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You had to post this on a day whereby was my worst in 8 months! haha...
I hear ya, have heard it before. The funny thing is, I do see setups but the last couple weeks have been a bit rough for me changing up my style some.
For me I have found my best trades to be off trendlines believe it or not. I have made a few gifts, but fibs are good sometimes, others not, trendlines same thing I guess. Just a matter of getting a good feel for what works.
Thanks for the input.
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
If you are consistently profitable trading for 2-3 points daily why are you looking to change your method/approach in the first place? As increasing the no. of contracts youre trading would get you the big $$$ you are aiming for. Or as Al Brooks notes:
"Once a trader is consistently profitable, the next goal should be to increase the position size rather than adding lower probability entries. If a trader consistently nets only one point a day in the Eminis but trades 25 contracts, this comes out to over $1 ,000 per day. If the trader can get up to 100 contracts, he will make $1,000,000 per year. If he nets four points a day, that IS $4,000,000 per year."
Today was another day of the conditions in which I tend not to trade the best. I did my best to hold my PT, SL and continue to trade.
I need to be more patient and wait for the better setups. There were two good trades early on, I got both of them in my opinion, but exited too early on both. I did my best to hold them longer! The trade I held longer ended up knocking me out!
I am satisfied with my trading as I do not believe this to be the best conditions for me, but I was more cautious than yesterday!
I am ok with this and will get back to profitability soon. I am still trying to change my style hence that is the reason I believe I am unprofitable. That is ok for now and better for the long term.
The trick on the mind is to instead of saying, "This up has been amazing, we should be retracing, ....too.... This long is amazing, I should be riding it".
Just practicing for now. Some advice was to focus on the long term trend, hold my stops and be OK with it knocking me out. Just focus on the longer term direction, hold my TP's and catch the nice runs.
Well, I think it couldn't be a worse time to adjust my trading style as it has gone from trending to ranging. NOT GOOD.
When it ranges, I should be taking ranging TP's. When it trends longer TP's etc..
I am not distressed about today as I did what I set out to do, hold my stops, hold my TP's and continue trading.
I had some misfortune of getting knocked out on the tick (laziness on my part) for not moving my stop 1 tick above high. I would have held that baby all the way down and would have made the difference for the entire day! I missed the 76 pullback which is fine, but then I started going long?? Why... The long term trend was saying down! Well, I thought it would be good for 5 or so points. Good enough R/R so I started taking them, but boy was I wrong.
I have to be honest, I just don't feel comfortable 'hoping' to get a long term run of 5+ points. I am doing my best to just let it roll, but as I am practicing I see that I am just being lazy on my entries and that my SIM is not taken seriously.
It is not like I am sleeping, but I am sitting back, not talking, not focused and just really trying to get a thumb on the longer term trend, but hard to do with a 5 tick stop without getting plugged.
This has been a good exercise and I will continue tomorrow but I will put in more effort on my entries and not be so lax.
There were some nice runs today. I just didn't get them cashed out which is fine. I still believe it is heading down to my target, but working on those long term targets!
I just watched my video again, and it is clear of the following things:
1. I don't like what I am doing with holding my stops and TP's, so I am being a victim to show it doesn't work. Don't tell that to Horst.
2. I need to discuss my setups more.
3. I am not trading what I see and letting fundamentals affect my trading. Because the 'foot' has been a bit misleading that I have been ignoring too much.
4. I am not waiting for clear and clean setups per my guidelines and kind of flying by the seat of my pants. That doesn't work with small stops.
5. I am not open to changes within what the market is telling me.
Obviously this is all 'bad' which is fine and that is the problem with the changes I have made to my trading. I am demanding in my brain a nice 7-9 point run. haha... But, the MACD's weren't telling me there is one!
I just watched your video also and I have to disagree with you on some points.
You said that you saw direction down and your trades with nice MFE were short. That means that it does work.
If you didn't close your trades and was waiting for your target hit without watching MACDs that's only your problem. I don't think that Horst told you to get in set your target and forget about it. Because I've seen him closing his trades so many times before the target if he sees any reversal signals.
You didn't close your trade when there was divergence at 144 twice. That's where I took long (my third trade). You had enough time to close it and reenter again.
Then another trade you could see retracement divergence all the way up to 1597 and nice separation for long at 4181. You had a lot of time to close it or trail your stop at least.
When you are holding for bigger target you should manage it according to larger time frames. Not just set and forget.
When you were trying to go long and made a few gifts you didn't even have time to move your stop if you wanted to.
I think you just have to accept that you didn't feel it today. You couldn't see pivots and that was a problem. Not holding your stops or targets. If you disagree with me just go back and see how many times you got in on the pivots today.
Start fresh tomorrow and don't think about today! Don't over think it with holding not moving etc.
P.S. As I said before you can try to make 2-3 points your old way then if you like market conditions you can take a risk and try couple more trades with bigger targets. If they don't work you still gonna have some money left and it's not gonna effect your statistics so much.
You are right. The long's didn't work out and that actually surprised me as those looked the nicest to me all day. haha...
I was actually trying to hold off of higher time frames expecting it to go down, but you are right in that I ignored the 610/987 and others. There has been so much separation though that I have a hard time telling if it is this time, not this time and will I just waste my time by going to BE etc..
I am going back to the way I typically trade and see how it works out in these conditions. I have lost confidence in my ability to see the longer term trends and I realize that I have fallen apart on that, but it is just such a struggle for me to identify a long run and a not-so-long run.
It seems like when I think there is a 9 point run, it ends up 3 points, when I think it is a 3 point run it is 9 points. haha...
There is no reason that I couldn't have closed out profitable today like you mentioned, had lots of opportunities, but honestly I was focused on holding my TP for my target and not letting anything tell me different. That is where I have issues with longer term trends/runs, when to ignore, when not to ignore.
I guess that is the Million dollar problem though as if it were very easy, then why would anyone do anything different. haha....