I haven't done much trading this month (maybe less is good) but I am thankful to god to close it in green and I am very thankful to everyone on fio for the all the support.

Another fortunate day...thank god!

Small loss today...



Edit: One pattern I noticed in my trading is price will tell me almost immediately if I am wrong or right on the trade for example today I was short biased on NQ but price struggled to move in my direction so I reversed to long but my initial bias didn't let me hold on to that long and at the end of the day it would have hit my stop on my initial short.

This is what changed my thinking one of the simple and powerful quote from @Inletcap

YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE RIGHT

So I started thinking if I don't have to be right do I have capacity to make it right if I am wrong the answer for me right now is NO so I am sticking to trading OIL using QM so that I can add/sub contracts to get out with less pain or gain.

With NQ/YM/CL/ES I don't have that luxury because of small account so I have to cut the losses quickly...hope this helps someone who is struggling like me.

Currently I feel comfortable in my planning but still working on my execution and position size. Last week was one of the best week with minimum number of trades, I guess I just took 10 trades or so but got good results. My swing strategy is spot on 90% of the times just close my eyes trust me and execute it and hold on to the trade. I am also looking into combining @Okina's 200 trade velocity method and @Rory's divergence of time and tick concept since I am not so much familiar with SC it might take some time...Maybe these two wonderful people can chip on this idea and give me suggestions.

AGAIN IT IS NOT THE METHOD IT IS WHEN NOT TO USE THE METHOD IS KEY.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Tapatalk

bmtrading9 

Currently I feel comfortable in my planning but still working on my execution and position size. Last week was one of the best week with minimum number of trades, I guess I just took 10 trades or so but got good results. My swing strategy is spot on 90% of the times just close my eyes trust me and execute it and hold on to the trade. I am also looking into combining @Okina's 200 trade velocity method and @Rory's divergence of time and tick concept since I am not so much familiar with SC it might take some time...Maybe these two wonderful people can chip on this idea and give me suggestions. AGAIN IT IS NOT THE METHOD IT IS WHEN NOT TO USE THE METHOD IS KEY. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Tapatalk

I just had these thoughts on reading this. You may have already thought about these, but in case you have not:

1. If your swing trading is this good, then why do anything else? Note, I'm not saying you should only do this, I'm just asking a simple "Why not?" Money is money, after all, and if there's good money there, why not take it? (I do assume, by the way, that you do have a good answer to this, but I'm just posing the question as something that makes sense to consider.)

2. Again, regarding your swing strategy: is it possible to scale the time down from multi-day swings to intra-day moves? I don't know exactly what the basis of your swing strategy is, and it may not be scalable downward, but it seems to be a strength. So can you take this area where you are strong and build on it in daytrading? Sometimes it is easier/better/more fun to build up your strong points than to work on improving your weaker points. Sometimes building on your strong points is also a good way to improve your weaker points, for that matter....

These are just some thoughts that came to me when reading this post. I wouldn't say they necessarily have a lot of merit, but basically it's just to emphasize and utilize your strong points.

By the way, I am noticing your improved results lately, so you're certainly doing something right in the day-trading department as well.

Good luck; I enjoy your honesty, and I understand very well your feelings and experiences as you push ahead and try to make this trading thing work for you. Man, do I ever understand!

Bob.

bobwest 

I just had these thoughts on reading this. You may have already thought about these, but in case you have not: 1. If your swing trading is this good, then why do anything else? 2. Again, regarding your swing strategy: is it possible to scale the time down from multi-day swings to intra-day moves? I don't know exactly what the basis of your swing strategy is, and it may not be scalable downward, but it seems to be a strength. These are just some thoughts that came to me when reading this post. I wouldn't say they necessarily have a lot of merit, but basically it's just to emphasize and utilize your strong points. By the way, I am noticing your improved results lately, so you're certainly doing something right in the day-trading department as well. Good luck; I enjoy your honesty, and I understand very well your feelings and experiences as you push ahead and try to make this trading thing work for you. Man, do I ever understand! Bob.

