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I did not post Friday. I was ready for the weekend. Friday was a good day in that my faults stuck out like a sore thumb. The stuck out so well it was obvious to me what I am doing wrong many times. I feel I learned something on friday. Ended the day with a small loss of $200. Ended the week with profit which is a fairly new experience for me and give me hope that I'm turning this around. Friday gets a F for the first hour of the day and a C+ for the second part of the day.
Today was a decent day for me. I feel I followed what I consider to be more important rules which have to do with the actual set up. Today raises some questions for me.
1. Is it okay to exit a trade early?
2. should the trading plan allow for this kind of discretion? If I give myself the option of exiting early then it opens the door for more erratic behavior.
I took 3 trades for winners with info on the chart. I'm inclined to grade myself a C because I followed the setup rules, but not the exit rules or defined targets. I felt okay with that because the first trade was initiated long below the futures.io (formerly BMT) Midline and price does respect that line. The 2 other trades where shorts and I exited early. I feel I exited early because I did not want to give back any profit, but also because the Bias is up and a short is counter to that. Ultimately the trade would have worked out for a larger winner, but we don't know that in the beginning. By taking profit I exceeded my daily goal. How should this be handled? Any input is appreciated. C for the last two trades.
David
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
Obviously I am not posting daily. I know I should, but I am not getting as much review as in the past, so I have been lax in posting.
3/9 was a good day and I rate myself a B.
3/10 was a set back, but manageable. I grade myself a D. Too many trades and the bad habits come to the surface.
3/11 Much better today and rate myself a A for the first hour. There is a pic of a trade set up I took today with methodology in mind. I took a couple other trades, and I should have been done for the day instead. For that I get a F.
I also posted this pic on the CL Market Profile Thread in the Traders Hideout area.
Here are a couple trades from Friday 3/19. Info on the chart.
By the way, I neglected to mention that I was trading with Ben Brooke on Friday via skype. He was using the MarketDelta footprint chart to read the orderflow at support and resistance. The combination of Market Profile and the footprint for aiding in the entry is a good one.
Okay, I admit to being negligent in posting to my journal. To be completely honest as to why, it's because I was doing terrible. Not because of the losses, but because I had funded my account for the umpteenth time and told myself this was going to be the time that was different. I contacted Mike for some coaching and began the process of writing my plan. I then proceeded to not follow my plan or any rules and instead of admitting it here in my journal, I stopped posting.
Ben B., one of the moderators on the forum has always been very generous with feedback and comments on my journal and in other areas of the forum where I have posted. He has been a great influence on me to improve and do what I need to do to become successful in this business. My plan has been updated to be more simplistic. Simplistic in the sense that I don't have paint bar studies and various indicators on the chart. Auction Market Theory is the basis for my trading and the market profile is the tool for reading the auction. I do have the VWAP on a chart as well as the MarketDelta volume breakdown indicator, but that's about it. I still execute through Ninja, but am in Trial with marketdelta and plan to continue with it. I use Marketdelta for the footprint chart as well as the profile. My plan has been updated to reflect fewer setups and the addition of marketdelta.
I still need to work on the mind, but I think it all starts with following the plan.
I've posted a chart for 3/31 where I took an emotional trade and lost. There are a couple winners on there as well as another loser, but at least they were to plan. One trade today, 4/1 that was per plan and worked out very well. I'm happy with myself for not trading emotionally and the trade gets an A. I am disappointed in myself for chickening out on a trade that was per the plan. It works both ways. One needs to follow the rules to not take bad trades as well as follow the rules to participate in the good trades.
The charts posted above are very good. Are these the only ones you are using though? I'm thinking no, based on the trading plan there are several others. Let me know.
I like the 3-trades a day rule. If you are trading more than 1 lot per target, I suggest cutting it to just 1. Don't focus on net profit right now. Focus on minimizing losses while you prove that you can trade your plan, and that doing so yields the trades you were expecting. Profits can be adjusted later.
I took your first screen shot and marked up what I saw in the red box:
Going from left to right, the far left (bottom) we made a lower low. Uh oh, our uptrend is in danger. Then we made a higher high, ok, there is uncertainty here. Then we made a lower high, ok our uptrend is now really very much in danger, and the final straw was the lower low where it broke down and collpased.
