A day where too many mistakes were made:1) The 2 globex- hour trades had given me a 5-tick and 8-tick profits before my stops were hit, which I should have taken, since my stop was not set to take a swing
2) The 1st trade after US market opened was a mess - it wasn't supposed to be taken in the first place. I chased coz I was trapped out. I was trapped out coz I hesitated when I had my signal to enter (in triple pink arrow was where I should have entered).
3) The trade that followed was another chase - and even more unforgiveable coz I hadn't a signal at all!
4) The last trade was the only one today that I can feel happy about : I had both setup and a valid signal, and I exited as planned (which was NOT to hold beyond 2 trend bars, and cover as and when trendline is hit)
Before taking the last trade, I was down USD 325. I have a daily loss limit of USD 400, and what that meant was that I had 3 choices:
i) take the next signal and risk blowing my daily loss limit
ii) enter only on hammers / very small trend bars
iii) call it a day
I learn today that if I don't make good decisions throughout the day, I'll end up having to make extremely difficult ones before the day's over.
9 comments:
Cool, you managed to catch that crazy pop, must feel good :)
You had nice entries in your Globex trades, too. 935-938 actually held, but it would have been a choppy ride.
MVW, I would have felt much better had I not blown 325 first...I admire your patience in waiting for that right moment to strike. I have a love-hate relationship with Globex hours...Correction: I should only hate globex hours coz all my biggest losses were from globex hours trades. Taught me to use hard stops though :-)
it's clear that you still get mix up between scalper vs hold-for-target role. I suggest you have 2 hats one for each role, just put one on and trade accordingly.
Cory, I'm confused by default...I'll start out wanting to swing a trade (which explains the single contract size), and then I'll move my stop, thinking only one or two candles ahead (scalping mode), and then after moving my stop, I'll keep staring at that target somewhere really high up there. And then I'll realize what just happened after I'm stopped out. Now tell me you've met a more confused numskull...
Murphy's Law- Just a Click away. That's a good one Jules.
Jules, when you're scalping how do you determine your exit? You mention 1-2 candles. Do you try to hold for a specific amount of time? Or is it "take what the candle(s) give me"? Thanks. DT
Usually when I'm positioned in Globex, I'm light and use moderate to wide stops. Once it moves in my direction and I get my risk to 0 I no longer care what happens, at that point I start using targets from underneath by trailing it.
This entails giving up some points, but when it works it's usually a high R multiple winner.
Now, where and when to start trailing, that's the hard part. I've held trades for 1-2 days and end up getting out at b/e or even a loss.
What's most important though is that you are comfortable with your method and you know your method well.
I scalped today and churned my account so bad the profits barely even paid for commissions. I suck at scalping :(
are you scalp or swing trader? http://tinyurl.com/o5z66h
About your data lagging problem you can open an account with https://www.openecry.com/openaccount/applyonline.cfm their data feed is free and you can feed it into the sierrachart. Openecry/sieerachart combo is what I am using.
or try quotecenter by thomsonreuter, a brand name http://www.quotecenter.ca/data_and_exchanges.htm
free for 1 month 135/m or yearly discount hopefully you can make enough to pay for the yearly discount during a free month.
also some forum recomm http://www.nextview.com/
this you have to investigate on your own, good luck.
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