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Thought I'd catch up, if you recall we had a discusson about some coding a number of months ago - and I took the plunge and taught myself.
I've been following your journal, I trade spot FX too although primarily on the 15 minute frame. I do not know the Lance Beggs method but it look likes PA? I was wondering how well you find this applies to the lower timeframes and thus with tight stops. I noticed you trade 3 min. I am currently reading Al Brooks which looks similar. Have you read Brooks?
Hi, sure I remember. Hope the programming worked-out. Lance Beggs is PA, but a smaller subset of the stuff that Al Brooks teaches. Al Brooks seems to cover everything - which is amazing but it was way too much for me. It was like trying to ride an elephant when all I needed was a skateboard. I'm not sure that's a metaphor that will work it's way into trading parlance.
Sometimes on the 3min chart, I think that my average win of 8 ticks isn't good enough, but that's just greed. As Al Brooks himself says, it doesn't matter if you only make 1 tick profit per trade, as long as you can make it consistently. Consistency is one of my trading goals - my financial goals are comparatively modest.
But it's not easy. In my sim account, my equity plunged while I was beginning the learning, and it's only creeping back up at the slowest pace.
What about you? Do you have a journal?
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
Just started a futures.io (formerly BMT) one in the last week or so (although have been keeping a hand-written one for 18 months or so), I think it's linked via the graph icon in the left hand panel.
An average win of 8 pips on a 3 min chart sounds solid to me. So well done with that. I trade off the 15min and, where I get to my targets, I get 20-30 pips a time. I've been drawn to PA to try to fine tune my entries and exits. I think I've made some progress on understanding the overall market environment and where my set-ups are best suited. But I've a lot of work to do in getting in terms of PA. It's (again) hit me that I've a load more work to do!
Reading your thread looks like some parts of our journey have been similar. I thought that systems trading would be 'the answer' but after 6 months neck deep in code, with some successes and failures mixed in, I realised that it had it's limitations too - and that I preferred to trade and make the decisions. That said I can forsee a circular pattern of discretionary trading to refine rule sets and then code into strategies followed by periods of more discretionary trading moving things on from what is learned from the automation.
I'm trading live with a £10kGBP account whilst I am finding my way and making back what I've previously lost. Nearly back to breakeven.
I'll keep up with your journal as we trade the same instrument and there are cross overs with our methods. And it's nice to come across a fellow brit here on futures.io (formerly BMT)!
Another loser, and failed too late for me to reverse it which currently looks like a nice trade.
PM: a couple of problems came to mind - first up, I had the feeling I've lost a little experience and that I was looking at a situation that I should recognise but still didn't know what to do. Not much I can do about that. I know my memory is poor already so it's hardly surprising that after a couple of months of trading only 1 hour in the morning, my experience is going to slip.
Also my little girl got up early and I tried to carry on trading with only 50% concentration. That's got to go in the rules as a big no-no.
Then I realised that over the last couple of months I've done nothing outside my hour of trading and the summary later like now - but I've done no weekly review, I'm building up a big list of things I need to do and I'm not finding the time for them.
Nothing like a few losses in a row to create a bit of existential worry and focus the mind on the process of learning.
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
That is pretty amazing actually because I was thinking very much the same thing about mechanical trading. I am at the stage where I would like to try to automate what I've learnt. I've come on miles and miles in terms of my comprehension of what the market is and does compared to where I was before with only my systems trading experience. However the stuff I want to code is going to be difficult to do, and with my current day job I just don't have time to do that with the 5 to 7 hours trading a week and the demands of the rest of my family on me.
Well done on the live trading - I am not even close to break-even on the sim account, so you're obviously doing well. Keep on keeping on on the straight and narrow....
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
A break-out with a charge into the setup, but it's hit the end of my session (07:30am) and I can't wait for it anymore.
Session review: the break-out pull-back got a bit messy without any convincing triggers either way. I might have played it with an entry stop below the lowest low and have got stopped in and then definitely taken out on the initial stop as price retraced 6 points above the Asian low.
Looking at it more, it seems that today the market just didn't show any respect for the Asian low as it normally does. It retraced up to the area where it started its first strong push down after the Asian session finished. After that again it didn't do anything convincing until it broke downwards at 09:45.
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
Leaving the trade in play at end of session. Had a small win offered already but didn't take it at the mid-Asian-session S/R level.
I'd given it more risk than that reward justified - although I'm not sure thinking like that is logical
Session review - part one: finally inescapable proof that I've got totally ambiguous rules in my trading plan. The basis of the trading plan is to implement YTC PAT - as it always has been for over six months now - and I thought I could apply it directly to the start of the European session.
But I left the use of the Asian high and the Asian low as S/R totally undefined, with some nebulous concept that they were in some way more important because I 've seen the market move between the two at the beginning of the European session far more frequently than average - I think.
So here instead of taking the first S/R as my target and netting a small winner, I went for a more distant target (the Asian low) and lost.
I think the original idea was to use pure YTC PAT and observe whether there was anything special going on at the European open. Need to check. Also need to write this stuff down but don't have the time and don't want to stop trading to make time. Not professional.
So I had 2 ideas - (1) when the volatility picked up, it's worth getting in on a position in that direction (I don't think that's proved itself at all) and (2) from one Asian boundary, it will usually make its way across the whole session to the other boundary. Needs testing. That is not what I was doing this morning. So I was just plain out-of-order this morning, not following any rules.
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
Nasty failure of break-out. Internet connection keeps dropping out for a couple of seconds, plus it's getting choppy, so not much hope of a decent 2nd attempt or another setup now.
Post-session review: I think I'm getting rusty, not recognising some of the price action I should be recognising. I haven't done any of the reviews I keep telling myself I need to do, review that appear in the plan but I don't have time to implement. Next week, I'm taking a day off trading to do reviews. I also need to keep up a catalog of print-outs showing different types of PA. Haven't done that for a long time but the idea is to build up my own trading book.
I'm taking tomorrow off to go to the coast for some peace and to get out of the old smoke that is London. There seems to be a break in the monsoon weather we're having, that'd be welcome. We need some of that heatwave you guys over there in the US are having.
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.