ES Journal - 2012

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Quote from ammo:

the spot to go long is 30- 31,this is just a brief stop,that cleavage is a strong magnet
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yeah you're right...we do have that weak dble bottom and a test of yesterday's low (38) isn't too much of a stretch. but this was basically a stupid brain dead trade.

My stop is in 5 ticks below my entry. Gonna get some sleep.
 
Quote from gmst:

Talking about the break, in my experience, its a very healthy thing to take from time to time. Just taking 2-3 weeks of break and either going for a holiday or even better immersing yourself in research, helps "me" a lot - i hope its the same for others also.

The biggest improvements I see on my trading of taking breaks are first it allows me to take a step back from daily madness of markets and gives me time to think, to analyse and to look at the bigger picture. Sometimes there are revelations, sometimes this break allows me to condition my brain into instilling some of the wisdom that I have picked up over the last few months in the market into my daily behavior.

I know above is very obtuse, but I will give an example to clarify what I have on my mind. For example, this time around, I immersed myself into some serious research on ES. I went bar by bar for ES 5min chart for last 16 months, first seeing if I can identify any patters etc. Secondly, I traded moving chart bar by bar. It took me around 2 to 3 weeks of work, working 5-8 hrs everyday. I basically ended up learning following lessons:

1. It is extremely hard to look at a bar in ES and trade based on it. Algos or just the fact that is a combination of 500 individual tickers, make a bar by bar trading approach very hard. Most of the time it is pure noise and my ability to correctly call the direction is probably something like 40% - if I go bar by bar on ES.

2. However, if I wait and restrict myself to just 1 or 2 trades per day, then I start to show some improvement in my discretionary trading ability.

3. Also, analysis of my equity curve suggests that just taking 1 trade per day or maybe 2 on some days and skipping some days will reduce my DD significantly and will help me experience much superior returns.

The final advantage of taking a break is helping the psychological aspect of overtrading. Once you haven't traded for 10 days, haven't even looked at your platform, it helps you dramatically overcome the problem of overtrading when you are back to trading. You just grow calmer.

Just my thoughts that I experienced.
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I agree. The most important work is not done during trading hours. Learning to trade by trading; not sure if that`s a good idea unless one knows what one is looking at from having put in the necessary preparations first.

I also agree that looking at any single bar is fairly useless. And why 5 minutes, right? Context is everything and one needs to look at prior bars leading up to that bar and most importantly in ES; the different technical horizontal levels.

Now, how the hell did you go through 16 months of history in 2-3 weeks? :)

I think I averaged 45 minutes per trading day when doing a similar type of backtesting, plotting levels first, anticipating scenarios for the day and then trading it bar by bar, taking notes, etc. :)
 
Quote from tortoise:

yeah you're right...we do have that weak dble bottom and a test of yesterday's low (38) isn't too much of a stretch. but this was basically a stupid brain dead trade.

My stop is in 5 ticks below my entry. Gonna get some sleep.
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well, the stupid brain-dead trade worked.

then again, it's a stupid brain-dead market.
 
Quote from skyriderfox:

Getting out long after a roughly 80 point up move since 12/5/12...wasn't an easy ride initially.

Goin' short here at 1335. Target 1288-1290 or so.
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Wow SRF.... that was quite a trade!
 
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