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I'm not going to say you are wrong, you know what you should do better than I do, but I seem to recall that things were looking pretty good recently, and now it looks like you are making a total change.
If you have had consistency issues (and everyone does, successful or not), do you know what is not working and why? That is, are you just not making consistent gains (that's one thing) or are you not consistently executing a plan/system/method? (That's another thing.)
Maybe a total change is the best thing, so don't let me talk you out of it... but are you sure what was not working before?
Just a thought. There's nothing wrong with trying different things either, there's just a time and a place for it. If this is the time, fine. Your call, after all.
Bob.
When one door closes, another opens.
-- Cervantes, Don Quixote
Being aware of various markets and how they interact is something I feel is important, and it's much better to be aware of what's going on than to have tunnel vision and have your head in the sand. I'll throw this in here -- being aware of what tech is doing, vs big caps, vs small caps, is interesting, but there's nothing causal there, IMO. For example, yes, I can see that YM and NQ were diverging (as they often do these days), but now I see them starting to move together, so I have much more confidence in my ES long. However, these are all effects. IMO it's better to go into the day knowing what environment we're in, why we're in it, and how long that may be expected to last -- i.e., what are the drivers, when are those drivers affected by upcoming events, and what should I be looking for? You can go very far down that rabbit hole and it's easy to get lost, but just knowing at a surface level what's in play can give a lot of clarity. Like today for example, no way I was not buying the early morning dip. Odds were very VERY high that we'd see the continued grind. Having that in mind, and seeing the action in the first half hour, it was all but a given that we would do the same ol' thing. Boring, but easy.
Now, to your targeting 4 markets to "diversify." If you mean, "buy what's strong", that's a worthwhile strategy. However, it is *very* easy to get really f'd up trying to trade more than one market, let alone 4. There's a huge danger in becoming very distracted, losing focus, and then things falling apart--you sell YM because it looks weak, then it rips higher and you cover, then you jump to NQ which looks great, you buy it and then it flops... I suppose we all have to learn the hard way, but I'll say that since I've been trading, 95% of my trades are on one instrument during the US session and 1 instrument during the Asian session. Sometimes that's boring because nothing's going on, but when something is going on, I actually *know* my instrument. I know how it behaves. I can trade the ES and Nikkei with a lot more comfort, because I understand the liquidity, how they move, and have traded them literally thousands of days. You can't just jump into something you don't know and expect it to work the same. Even though I've watched YM/NQ/RTY trade most every day, actually trading them and understanding how they work is different enough that I generally only trade them maybe twice per month.
A caveat: if you are trading much longer time frames, like daily charts, and holding trades for a few days, the focus can be split much more easily, and it makes a lot of sense watch 10 or 15 markets.
A quick edit: this growth/value rotation dynamic that's been going on for what seems like about a year now, used to not exist to the degree it does today. I just don't remember +1% NQ, -0.5% YM days ever occurring on a regular basis before 2020. Sure, sometimes, but not with the frequency like we see now. If I see all three indices within a half percent of each other, I'm shocked. And, maybe I'm not remembering that well, but things also seem much more "tricky" to me these days with those two. For example, we'll see a huge sell in the NQ at the open, just killing everybody.. YM will hold on, NQ turns back up, YM joins up, ES picks up, and then the floor will fall out of YM, NQ rages to new highs, ES stuck in the middle ... this type of behavior has always happened to some degree but it's just easier to get whipsawed in this daily rotation that continues. I mention this to just say, take caution, the waters can be very choppy early in the day.
I don't think that things are bad, rather they're just not good enough to use with real money. Some things are working, so I'm keeping those things intact and changing those things that are not. What's working includes things like I'm in the right markets, trading at the right times with good trade plan. I've managed to shoe-horn trading into a busy life in a way that's sustainable. By now I have a good grasp on the basics. By now I think I have a pretty good idea of what its going to take to be profitable in the long run.
What's not working is that I have yet to find a strategy that I feel good about using. There are aspects of what I have been using I like, for instance, both static and dynamic support and resistance- I like it, because I see that price respects these often enough and in such a way that I can trade it. Same with moving averages and price action. Where I seem to be having an issue is with time scale, granularity, and style. Do I scalp or swing? Do I focus on one minute or one hour? Do I even have to choose?
So that's what I'm working on now. It may sound ridiculous to some, but I want to trade a strategy I feel comfortable using. I want to see price move in a way and at a speed that I find useful so that I might better guess its direction. Ultimately I want my trading to feel like driving, where a million different variables are changing every second, but you don't consciously register any of it- you just drive.
Like all things- time will tell if its even possible. This week I didn't have a ton of time to work on much, but what I did feels a little more comfortable in some ways.
My son left back to Michigan today. It was good to see him. I took a small breather from trading, that was good too. I made some changes to the way that I'm going to trade. It looks like this.
basically its just 2 instruments side by side, with a 60 minute candlestick chart on the top and a 1 minutes heiken ashi chart below. What I'm really liking about how this is set up is that by being able to watch the NQ and ES at the same time, I seem to be a lot less prone to ES FOMO. How I'm trading this is by watching when price gets to levels or structure on the 60 minute chart and seeing how it reacts on the 1 minute chart. so far I like what I'm seeing. Here is how it performed today.
