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I continue to study.
I am sim trading at least 1 hour a day using market replay while trying out all the indicators I can to
get a feel for how each one works. I have been able to reach or exceed my goal of 20 hours a week
of learning/practicing.
Thoughts:
1. From reading the trading journals and forums I get the feeling that everyone has his/her own
way of learning/trading.
2. I will have to invest more time to speed this process up. I should be able to do this during the winter months.
3. I think the sim trading with ninjatrader is the best tool for learning.
4. It will be a long time before I am comfortable with all this information I am pounding in my head.
5. Organizing my education is going to be a priority before long. I sometimes let myself go from article to forum to video and end up getting confused with all the information.
Questionsfor myself or anyone that would like to answer)
1. What are the differences from sim trading to live trading?(commission, emotions etc.)
2. I am profitable about 60% of the trades sim trading. How much will that drop in live trading.
1. if you keep sim environment identical as live down to the number of trades then only the diff is emotion.
2. all depending on how much you can control your emotion.
Now that I am live trading (again, will exp more later) i have to agree with cory 100%, its all about controlling your emotion. Your sim trading, once translated to live--will drop to 0% unless you get the number one issue under control.
I continue to study and hopefully learn. I have been able to get 20 hours a week with at least one hour of it sim trading as planned. Dreaming of charts has become a regular occurrence. This is a good sign, it is part of my learning process to become obsessed with the subject.
At this moment I believe that price action will be my main focus. While focusing on price action I want to know the overall trend, volume, and when the large and small trades are placed. I am not sure how I will get this data but this will be the foundation of my system.
Up to this point I had the mind set that I have to figure out my own way of trading. From now on I will be learning how everyone else trades. What they are thinking, what they are watching, When they trade and for what reasons will determine my trades.
while sim trading I am not worried about profit or loss at this time, but rather how to get into a "zone" with the market. This will require, at some point in time, that I sim trade with live data.
This is my chart for today. I do have a strategy/rules although it is a work in progress.
Here are my rules as of now.
1. Always know the trend of the market. I do not always trade with the trend because on some days I can see
Highs or lows that the market bounces off of and use those as trading points. There has only been a couple of days
That I trade against the trend. I understand the importance of following the trend.
2. I set up my ATM to set a stop loss at 6 ticks and a gain of 6 ticks. I will never move my stop loss but will move my
exit if I think I am in a run.
3. I will trade until I have 3 + trades or 3 - trades. not less than 3 trades and not more than 6 trades for the day.
That is really it for rules at this time.
Is this working for me? Yes, I have had only 1 day that I stopped with 3 trades that went against me.
I continue to try different indicators but the only one I keep on my chart is MACD. I think the only reason I keep it on is
because I have used it with stocks for so many years. It does work with the ES as it does with stocks for me.
Today there was a slight upward trend. the resistance to the upside was clear to me so I went with it and it worked for all but one trade.
I made 4 trades today. All markets down today so I looked to go short and it worked.
First trade was over 3 points, I caught a good run and removed my target. When I was exiting I had a pilot error and hit reverse but closed it immediately. I have had many pilot errors, hopefully I will get better as a practice. This one only cost me a couple of ticks but I have had a couple that would have been very costly had I been live.
second trade I jumped in on a run downward and hit my target.
Third trade hit my target but did not fill, then it went to my stop.
fourth trade I seen more to the downside with a couple of strong red bars. After the dip I set my sell at 44. It filled and quickly hit my target.
I use jigsaw tools and wouldn't dare trade without them.
We are analyzing data and that piece of software will give you the data necessary to make solid decisions.
I hope this helps and good luck.
Rgds
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