I would like to improve that number considerably.
Course of Action for Next Month:
-Decrease trade frequency to focus on trade quality.
-Improve win rate as a function of decreasing trade frequency.
-Improve avg win/avg loss ratio by taking trades that have "legs" and allowing those trades to run their course.
Over this past weekend I thought about my performance in the months of May and have decided to increase my Risk per trade. I plan on gradually increasing my risk each month so long as my performance continues to improve. I also decided to switch over to futures from equities.
I thought about trading Micros but with my broker the commissions are absolutely lethal. 10 contracts of micros is $49.40 round trip while 1 contract e-mini is $6.90 for the same leverage.
The tradeoff is that I can not scale out of positions as I have become accustomed to, nor am I afforded granularity with my entry.
These luxuries are not worth paying 7x as much in commissions.
The plan for now is to continue refining my entry criteria and only taking trades that have "legs." Once I am comfortable with my performance I will take the leap and move from 1 contract up to 2.
OK, Let's Talk about Today!
Entries:
-Annotated on the chart.
-Was also watching NQ and YM to confirm my hypothesis.
-I've begun to research intermarket correlations and divergences. I don't know much but I do know that trades have a higher probability when all the indeces are moving the same direction. Exits:
-50% of Daily swing.
-Did not anticipate price to continue dropping so rapidly. Did not want to be stupidly greedy. Trade was already up more than 3R.
Results:
1 win
+3.9R
Feel quite good about today. I did not manage this trade any differently than I had been managing the SPY trades of half the size. What I have learned about myself as a trader is that I don't care about the money but I do care about winning/losing. This is both good and bad. Hopefully this means I should have no problem scaling up and that trading larger positions should be no different than trading smaller positions.
What I need to think about:
My trade today makes the case for managing by just trailing each swing high. Implementing this method would have yielded 10 more points or a win DOUBLE the size. Of course, today was an unusual day and most of my entries do not result in 10R wins. Trading without the ability to scale out of positions is uncomfortable for me. I have not backtested yet to decide what the "best" trade management technique is for single entry-single exit trades.