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-- Big Mike, Site Administrator
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I have decided to take Big Mike's advice and hold myself accountable for my trading. The best way is to start a trading journal.
For the first few entries I will post charts and my (humble) analysis of price and volume analysis and any trades I make.
After missing this morning move I've been looking for an entry point. The ES failed to hold 1128.25 and I'm looking to short @ 1127.25. Assuming a favorable DOM profile. Currently the cumulative depth is 6700x12300 contracts, so I am reluctant to go short unless the number of contracts drops.
I use 233 tick charts to see mini-failures, but actually trade using a 5 min time-frame in Ninja Trader and execute trades with ChartTrader with a ZenFire feed.
When talking about trading I will include the initials of one of the three who have influenced me, more may be added later.
Looking back at today (I slept through the open) reminded me that the best price action usually happens during the 1st 2 hours of trading. The chart below shows the 2 major stages of today:
Up Trend from the open to 8:45 (PST)
Range bound from 8:45 to close.
While I use ChartTrader (Ninja Trader) on a 5 minute chart for executions, I am always looking at the fine structure of price action on the 233 tick chart. The entry can be seen as the micro trendline at 1118 (A) is broken. If a long were entered at this point and held until the trendline (from Friday's low near the close) was broken at 1123 - this would be a 20 tick trade. Paraphrasing Al: do this a few times a month and you are making a living.
The next trade was a breaking of the wedge that formed from 7 Am to 7:25 Am. There was a triple touch of 1123.25, followed by a higher low (A) at 1124. Next time I see this I will risk 6 ticks and look for an exit point. Here it was the double top of the daily high, when I first started noticing the cumulative Bid and Ask amounts (DOM) getting very heavy (10,000x10,000 contracts).
As the market was getting burdened down with a heavy DOM I put together a set of condition for entry (B), and cleared my head of missing that big move this morning (M).
Long Entries: 1130.50 or 1127.75 (If 1127.25 was touched and held)
Short Entries: 1127 or 1129.50 (if 1130.25 was touched and held)
These trades would require a lighter DOM then the greater then 8,000x8,000 contracts I was observing all afternoon. Never happened and I never entered a position as I never saw any other set-up that I thought had a high probability of success.
Tomorrow is gonna be a good day (Paraphrasing the message in The Secret).
Participating on this site has rekindled my passion for trading over the last two months and posting forces me to focus.
Hope this isn't too much, but it is something I have been formulating for awhile.
To prepare for trading, visualize taking a loss. What? Really, visualizing taking a loss! Yes, being able to emotionally handle a loss in the most important step to being a consistent trader. Visualize it and try to actually feel all of the things that bother you about taking a loss. Trading is about probabilities, so expecting perfection is counter to reality and profitability. But the loss must be exactly predefined (accounting for slippage). How many $ are you willing to risk to find out if your identification of a setup is correct?
Paraphrasing Mark Douglas (M) in Trading in the Zone (pages 121, 130) there are some fundamental truths:
Anything can happen -You don't need to know what exactly is going to happen next to make money over time.
There is a random distribution between wins and losses for a set of variables that define an edge for a predefined setup. An edge is nothing more than an indication of a higher probability of one thing happening over another: a good setup.
Every moment in the market is unique. This is why you must accept losses as part of becoming a consistent trader.
Nothing that has happened before, either winning or losing trades, has any effect on how you judge the edge in a potential setup. Don't worry about the last trade or you will miss the next one
Stay in the Now Moment (M on pages 87 and 130), don't wish and hope. Constantly evaluate your position and be brutally honest.
Never let a profit turn into a (big) loss.
On page 189 M states the rules for an exercise to produce consistently profitable days.
So, after visualizing taking a loss what next? Using the method described by Hale Dwoskin in the Sedona Method; let go of all of the bad feelings associated with taking a loss. Until it is recognized that looking for and entering a trade based on a good setup is not guaranteed to be profitable for every trade. What it should be is profitable over many trades.
The exercise:
Pick a market. Choose a setup or 2 (keep it simple) that you believe gives you a higher probability of success. If you are unsure of what you have been using,read chapter 15 of Al Brooks' (A) Reading Price Charts Bar by Bar for ideas.
Pick one or two setups, know exactly when the conditions are right for an execution and define the price range in which to place your trade.
I say range because almost everyone who trades talks about the move that got away because they missed it by 1-3 ticks and how the scariest setups in terms of the amount risked sometimes are actually the strongest entry signal.
Have a trade management strategy. Currently using Chart Trader with the Advance Trade Management system in Ninja Trader. Using an entry stop with a 100 contract price target. 100 contracts must be filled at that price before a market order (or stop-limit 3-5 ticks away from the determined entry price) is submitted, once the order is filled a 6 tick stop loss market order is automatically placed along with a 13 tick price target limit order. Once filled move both the bracketed stop-loss and limit orders to some point based on the chart or indicator.
Check the financial calendar. My biggest loss was on a day the Fed announced and I was unaware. M goes on to talk about Time frame and taking profits, A suggests using just the 5 min charts, but I will always look at the 233 tick, 30 min and daily charts to make sure something important is not missed. Longer time frames usually have more significance if they concur with your short term setup. Both M and Brett Steenbarger talk about starting with an appropriate size: Start small and once consistent increase. Be patient, how many traders do you know who have blown up their account because they over sized or over traded? Watching the markets is boring, like most jobs, it takes a lot of work and concentration. A get it right when he says that the 1st 2 hours of the day have the highest probability of trending. Look at the ES on 1/4/10 for an example.
In order to really accept the risk take all trades that meet the defined conditions.
It will become second nature. 4 conditions for 4 different trades were described in a the previous post on 1/4/10.
Think about watching The Secret (someone on this site posted it but I could not find it using the site search) - available from NetFlix. It is a method of visualizing what you want and attracting it. It is more than just a positive attitude, it is practice.
Doing all of the above will allow you to enter The Zone (M page 135), the same zone that athletes talk about.
Now, I gotta put my money where my mouth is and not go
Striving to Becoming a Consistently Profitable trader.
Andy
Still working on Now Moment stuff. Missed a great trade while pondering my feelings about the last one. Gotta learn to stop this - ugh - stuff.
What did I learn? Pretty Patterns can't be second guessed, they are flat out pretty, as are ugly ones. I should have gone long @ 1126.25 anticipating the completion of a really nice higher low, followed by a good Continuation (blue, yellow). This is why I like using ADXVMA_sharky_paint (Thanks Sharky). It goes from Red, to yellow, to blue, making beauty of the pattern stand out.
Book size has gone up almost 4 times in volume. If I had gotten into the Zone I would now be placing sell stop loss @ 1030.25 to protect 16 tick profit. Once above 1131.50 move up stop 4 ticks to 1131.25.
Example of an Al Brooks microTrend BreakUp Failure.
This corresponded with a Buying Climax on the BSVASZLine Indicator
and a maximum in the # of contracts in available on the DOM.