Quote from babe714:
was doing some replay tonite . I really think this is a great system , don't let my ineptitude in implementing it make anyone think it doesn't work. Will just focus on the first few hours after the open .
The fact that you actually went through replay is a good sign. Kudos to you.
First, try to veer your thinking away from stops. A catastrophe stop is necessary, but stops otherwise encourage the trader to relinquish control and responsibility for his trades and let the market take over. But the trader is responsible for everything, and blaming something or somebody else for his failures is a road too commonly traveled by beginners (and not-so-beginners). Look instead to buyers and sellers and what they're doing.
Your first sign that a short is appropriate, only confirmed by your line, is that rapid failure at the last attempt at a higher high. Clearly selling pressure is greater than buying pressure. You don't know why. You don't need to know why. You need only to recognize the fact of it. This in and of itself increases the probability that your short will succeed. Don't, therefore, throw away the opportunity just because price hiccups. Traders have this thought in their heads, recognized or not, that price should immediately react once they've hit the transmit button, that if they initiate a short, price should plunge instantly. The irrationality of this should be obvious, yet it is pervasive. One should therefore strenuously avoid the temptation to entertain the notion that the market not only cares about what one does but that it is somehow reacting to it. The market is an elephant. The trader is a gnat.
Therefore, when price "turns against" you after your entry, try not to be concerned so much as interested in what buyers and sellers are doing. If you have clearly defined what it means for a trade to go wrong, then by all means act. If you haven't, then you shouldn't be in the trade at all. But in this situation, price is simply doing what price does, and it poses no threat to you. Not only can price not even reach the last swing high, it can't even sustain the effort, failing immediately within the same bar interval. This is clear even if one is not watching this live. After this, there is not a single bar that moves against you until you reach this end of this particular run.
It helps to consider what you would think about all of this if you weren't in a trade. If you have fear issues, those have to be addressed, but the idea that your trade is of any importance must be set aside. Otherwise this will drive you as crazy as any other approach.
Also notice the level 3330.