I was only able to trade for an hour and a half, in mediocre market conditions, so with that in mind, I'm liking what I see here. More work will have to be done, but for the time being I do believe I'll be doing that work in a similar manner with what I've just laid out here.
I'm working through the 'Tao te Trade' FIO journal, looking for insight, but really, its over my head. I do like how the Wldman starts by explaining his fundamental bars, but even these are beyond me. When I say beyond me its not like I couldn't understand it, I just don't have the experience to agree or validate any of it. It may be that I don't need to in order to be a successful trader. It may be that this is my insight, and mine alone. I like the thought that there are facts so true about the market and trading that by knowing them you gain some advantage. This is all I know to be true about trading;
1. I can make money by correctly guessing if the price is going up or down.
2. I'll make money if I exit my successful trades in profit.
3. I'll lose money, its inevitable.
4. I'll lose less money if I close trades where I guessed the direction incorrectly quickly.
5. Don't lose more money than you make.
I feel like I've come to this point where I'm not finding any new information that I think is going to make a difference in how I trade. I know there is so much more information out there, a lot of it useful too, but my guts are telling me that right now I have enough knowledge to at least try. So that's where I'm at.
So far the path towards trading greatness has been good. I would be content if the path only lead to here today, but know that its a path that need not never end. To find such things is rare, and to appreciate them, rarer still. In six months I've literally gone from a hopeless drunk stuck in the past to someone who has become rooted in the present, who searches for true things that are good.
At this point if I ever make a dime trading I'll be far ahead of where I started.
One thing to know is that Dan (wldman) is a trader with a vast depth of experience, which you probably have gathered. It is both totally fine and totally routine to not be able to match that, and sometimes (a lot of the time) to not quite understand what he is talking about. He makes every effort to be clear, and does try to add value, and succeeds. But there is a lot of experience in the background of his posts, as you have discovered.
Also, when he recently started posting about the "strat," many people enthusiastically gave it a try in their journals, but I have noticed that this dropped off over time. Which doesn't mean there is nothing to it -- to the contrary, there probably is -- but this is routine too. Almost no one ever successfully takes what some other trader is doing and applies it to their own trading unchanged, or for that matter, at all. At best, people sometimes take some aspect of it that speaks to them and that they can get some value from when they fit it into their own perspective on the markets. People often believe there is one way, or the best way, and this is simply not something that the experience of traders on this forum has borne out.
Everyone changes everything they learn from other traders until it fits them. About the only thing anyone can get from another is some general idea or something specific that for some reason resonates with them, and then they run with it on their own. There are not two traders who trade exactly the same way that I have seen on this forum since I have come to it, many years ago (2013). But there are still profits being made, by some at least. All doing something that is their own thing. Maybe there's a reason for this.
You never actually need anything new. You always have enough knowledge "to at least try," and to succeed too. It takes a while to know that, though. Plus, working in the trenches, which is where the actual learning takes place.
Completely agree.
Bob.
When one door closes, another opens.
-- Cervantes, Don Quixote
I traded today... a lot. This is the second day trading the set up I call 'Walking and Chewing Gum'. I'm still in SIM, but I try and keep it realistic. I gathered some really good data today. Here is today's trade performance-
So yea, a $1.72 for the day. Not in itself what I would call great, but if I look deeper- gross profit $429.93, from trading micros 1 contract. Average winning trade, bigger than the average loss, good, Ratio win/loss 1.18 not great, but not bad either. Look at the largest winning vs. loss- just about double, that's good. 89 trades today, that's too many trades, but what's good is that I'm taking trades.
Here's my take away for the day. The hallmark of my trading style will most likely be the ability to cut bad trades quickly thus keeping losing trades small in comparison to those I win. The other side of that is trading those micro trends and taking smaller profits on the regular, all while keeping an eye out for what's really happening on the 1 hour chart. I need to start trading exactly like its live, so that means being more deliberate about the trades that I take. 89 trades today shows me that the opportunity is there on a daily basis, I just got to get mo' choosy. Now is the time to focus on hitting those trade plan targets and goals. 10 points a day, 10 points a week minimum.
Not suffering a catastrophic loss today, despite being down nearly $180.00, and trading my way out, was instructive, but its not the way that I want to trade.
Walking and chewing gum turned out to be be more like running with a pair of scissors in my mouth blindfolded, bare-foot, through a Lego grave yard. I'm glad it crushed me now, thoroughly disabusing me of the notion that I am any good at trading on the smaller timeframes. Today taught me this, When I lose more than $100.00 (micro), I am done for the day. You might have read this, a lot, because subconscious me must either be dumb as fuck, or actively working against me. All I know is this. I will get to the bottom of it, and eventually I will learn to trade like a pro. Here is what 'Walking and chewing Gum' should look like.
All that's really changed is that I am bumping up to the 60 minute time frame in the attempt to better understand the price action so that I can make fewer, better trades. Here's the kind of trade performance that I am aiming for.
So here's where I'm at- When I lose more than $100.00 (micro), I'm done for the day I'm not back at square one. It's better to stress test and break potentially faulty things before intended usage.
He makes every effort to be clear, and does try to add value, and succeeds. But there is a lot of experience in the background of his posts, as you have discovered.