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You want to use an edge that places probability in your favor whether the market (or your trading instrument) is rising or falling. Here is a G-rated edge, suitable for all traders: You short a second lower high, or buy a second higher low following a strong move in the other direction. You...

Haven't dropped in on this thread for a long time and my email alert opened straight to this post, a nice bit of distilled wisdom that, once you understand and implement, quickly takes you to the "other side".

I trade from AZ and I love the hours because I have a built-in alarm clock that wakes me up with the sun. However, last night I dreamed I had insomnia. When I woke up I was wondering if I'd feel really tired all day. Picaso, my target with 1 lot is 1 pt a day and I have yet to achieve that...

It's only fair after that awesome pre-market trade I had to show how easily I can then screw up my trade management royally once I'm wide awake and my brain is capable of thinking, and I assure you that thinking while trading is very bad. (My trade blotter is 3 hours before eastern time)...

All the thanks to you, EON; you taught me how to properly enter a breakout trade with this beast :D

One other thing: I used a 5 tick stop because real breakouts should have follow-through (failed breakouts can result in rapid moves against you), and I trailed the stop to the high of each 5-min bar as it closed.

Example of a breakout trade from this morning. Shorted 1 tick above the test of the low and targeted a measured move down based on the breakout of previous support (75.59) to the low I shorted (75.29), but I added 2 ticks for good measure because I've had so many targets missed by 1 or 2 ticks...

Yes, LMAO! I made some hay when the sun was shining and now I'm just your average trader :D Seriously, I sized down after May flash crash, just got scared of too much leverage when that kind of crap can happen so quickly.

I see you use a target strategy similar to mine. I went long ES off the pre-market jobs report, target: somewhere higher :)

Every now and then you end up positioned just right and price makes an incredible unexpected move in your favor (such as the day when I was short the ES and Spain was downgraded). Your P/L gets bigger and greener by the second and you end up with a profit that's 5 or 10 times what you expected...

I have a Skype group together for a few weeks now and we know each other's setups really well now. We are progressing from the polite getting-to-know-each-other stage to the "Are you long? No! Why the hell not, that's your prime setup!" The last step in this process is to start sounding like...

The market isn't a simple coin toss though. Time of day and previous price action make it more like throwing dice, where 2 numbers represent the strongest moves, 2 numbers represent smaller moves and 2 numbers represent signal failures (and potential losses), where I limit my downside by making...

Have you ever traded crude? It trades in its own bizarre universe and once you've lived in that universe for a few months, you become very tall and blue with a strange tail that no longer fits properly into ES receptors :p

I do what Picaso does when trading breakouts, 1 or 2 ticks before the break with a very tight stop in case of a failed b/o, or maybe even enter earlier when price pivots off a shallow retrace and heads toward a breakout level. You can get killed on slippage if you place your stop order a tick...

No, lukewarm setups are basically opinions formed while price is in no man's land. It's usually a case of conflicting signals: Oh there's higher low (but look there's also a lower high); this is overbought, looks like a good short (uh, yeah, but price is in an uptrend...). You know, that kind of...

I haven't traded ES much at all for a while now, mainly focused on CL. It's amazing how rusty one can get with an instrument even though trading is trading. This morning I bought pretty much the high of the 8:30am bar after the news, 3 lots @ 1062.25, with my stop @ 1060.75. It was a "what the...

My yearly chart shows the 20 at 1060, but I'm not too crazy about IB's charts. Schizo, I think you're on to something here. Notice how every one of emg's planned entry prices get hit not too long after he announces them, even though they seem very far away at the time? :cool:

Maybe I should post my daily blotter again. The thought of you guys analyzing my trades might keep me from micromanaging them :p I already feel really guilty now when I announce to my Skype group "Moving my stop to break even..."

I have #6 fully under control now, but posted it as one of my common past mistakes. I have my rules written down, but I think you're right, reading them out loud every morning would be a very good idea.

Here's how I do my bar-by-bar analysis now, to avoid any cheating. I have a set of criteria that determine a valid setup and a signal bar. I can only choose to trade when a 5-min bar has completely closed and my entry price is the open of the new bar, with stop and target entered at the same...