I am getting my butt handed to me on a daily basis!

[jeredlbb]

Quote from NoDoji:



Not sure what "try" means here. Do you have a disability that prevents you from seeing your setups and putting on and taking off trades in a timely manner?

I do miss trades now and then. Of course, the ones I miss are the ones which end up making the highest return.

I guess when I said before that my confidence was unshaken I meant unshaken in the fact that I do not doubt whether or not I can succeed ultimately. I am not, however, that confident in my strategy.

 

[MrN]

Here is an exercise. Go over your brokerage statements and figure out the total amount of commissions and fees you have paid during the time you have been trading. Then compare this number to the amount of your total loses expressed as a %.

Next, do this same exercise again, but this time add 12.50 (bid-ask spread) * total number of trades to the amount you have paid in commissions and fees. Once again, compare this number to the total amount of your loses, expressed as a %.

This will give you an idea of if you are basically just throwing darts (losing transaction costs) or are actually making trades that actually have a negative expectation beyond that.

Quote from jeredlbb:

I am new to trading, but I am not at the same time. I got my start in hedging for a grain elevator that I owned back in the mid 1990's.

In all I have traded off and on for 20 years. I have had big runs of success and failure. I have consistently traded commodities. Lately only the ES.

Recently I came to a place in my life where I had the opportunity to trade full time. In the past, mostly, I was trading around other things in my life.

My first day to trade as a full time trader was March 27th, 2013. I am down 82% from where I started.

I work 8-15 hours a day 5-7 days a week trying to figure out what my edge may be. I obviously have not found one yet.

My confidence is unshaken. But, maybe that is a bad thing...

My fear is that with all of my work, reading and such that I am still not making forward progress.

I guess I already know that you probably can't give me any concrete answers. And, I guess, I am not really asking for any. Hell, I don't even know what to ask for.

I learn as I go from the mistakes I make; or at least I try to learn. I clearly see all the ways I started wrong. But, am I truly closer to being profitable?

I guess reading some of the posts by Jack Hershey and others I realize how far I have yet to go. I wonder if my early successes have hurt me rather than helped me.

My "system" is a technical one based on price action and volume. No indicators. Well, I use ATR to help place stops. I generally try to find term trends and or play reversals.

I am not looking for sympathy, but I sure don't need more ass kicking...the market has provided me with plenty of that.

 

[MarkBrown]

do this when you want to buy -instead sell- then place a buy 2 sar some amount you determine above like 2 points. be sure and move the stop down as you make money from the sell. this is a quick easy no pain way to be right in the wrong direction. paper it and see how it works.

 

[jeredlbb]

Quote from Laissez Faire:

In my opinion, you should not be learning and developing a method by trial and error with real money.

You may end up being right.

 

[NoDoji]

Quote from jeredlbb:

I trade pin bars as a reversal. I have attempted to filter out the pin bars that fail from the pin bars that lead to reversals. My filter is based on ATR and surrounding bars.

I guess in a way I am trading swings intraday. My time frames range from 15min to 4hour. I have been experimenting with tick bar charts as well.

I am starting to learn C# to try to begin to back test thoroughly. As of now I manually back test three or four months. I see that even that is subjective in some ways and can lead to errors. Your recommendations? I was using Tradestation, but recently changed to MultiCharts .NET

I am currently reading Trading in the Zone per Visaria's suggestion.

You're still experimenting (in the R&D phase), so avoid live trading until you have a plan, applied the rules to 500 appearances of your chosen setups and logged the results, then practiced in demo mode until you're consistently profitable and stick with your plan.

I manually backtested. I had a core setup and a method of entry and with my spreadsheet open I logged the stats surrounding every entry. The only filter during that phase was no trades withing 10 minutes of a major news release. Every appearance of the core setup had to be logged and evaluated.

Do you know the win rate % and risk:reward ratio of your pin bar strategy applied to, say, 500 appearances of the setup?

 

[jeredlbb]

Quote from NoDoji:

Do you know the win rate % and risk:reward ratio of your pin bar strategy applied to, say, 500 appearances of the setup?

No, because I have not back tested that much. My trading method has a built in reward/risk ratio of about 3:1.

Quote from NoDoji:

You're still experimenting (in the R&D phase), so avoid live trading until you have a plan, applied the rules to 500 appearances of your chosen setups and logged the results, then practiced in demo mode until you're consistently profitable and stick with your plan.

I manually backtested. I had a core setup and a method of entry and with my spreadsheet open I logged the stats surrounding every entry. The only filter during that phase was no trades withing 10 minutes of a major news release. Every appearance of the core setup had to be logged and evaluated.

I'll back test further. I'll back test to 500 occurrences.

 

[athlonmank8]

Pin bars, engulfing etc should be used in context of support and resistance. Bar closes inside and outside of key levels are even more important IMO.

NoDoji has the best advice as usual. Ignore the rest of the dicks on here. They're just taking their week out on you.

 

[jeredlbb]

Quote from athlonmank8:

Pin bars, engulfing etc should be used in context of support and resistance. Bar closes inside and outside of key levels are even more important IMO.

NoDoji has the best advice as usual. Ignore the rest of the dicks on here. They're just taking their week out on you.

Thanks for your good words sir...

 

[NY_HOOD]

Its gambling and you are trading against computer generated systems which cause big whip saws that cause stops. You will make more money working at walmart, trust me.

 

[jeredlbb]

Quote from athlonmank8:

Pin bars, engulfing etc should be used in context of support and resistance. Bar closes inside and outside of key levels are even more important IMO.

NoDoji has the best advice as usual. Ignore the rest of the dicks on here. They're just taking their week out on you.

I feel like I am good at identifying these support and resistance levels. Maybe I am not as good at it as I think. Would you suggest a way I might get better at it? A book or something that you found helpful.