Birth of a trader

Quote from Laissez Faire:

Looking through my notes this weekend, I found out that it was NoDoji who wrote this in her journal. If I may, NoDoji:

"That's when I started entering trades around the price zone I would've placed a stop had I entered when I first thought I'd miss the move."

:)
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Ah yes, that was a worthy lesson from my counter-trend days. :eek:
 
Iv took a look at some of your trades and I think your waiting on to much confirmation. You need some kind of timing indicator. JMO
 
Quote from Joman:

Interesting, I thought about that stuff too: I came to the conclusion that if you wait for the price to retrace a bit you're going to miss the BEST moves that do not retrace and keep chasing an entry.

Do you think that overall it is better to wait for a small retrace and giving up entries in stronger swing ?
I understand that you're keen on backtesting so you may give us your insight on what the best entries are :)

Thanks to all for your valuable comments, much appreciate this journal.
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Most of what I have learned has been due to staggering losses of doing the same things over and over. Last several months I have changed my view of day trading from making the most money to a much reduced amount of losing trades. My goal each week is 10% or less losing trades, most of the time I have less, and in order to do less, I skip certain trades I use to take. The way I figure it now as I am in my fifties, less trading means less stress, but smoother equity curve. My profit day based on all signals will go down, but since my losses have gone down, I can trade more contracts.

Crude Oil has been the best of 40 markets I have day traded through the years based on true price action, meaning Head/Shoulder patterns, triangles, double tops/bottoms and retracements. But reason so many still lose, the Crude is very much like the Nasdaq where it explodes out of a trendline, only to come back and take out the weak hands. Now on larger timeframes, I am more inclined to take breakouts, but not on shorter.

But I still use indicators too, EMA's, TSI and I keep track of volume.

And if I miss a move, I can do NoDoji's new high/low move.
 
Quote from NoDoji:

Giving out trade secrets now, eh? :D

I started doing this pretty regularly lately. I call it the "second mouse" entry. The risk is possibly missing a move, but as you said it works especially well in a new trend and out of low volume ranges where there are many false breakouts before the real move transpires.
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Hi Donna,

My time for day trading is reducing due to my ongoing medical problems that just won't go away. So I am going to probably have to stop day trading within next four months or so, just too hard to get up early and get out of bed. I don't trade well sedated, LOL.

I have found you can give people your Holy Grail of advise and they will still screw it up. Sometimes I just think, when you are ready to start making money trading, you will.
 
Quote from Laissez Faire:


I remember reading somewhere that when a neophyte trader wants to execute a trade at a certain price level, he should instead look to execute his trade where he initially planned to place his stop for that trade. Maybe there`s something to it :)
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Actually, this is actually how I day trade the ES. Most traders draw trendlines on tops of bars and sell, I draw trendlines on the bottoms of bars, and using volume, but when price is dropping like a rock. I buy a total of 8 price levels going down and then reevaluate my trade. But I only do this in the ES as it is a congestive market and I am a scalper of handful of tics from original price. I am not doing anything new, you just got to have big balls to trade this way. You just have to learn when to pull all orders when volume is not right. Of all the systems I have tested thru the years, this approach and a couple of others are the only ones that I can trade ending with reduced amount of loses for the week.

But whether it is the ES or Crude Oil, the money management rules have to be in place. I will only stay at risk for so many minutes after entry. I have found the best profitable trades let me get in quickly and take off, and after so many minutes, if price come back to entry, time to take a one tic profit. Want to make enough for lunch or another bottle of vitamins.
 
My pre-market analysis was spot on, but failed to capitalize on it. I was expecting CL to drop and 6E to rise. On CL, the 60 min chart was showing a very well formed pullback, but on the 5 min chart I didn't see a clear entry. I watched patiently as CL dropped 120 ticks. The one good thing to come out of that was I was able to collect more data on the break out (break down) of the 88.23 level. Only 6 ticks of heat on that.

After the big drop, CL moved sideways. After an hour or so and a test of the LOD, CL broke out of the range and exceeded the 88.23 pivot low, so I was looking for at least 2 legs up. I didn't take the 2nd leg because the pullback bar had too much downward momentum. I was expecting a down move, but it went up again. The 3rd leg up made a HH, but nothing great, so I was now expecting a down move.

Trade #1
The down move from the 3rd push up didn't make a LL and ended with a small hammer straddling the EMA. Went long on the 3rd pullback, acutely aware of the overall down trend and the potential resistance at 88.23 and trailed the stop. Out BE +1.

On the 6E side, I didn't take the first pullback at 05:15 because of the double top that had formed at 1.3572. The two previous bars poked through that level before falling back. That would have been a very nice entry.

The other nice entry that I didn't take was the IB at 06:40 that broke out of yesterday's high.

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Quote from frank8800:

My pre-market analysis was spot on, but failed to capitalize on it. I was expecting CL to drop and 6E to rise. On CL, the 60 min chart was showing a very well formed pullback, but on the 5 min chart I didn't see a clear entry. I watched patiently as CL dropped 120 ticks. The one good thing to come out of that was I was able to collect more data on the break out (break down) of the 88.23 level. Only 6 ticks of heat on that.

After the big drop, CL moved sideways. After an hour or so and a test of the LOD, CL broke out of the range and exceeded the 88.23 pivot low, so I was looking for at least 2 legs up. I didn't take the 2nd leg because the pullback bar had too much downward momentum. I was expecting a down move, but it went up again. The 3rd leg up made a HH, but nothing great, so I was now expecting a down move.

Trade #1
The down move from the 3rd push up didn't make a LL and ended with a small hammer straddling the EMA. Went long on the 3rd pullback, acutely aware of the overall down trend and the potential resistance at 88.23 and trailed the stop. Out BE +1.

On the 6E side, I didn't take the first pullback at 05:15 because of the double top that had formed at 1.3572. The two previous bars poked through that level before falling back. That would have been a very nice entry.

The other nice entry that I didn't take was the IB at 06:40 that broke out of yesterday's high.

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Why would you take a long there? Just wondering. That was a counter trend trade. The only Time i would take a counter trend trade is at or near S/R. I really think you need a way to time your entries. Trend wouldn't of changed until price broke 88.25 and closed above there with decent volume. Look at how the buys started to dry up around the price you went long ( less volume on the green bars). Just my two cents. Happy trading
 
The only reason that I can figure that he went long is looking at the hammers that formed on the previous 2 bars. If it was me I would have been closer to the bottom of the hammers trying to go long and see how it tested the high around 88.20. However, since I don't see the previous downtrend having any kind of retracement. I would be thinking double top or short side retracement as the overall trend would continue.
 
Quote from djmartin:

Why would you take a long there? Just wondering. That was a counter trend trade. The only Time i would take a counter trend trade is at or near S/R. I really think you need a way to time your entries. Trend wouldn't of changed until price broke 88.25 and closed above there with decent volume. Look at how the buys started to dry up around the price you went long ( less volume on the green bars). Just my two cents. Happy trading
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Thanks for your input DJ, I'm still working on a 'few' things.

I went long there because CL just broke out from a range after a big down move, and there were 3 legs up making HH's, and the pullback from the last push up closed above the EMA with a hammer. I was aware of the resistance at 88.23 and the fact that CL had already retraced 50% of its move down.
 
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