Recent content by cfd_trader

frostengine, at this point I'm just planning for the backtest of that apparently successful setup, therefore I don't need to be picky on the algorithm "reactivity" in terms of immediately identifying a peak/valley. Though obviously to apply that setup in live trading this will have to be...

Markets ain't random. At least, not all the time. To begin with, markets do have "memory". Well, if anything it's the memory of eg all these hundreds of traders that have shorted the market at a level they believed would be a short term top and who see prices retrace suspiciously - if not...

I've been using for the last few weeks a fairly known setup/system which I have slightly modified to fit my requirements (intraday - as in intra half hour :D - index futures/cfd trading), and so far so good, that one seems to provide a real tangible edge, though I still need to improve on...

I beg to differ. If he's consistently posting badly losing trades, I will happily take the other side of each of those trades. More than useful, indeed...:p

Well, sometime the other guy's excessive greed can be your gain. :) That is, unless their account size is a thousand times yours, in which case you're essentially toast.:p

Well I guess the discussion is drifting away from the original OP intent and extending in scope, not that it's bad by any means... :) There are simple *facts* that a trader tend to ignore, or forget, or worse yet pretend to ignore while in position (just because these facts don't go along...

I understand and in fact agree with your note of caution. However in my case the scale at which this has happened in the recent past largely goes beyond this level of caution, you can trust me on that one - unfortunately. ^^ I'm probably an outlier here when it comes to regularly not...

HowardCohodas, or maybe I just speculated a touch on what you wrote. :-] Allright gals and boyz, c'mon... there MUST be more to it than this. Sheesh, once I'm done with coding my trading log and analysis tools I'll post a summary and screenshots here, looks like most people here will go...

The missed opportunity risk: you "see" a good setup, but you don't take the trade because you lack confidence and/or you screwed the last trade and/or you're trying too hard to perceive the future but realize you just can't. Very often the net result is effectively an excellent opportunity...

tiddlywinks, what you call "drawdown" and "unrealized reward" (I think you mean on a per trade basis) is what I refer to as "MAE" and "MFE", which stand for Max Adverse Excursion and Max Favorable Excursion (in which case it's measured in pts/pips, not € or $). Interesting piece of...

HowardCohodas, when you said " Even when I do nothing, I may note some concerns and areas to monitor ", I thought you meant that you do record "non-trades" in yr trading log. Oh well... you know, that's the kind of reasoning which my "intuitition" tells me is legitimate and logical. And...

Te laisse pas faire, Laissez Faire... :p I live in Paris and have CNBC use one 1/4 of the screen on my 2nd monitor, running the whole trading day, from morning til close at NYSE. Not that I'm constantly watching or carefully listening all the time, but I do pay attention esp. around major...

Allright, this is what I'd call a "vanilla" trade log/journal - though I'm not familiar with credit spreads trading and might therefore be missing a gem here or there. :) You're showing a bunch of trades, but what if you'd have to review *hundreds* of trades? Would you still be staring at...

Thanx for the detailed answer HowardCohodas. :) I do agree that keeping notes of why you took a specific trade at a specific moment in time is important, and reviewing them on a regular basis can improve one's trading skills. That's why I have a reserved a "Notes/Comments" field in my trade...