I share this only because I know our two trade styles are very different. For instance, you took a short four bars before my red box, something I would never do with my setup because I would expect the short to fail and a higher low to be made -- until proven otherwise, continuing the up trend.
But everything is subjective. Where do you calculate the HH and HL, LH and LL, what 'strength' etc. All subjective.
You also took a short before this, around 7:40am, that I would not have taken and it obviously worked well for you.
So my question is, are you taking both "with trend" and "counter trend" setups? I know you may find trend subjective, and hard to answer. But I always caution against trading both ways simultaneously, it is so easy to miss the right setup while you are taking a stop on the wrong one, whereas if you focus on being either long or short, but not both, at any given time, I find it clarifies things.
great tradingplan. but i didnīt get the trigger. i have worked a lot with my triggers and entries. for instance my trigger is the close of the range chart bar i trade of. the great thing with the rangebar is that i know where it will close. then i enter with a stop order or a stop limit order -1. the god thing with the stop order is that iīm guarantied the poisition the bad is that i give up a tick since the next range bar opens 1 tick above. this gives me less profit and bigger SL. and that tick adds up if you do the math. using -1 gives me the right price but iīm not guarantied the position. sometimes if orderflow is strong i try to frontrun the close and under some conditions i enter with limit the next bar betting on a pullback to the signalbarīs vpoc. the point here is i have it in my plan so when everything lines up i know what to do. mostly i use the -1 stop. less stress...
so what is your trigger and how do you enter (limit, market...)?
Thanks for commenting. I do use other charts such as a 30 or 60 minute, a daily and a weekly. Those are mainly for seeing the bigger picture as well as areas of support and resistance.
I am only trading 1 lot per target.
Yes, I am taking both with trend and counter trend setups and I question that myself as well. The struggle I have with this is that it depends on the time frame. From what I have seen, some of the best setups via the Auction are going to be a counter trend trade on the time frame that you enter on. Its counter intuitive and makes it difficult to pull the trigger, but from an Auction perspective it does make logical sense to me The more I see it play out the more confidence I will have in taking the trades. The 7:40 trade did work out and on some level I would agree with you about that trade. In actuality I should have been think long somewhere around the 6:50am time frame on the chart you marked up. If I had I wouldn't have been stopped out on the short and most likely I wouldn't have taken the other short that was a winner and counter trend. If I was able to hold the trade long enough I may not have taken the short at 7:40 that worked or the one before your red box. I may have been done for the day. I've attached a chart to show why a long at 6:50 may have been indicated. I've also attached a picture for 4/1 where the same kind of setup occurred that I did not take.
Before I jump to that though i want to comment on the area in the red box. That area and the trade just prior to the box are basically during the so called doldrums. I need to make a decision as to whether or not I trade during that time. I know good opportunities can be missed, but I'm okay with that. At least I think I am. :-) At the time where the market fell hard was post doldrums and I don't know if I would have caught that or not, but if I was sitting out during 9-11 I would have not taken the short that failed.
I don't know if I've addressed your main points. I think you make a good point about trading both long and short, but with ATM it seems that both directions can present itself unless its a strong trend in one direction. At a minimum it would be best to wait for the extremes instead of taking the counter trend intra-day trades in the middle of the range. We never know what will happen, though. For example, a zig zag or gartley pattern will present itself as a change of trend, but in reality it is just a correction in the larger degree trend.
I've also attached another chart with only candles and volume on it. I'm not an expert by any means, but I have studied some VSA and went through the chart for 3/31. I find doing this in real time difficult, but some are very good at it. If one were to take trades based on VSA they could be considered counter trend. I actually saw the long set up on 4/1 on a 5 minute with both MarketDelta and just the candle and volume chart and wussed out on the trade. Ben went long and got a decent scalp out of it, but in reality there is probably more than 10 tics in the trade and there was. It just take big B's to sit through the oscillation.
Sorry to go on so long. I didn't mean to turn this into such a long reply, but I was trying to explain why I'm doing things the way I do.
Fiki gave me a quote out of Stiedlemyer book. I don't have the exact quote, but it goes something like this. Don't take the easy trades, take the difficult trades. The easy trades will most likely be the bad ones and the difficult ones will be the ones that workout great. The difficult trades are the trades at extremes