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Trying to choose my biggest weakness was difficult because I have so many. I selected losing control of losers, I think.
Lately, however, I have been doing better on that score. Basically, I run a few different ATM strategies and when one gets hit and I am in the trade,
I will watch carefully and close my stop in relation to what I feel the price action is doing. I do have the fear of losing money (managing trading account) so I will manually tighten the stop if the trade looks to be losing momentum. The balance I try to achieve is not tighten to quickly/too much that you get stopped out on a down/up spike. If the trade is going in my direction, and getting close to my target, I will move the target away somewhat. However, I get the stop ready to close me out if it takes a dive. At that point, I usually will be at breakeven or better with the stop.
This works fairly well, but I realize I need better discipline on a more consistent basis.
Just for background, I am still trading in SIM on NinjaTrader. I'm still learning the platform, a bit of a slow process. I will be buying a lifetime license this week as I am committed to doing this. I've done well in the past with equities and options, but this futures area is quite the beast. Frankly, I've attempted various difficult endeavors in my life, but this is, for me, the most challenging. The challenge is such that I feel the
knowledge necessary to be successful is akin to trying to find the bottom of a bottomless pit! I am studying like never before and this brings me to something I want to say: This forum and this thread in particular, is, in a word, OUTSTANDING! The wealth of knowledge here is astounding and, even more than that, is the unselfish attitude of the members to willingly share their VAST store of knowledge and experience. It blows me away. For me, this thread is a Godsend, in that it shows me there are many out there like me who are having doubts and fears about what this Futures trading thing is all about. I do not feel so all alone!!!
Thanks everybody!!
I've done that too, mostly before I automated my risk management. My problem now is not moving stops. It's misreading price action on the 5 Minute ES bars and jumping out too early. I have PT's at 1 ATR and 2 ATR, and I have trouble staying with the trade that long, especially in sideways markets. I tend to think in ticks, so I still tend to exit after 4 to 8 ticks. Not enough to profit properly after the occasional stop out.
Actually it is nice. Blackbird has a "Plan Long" nand Plan Short" feature. When you select it, Blackbird places the PT and SL lines on the chart based on your current trade management strategy. You can adjust these settings and see the P&L and R:R prior to taking the trsde. You can also have the targets move with th e price. It only takes seconds to do. Then when you press the execute button they lock I to place. Of course, you can still adjust the any time after taking the trade, which, if I recall properly, can be an issue for a NinjaTrader ATM.
Nice. I'm not a Ninja guy but I just want that. Lol. I seen FT71 use some software that told you your MFE, MAE, time in trade ect... all realtime. It was awesome. Combine all this... Wow.
I could have said "Yes" to most of these, but "Losers get out of control" wins hands-down.
Taking that loss when it's small is really, really hard. It doesn't help that many times a stop will be hit and then price will just turn around and keep going the way I expected, but without me. The fact that this can and does happen can overwhelm my judgment when it doesn't do that, and I end up with a loss that gets too big. This will usually be after a few "early" stop-outs that convince me I should let the trade have "more room."
I think that taking that big loss, when it comes, outweighs all the times when the stop got me out too soon.
Also, it scrambles my brain, which leads to more lapses of judgment and more losses.
Bob.
When one door closes, another opens.
-- Cervantes, Don Quixote
The two things that lead to me being consistently profitable ON THE SIM (not so much in the live markets yet but im working on it) is never taking a loss greater than what it was when I put the trade on AND if in profit let it go till it hits the PT or I manage my loss. Not that it's easy.
A trade exists as long as there is a buyer and a seller. Your setup is not everyone's setup.
This is clearly Al brooks talk but I think it's a little out of context as he's talking about probabilities not actual trades. And where he IS talking about actual trades he's saying there's no free lunch so if your going to get high probably they, the other side, gets good R/R. Or vice versa.