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Regarding your second example, show me a trader who picks trades that get to 3R 45% of the time and I'll show you someone making gobs of money. Easier said than done. In addition, it is just not reality to have 45% get to 3R and no others to 1R or 2R. You'll have the most get to 1R, fewer get to 2R and fewer still get to 3R. The higher the multiple of R the fewer times price will reach it over a large sampling of trades. I encourage you to track your trading the way I have described and you'll see what I mean.
The rules are: track price until either, it reaches your initial stop, or there is an unreasonably large pull back that you know you wouldn't hold through. Record how far price gets relative to your initial stop. Do this for your next 100 trades.
Yes, that is how it usually goes in trading. But I do not see personally any added value in tracking 1R/2R/3R for me. The same thing can be done by tracking your Avg. Trade/Winner/Loser, and MFE. Just tracking how often it gets to 1R does not answer how good the system is. What do you do when it reaches 1R? Do you close the trade? Do you move SL to BE? Results of the system can be simplified into combination of RRR and %Win. By tracking how often you get to 1R, you answer one part of equation. You are missing the second one. What you actually take down from the trade?
What I'm trying to warn you about: Targeting 70% as your success rate in reaching 1R, can send you dark path of looking for holy grail. You can waste time trying to tweak your signals, overthinking it all.
From my experience, it is easier to handle proper SL trailing, and letting winners run to your targets, milking every trade as much as possible. And also working on your consistency, and rules following gets you better reward on time spent. This is the message of my post.
No trades today. Very difficult trading environment across the board. Spotted a few opportunities in real time and hindsight but they didn’t go far, except for the one CL opp early. No Spectacular opportunities. New routine working well. Stepping away during slow times and getting chores done early. Feel much more productive. Attached are the opps seen today on the big charts.
Today was a reminder that it is perfectly ok to wait, sometimes for days, in anticipation of more favorable trading conditions. There really was no reason to take a trade this week until 6:59 this morning in oil. After that there were several good opportunities across the instruments that, in one day's trading, would have made a great month. Just need to take the trades.
No trades today. Still observing and getting feel back. Attached is the best opportunity that I saw today. It was in gold which has been a nice mover lately. There were others but this one had a good look and feel. Would have been good for 30+ ticks.
Monthly Recap October 2015
Live Trades: 3 losers
Month’s P/L: -256.85
Starting balance for the Month: $3448.54
Withdrawals for the month: $0
Deposits for the month: $0
Ending balance for the month: $3191.69
Beginning account balance from first live trade on 3/10/15: $3000.00
Total Withdrawals: $0
Total Deposits: $0
Total Gains/losses from 3/10/15: $191.96
Only took 3 live trades for the month. Most of my focus was on continued testing of trading more frequently in sim based on the rules utilized over the past year. My goal was to determine if I could trade more often so that a positive win/loss/RRR expectation would have a chance to work itself out on a daily basis, resulting in mostly positive days. I also felt that I was passing on too many good trades based on the marker work done in the spring and early summer. I wanted to prove whether or not this was true. The results of this testing has made it apparent that I do not yet have the skills and/or tools to trade with more frequency successfully. Too many trades went nowhere while too many good ones were missed. It is obvious that I need to find a better way to qualify trade opportunities for their potential and probability of success.
The first step in this process is to recognize that at this time there really aren’t that many high probability opportunities based on my rules, on the scale I am trading, to warrant taking very many trades on most days. Therefore I have to either trade less often or develop rules that open up more opportunities. Over the past week I set aside any kind of trading to just observe the markets, in an effort to regain confidence by waiting for spectacular trade opportunities. Spectacular trades look like other opportunities but with subtle twists: increased activity and energy, open field, new territory, following important news, etc. They have a different feel. This observation time definitely helped reboot my systems. I need to realize that it is really not necessary to trade frequently. Several well-placed trades per week can be more than enough to get the job done. A trader who can average $1677 per month trading single lots, can easily turn that into $100k or $200k trading 5 or 10 lots. That’s really all it takes. It seems so simple!
As for opening up more opportunities I will continue to study traders like @lancelottrader who has developed a style that creates more opportunity in an instrument on any given day. I have learned a lot from him on how to take advantage or short term moves that do not necessary show up with my methodology, but nonetheless result in nice gains in the aggregate. Thank you Lance for your contributions!
Lastly, I need to get back to live trading. There is nothing like the the prospect of losing or making real money to force me to be patient. So, for the next month I will:
-be once again locked and loaded live.
-exercise extreme patience waiting for the spectacular trades.
-be brave when spectacular opportunities arise, fully accepting the risk, with the confidence that I will be profitable in the long run.
-forget about the trades that I miss or pass that take off without me, not letting regret cloud my judgement.
-keep in mind that it only takes a very small number of targeted trades every month to make great money. Wait for them.
Weekly Summary 11/2/15 to 11/6/15
Live Trades: 0
Week’s P/L: $0
Starting balance for the week: $3191.69
Withdrawals for the week: $0
Deposits for the week: $0
Ending balance for the week: $3191.69
Beginning account balance from first live trade on 3/10/15: $3000.00
Total Withdrawals: $0
Total Deposits: $0
Total Gains/losses from 3/10/15: $191.69
No trades this week. I've stepped back from trading or posting to take a deep breath and just observe. Confidence is coming back so I expect to be trading and posting more soon. I have returned to placing markers in spots that I believe represent spectacular trades. These have been working out nicely. Switching between sim and live was really difficult psychologically. I realize the need to be committed to one or the other. Placing markers is a good alternative. Hyper focused on quality as well, with the idea that a few key trades per month is all that is needed to make a big difference. Quantity can come later as the account grows and skills improve. I will be focused on the following for the next week:
Weekly Summary 11/9/15 to 11/13/15
Live Trades: 0
Week’s P/L: $0
Starting balance for the week: $3191.69
Withdrawals for the week: $0
Deposits for the week: $0
Ending balance for the week: $3191.69
Beginning account balance from first live trade on 3/10/15: $3000.00
Total Withdrawals: $0
Total Deposits: $0
Total Gains/losses from 3/10/15: $191.69
Posting mostly for bookkeeping purposes. Hopefully live trading will resume soon so I have something to talk about. Still locked and loaded for live. Focused on catching trend resumptions earlier by looking at entering on the second leg of two leg pullbacks using the smaller tick chart. Examples attached