I'm sure we will evolve to where we are supposed to be. Hope all is well with you otherwise.
Hooti's Journey
- Thread starter Hooti
- Start date
I'm sure we will evolve to where we are supposed to be. Hope all is well with you otherwise.
Thanks. I'm sure there are people trading here with worse problems than mine. Life just chews you up sometimes!
My yard man was here yesterday and he was talking about linda ronstat. He is 1/2 hispanic and he was proud that she was the same. BTW my brother's X-wife worked for the Ronstats for awhile!
So we sang some tunes of her's and "it's so easy to fall in love" stuck in my head.
At 1:46 in the morning I woke up with a musical nightmare!
Horrors!
The words had morphed into...
Linda singing:
"I'm to busy to fall in love... Oh oooh oh
I'm to busy, busy busy... I'm to busy, busy, busy!"
*sigh*
IMHO when life chews on you, one of the better things to do is just get back to work.
Which I'd better do now
If I can just get that song out of my head!
My yard man was here yesterday and he was talking about linda ronstat. He is 1/2 hispanic and he was proud that she was the same. BTW my brother's X-wife worked for the Ronstats for awhile!
So we sang some tunes of her's and "it's so easy to fall in love" stuck in my head.
At 1:46 in the morning I woke up with a musical nightmare!
Horrors!
The words had morphed into...
Linda singing:
"I'm to busy to fall in love... Oh oooh oh
I'm to busy, busy busy... I'm to busy, busy, busy!"
*sigh*
IMHO when life chews on you, one of the better things to do is just get back to work.
Which I'd better do now
If I can just get that song out of my head!
Spent the last 3 days stuffing my head with Al Brooks videos, and class homework...
I tend to overthink think, and trade jumping in/out... after putting so much in my head. One trade is enough!
Guess the market is in a Holiday phase too. It's good experience to be a part of that. Know more what to expect next year.
I tend to overthink think, and trade jumping in/out... after putting so much in my head. One trade is enough!
Guess the market is in a Holiday phase too. It's good experience to be a part of that. Know more what to expect next year.
Here's my thought, always easy after the fact:
Low volume, tight range lately, and a strong "previous resistance could become support" zone around 1251.00-1251.50. These levels will be worked every time unless a news event triggers a price move right through them. Since the short trigger point was approaching the R becomes S zone by the time you decided to go short, expectations shouldn't be too high for a big move. If I took that trade, I'd bail if price didn't break 1251.50 on the first push. Then you could try another short, with-trend pullback pivot break entry of the 10:40am ET low @ 1252.50 and scrap it b/e when once again there's no follow through. Time to start looking for a range breakout after that.
Make a note of key S/R levels before you begin trading. It will help you decide whether the potential risk:reward is worth it, or if it's better to wait for the next setup.
I will often try the trades anyway, even if a key S/R level is nearby, because if they do break, the move can be awesome, BUT I will exit very quickly if there's no follow through. That's why at least half my trades each day (and sometimes more) tend to be b/e trades, because you just never know when the market will surprise you.
Hooti,
Remember, Al Brooks is a self-professed, over-confident perfectionist. He said that even to trade his methods, you need to have at least a 67% winning pct in order not to blow out your account. Why? Because his scalping methods on the ES call for risking 1 dollar in order to extract 50 cents on average from the market. He is placing buy/sell stops, giving himself a 2 pt stop and looking for a 1 pt target.
Because the CL contract has such great volatility, you can get out many times on a break even on the false breakouts in order to get to the good ones. Otherwise, why on earth would Donna be getting farked out of her positions 50% of the time if buy/sell stop with-the-trend was so great and STILL be making $400+ per day just on 1 CL contract? Answer: because she chokes off all of those potential losers for b/e + 1 tick. That's not skill. That's taking advantage of the higher volatility levels the CL provides in order to protect the position.
The ES is different. You get no such leeway there on using that loss control method simply because the ES has lower volatility characteristics. The big money in that contract thrives off of faking out the non-pros, draining their accounts as they buy/sell at the wrong times relative to readings on the NYSE TICK.
Al Brooks survives price pullbacks differently (and he has to because of the nature of how the ES moves). He gives a wider stop and takes 1 pt scalps because he (personally) can get that 80% win pct level consistently. He makes up for the small wins by trading large size. If the majority of his trading days were 67% winners or lower, he's already warned that he too would be dead meat.
Common sense should tell you that the higher volatility contracts offer you more trading opportunities where your winning pct does not have to be a key factor in your long-term success. Why? Because you can find more reward to risk ratio opportunities which are 2 : 1 in your favor WITHOUT interim pullbacks to achieve them.
Best of luck to you. I'll say this one last time. Once you start trading the CL, you won't want to trade the ES. The higher volatility is your friend.
Remember, Al Brooks is a self-professed, over-confident perfectionist. He said that even to trade his methods, you need to have at least a 67% winning pct in order not to blow out your account. Why? Because his scalping methods on the ES call for risking 1 dollar in order to extract 50 cents on average from the market. He is placing buy/sell stops, giving himself a 2 pt stop and looking for a 1 pt target.
Because the CL contract has such great volatility, you can get out many times on a break even on the false breakouts in order to get to the good ones. Otherwise, why on earth would Donna be getting farked out of her positions 50% of the time if buy/sell stop with-the-trend was so great and STILL be making $400+ per day just on 1 CL contract? Answer: because she chokes off all of those potential losers for b/e + 1 tick. That's not skill. That's taking advantage of the higher volatility levels the CL provides in order to protect the position.
The ES is different. You get no such leeway there on using that loss control method simply because the ES has lower volatility characteristics. The big money in that contract thrives off of faking out the non-pros, draining their accounts as they buy/sell at the wrong times relative to readings on the NYSE TICK.
Al Brooks survives price pullbacks differently (and he has to because of the nature of how the ES moves). He gives a wider stop and takes 1 pt scalps because he (personally) can get that 80% win pct level consistently. He makes up for the small wins by trading large size. If the majority of his trading days were 67% winners or lower, he's already warned that he too would be dead meat.
Common sense should tell you that the higher volatility contracts offer you more trading opportunities where your winning pct does not have to be a key factor in your long-term success. Why? Because you can find more reward to risk ratio opportunities which are 2 : 1 in your favor WITHOUT interim pullbacks to achieve them.
Best of luck to you. I'll say this one last time. Once you start trading the CL, you won't want to trade the ES. The higher volatility is your friend.
Breakouts in CL kick booty. They either work really well or your loss is small (if you follow rules) or non-existent (if you're a chicken-shit trader like me)
I only play breakouts in CL when I'm not already positioned in advance for the breakout. My primary goal is to be positioned for the breakout in the first place based on a PROPER with-trend entry. If you trade ES that way (position yourself properly with the trend) then it's really the same as any other trading instrument.
Hooti has what it takes to trade ES. That said, I think he also has what it takes to trade CL. The ingredients to trading CL successfully off a 5-min chart are (in order of importance): inviolable risk management rules, an edge, trust, patience.
Everything SteveH says here is true. Especially the part about how I use volatility, not skill. No doubt.