Week 6 Monday: My current objective is to test one setup at this time for NQ only, and observing NQ, recorded in the excel sheet having columns such as entry, stop, exit, MAE, MFE.
Summary of week 5: When I was focusing on the process and following the setups even when setup not precise or not good, trading is with less stress and smaller loss or bigger profit. Otherwise trading is stressful and exit winners early and exit losers too late. Based on the experience, i think it is time to get simple statistics for one setup in excel sheet, learned from NoDoJi's sharing.
So during the weekend, i have started to record simple statistics for one particular PB setup in a excel sheet by bar by bar. Today I recorded the setup information in the excel sheet for today's NQ in real time, mainly the setups i spotted in real time and some i missed but should have been taken.
NoDoJi wrote the following in a post (I forgot the link):
I choose a price action pattern to study, open a spreadsheet and log data surrounding every appearance of that pattern until I've compiled stats for enough trades to determine if some sort of statistical significance jumps out at me. I do everything by hand, no automated backtesting for me.
I already know in advance that I'm looking for two kinds of opportunities, so that narrows down the data I need to collect.
1) I look for patterns where the R:R is equal, but the win rate is at least 60%
2) I look for patterns where the R:R is positive enough to overcome a win rate of 50%
I eyeball things at first and do quick mental calculations. Or sometimes while trading day after day, I notice a certain thing seems to happen "a lot". I know from experience that this belief that something happens more often than not is frequently nothing more than selective memory, so I define the pattern and the context in which I imagine it's happening more often than not, and I then do the statistical analysis by looking for every appearance of the pattern over the past 4 weeks to see if there's any significance to it, or if I was merely remembering the successes and ignoring the failures. If a 4-week review shows promise, I continue to evaluate the setup until I have a sample size that satisfies me.
I probably did this the hard way, but it's done. I've been trading the same two core setups for a long time now.