Great system but no b*lls

[bighog]

As for trading the ES, agree that there are in general only on average 3 to 4 very decent trades per day that have the odds to show 5 handles per move. Like D says, sometimes you get a beauty that goes further but we can not depend on those to maintain a nice daily handle average.

Now naturally we run into whipsaws that skew the number of trades per day. Also some of us might like to book a certain number of handles and reconsider the situation, depends on the individual. Futures trading is about keeping what the mkt gives you before it evaporates.

I prefer to do a bit more size and shoot for the Gold setups. 5 Gold setups are all you need in ES, double cross, early range breakout or early fade of initial pop, 1-2-3-4 reversals, hook continuations if working the retraces..............REVERSALS in ES are where the action is unless we have a trend day like last wednesday, those have been rare since QE2. Lets hope the fed talks a powder and leaves us alone to our own poison.

 

[Blotto]

Quote from Cheese:

Lots of stuff appear to work theoretically and they need to work much better than "profits weren't huge".

There appear to be three classes of potential traders with regard to "profits weren't huge".

1) Traders who accept less than huge profits. This includes the person who wants to grind out $200/day, all those who wish to trade for a "living", and others after easier money but without the ambition to build a personal fortune. This class are doomed to failure, either immediately or through grinding out for years without making any serious financial progress - or as you would term "anything less than total victory is an eventual journey back to defeat". Ultimately the lack of huge profits is the result of not having a sufficiently accurate methodology and the ambition to build and deploy one.

2) The big dreamers of huge profits. The big ego guys who turn up at the exchange with a $10k account and claim that they will rule the pit. Those who spend more time procrastinating about trading than doing productive work. Those who spend all day on the Internet discussing their system, the markets, everything else but who achieve mediocre results if at all. Includes many hobby traders and those who aren't yet trading. May not have the necessary abilities or motivation.

3) Traders who have the ambition and drive to work towards trading at a high level of skill and understanding, with world class trading and a personal fortune as the goal. Appropriate levels of intelligence, hard work, and dedication required. Some of these people will discover that despite their efforts they do not have a temperament suitable to trading. Those who have the temperament and the other abilities will be very successful.

 

[stock777]

Quote from RCG Trader:

All technical systems are essentially the same, so we don't need to know the rules as much as his market and his risk.

Really? Well in that case, can you post the system you are referring to, the mother of all systems?

"Please, just let me break even"

 

[RCG Trader]

Quote from stock777:

Really? Well in that case, can you post the system you are referring to, the mother of all systems?

"Please, just let me break even"

How did you extrapolate my saying, all technical systems are basically the same, to my having the mother of all systems? I have posted charts of my system before, go look them up.

 

[stock777]

Quote from RCG Trader:

How did you extrapolate my saying, all technical systems are basically the same, to my having the mother of all systems? I have posted charts of my system before, go look them up.

Do you really want to say all technical systems are basically the same?

You've said it twice here now, if you say it a third time you may have to take irrevocable ownership of the silly thing.

 

[surfer25]

I think this is very good information and generally quite accurate.

Quote from NoDoji:


My written trading plan consists of:

Minimum monthly profit required

Description of market research and results of that research. (This is where I did daily analysis to define setups that appear a certain number of times a day, result in a minimum profit target X% of the time, and offer a risk:ratio that, combined with the average win rate, produces the minimum profit required through varying market conditions.)

Definition of market environments in my trading time frame (range, channel, trend)

Description of setups (with-trend, counter-trend, range plays)

Filter criteria (factors, such as major news events, that exclude otherwise qualified trades)

Rules for entry, stop loss and minimum profit target for each type of setup

Criteria for stop-and-reverse scenarios

Rules for adapting to changing conditions (price range and volatility)


Once you have a trading plan like this and reproduce the results in simulation (or via an automated system), I'm pretty sure it's normal to take it live and screw it up by micro-managing the trades instead of following the rules. Even those who automate are at risk of overriding the system.

Once you realize that messing with the plan causes failure, and you finally learn to simply follow the plan, trading is like an assembly-line job where you know exactly what to look for and what to do when you see it.

There's no hesitation any more because you've done the work necessary to trust that the end result will be the same as the results during the testing phases.

There is no fear of losses, because you know that individual losses are meaningless at the end of the day/week as long as you follow the plan without fail.