I have looked back a few pages and I can't see much to conclude on how your swing trading decisions are made from the MA, if you use VIX, COT etc. etc. but I would tend to agree with @bobwest, Intraday swing might be beneficial.

I like to do what I call 'ratcheting', essentially never slipping backwards. If I screw up on one instrument I put more resources into another that is working better for me. I look at the equity curve per instrument for the past 30 days or so. When I see a dip I address what I could have done to prevent that. I usually find I was using too few contracts on the instrument that was working best. When swigs are very long, I would have difficulty assessing this.

As you see around the 16th (A Monday) there was a bad day on this instrument but it was balanced by another instrument I doubled on. To do this I have to keep things in bite sized chunks of time that work for me. Generally I'm happy to carry a position over the close but I don't like to hold until the morning for fear of the Asian session around 2am.

As @bobwest says also, if its working why not just go with it? Keep it steady until you have more equity then apply the same consistency to more instruments.

On a larger scale are you increasing your overall account or averaging out periodically? Confirmation seems to be mentioned as a problem. Is it an even when the markets are not choppy, its easy to chop yourself up with do I wait for confirmation or not kind of thing?

Sorry, I feel I have not really looked closely enough at what you do to be of much help tonight, I need sleep haha

Shampoo again...




@Rory my swing method is simple but I am afraid of ridicule (not really but it so simple it needs lot of discretion) so keeping it to myself but I will share it later.

@bobwest @Rory Yes, you guys are right when something is working don't change it and try to build on it that's exactly I am trying to do. As we all know swing involves holding overnight/over weekend etc etc so even if a method is 100% sure even then one has to consider those factors specially if it involves leverage but at the same time if one can't take chances they don't win big.

I do have scaled down version that's what I have been following for last one month but that also involves watching open/close etc. My method is mix of concepts from all the good people, mainly from @Inletcap, who share everything regarding trading in this fio.

So my thought process is to try and incorporate @Okina's method and my good old divergence concept to increase size and trade for an hour or so..of course I will do it on sim first (This sim word feels weird because I don't trust in sim but it is necessary if one wants to try new).

Also, who wants to hold overnight and go thru that struggle when one can achieve the same result/daily target if we can concentrate properly right?

Sorry for the hurry up response, I wish I could explain it better but given the time constraint I have to go...

Thanks again for all the support.

bmtrading9 

Shampoo again... @Rory my swing method is simple but I am afraid of ridicule (not really but it so simple it needs lot of discretion) so keeping it to myself but I will share it later.

No worries, don't feel under expectation and we all know simple is good. All my successful discretionary methods require a lot of 'wax-on wax-off' training but you get there.

That Shampoo pattern on oil didn't materialize...My long term trend is still up from 36, imagine holding one contract of QM would have done to the account, that's the power of swing. My thought process was after a big trend price will oscillate wildly before next leg and that's what we got at 50 and now we are at 51.60, let's see what will happen next.

Last two day no trades, today came in with short bias and

Trade-1
Shorted in the morning before pit open at 51 and held on to the short thru the oil report since I was biased and being a report day I expected more towards downside atleast to 50.40 didn't get there but I ignored to take profit at 50.80.
Scratched that trade for breakeven.

Trade-2
Long at 51.17 but again that didn't go anywhere so took some 4 ticks loss.

Trade-3
Short at 51.08 and again didn't took profits at 50.90. Closed it at 51.05 because before pit close shorts have to cover and that's what happened.

All in all not much loss but on the bright side helped my broker

Daily close below 49 things can get interesting...Yesterday, I should have shorted that long pole pattern (I tried couple of times but stopped out) on PF but I was waiting for 52 to initiate the short.




Edit: After nice last week this week I am not thinking properly took more trades in last two days just to find out my initial trade yesterday (short at 51) would have made money than anything else...

edit: One thing I noticed physiological wise is if my entry is not proper then I keep second guessing whole process/method and make more mistakes...