I have bought Al Brooks' Trading Course
- Thread starter Visaria
- Start date
You are welcome. Glad you liked what was written. As far as what exactly I look for in a set up or examples on a chart ? I posted on Surf's thread my whole feeling on that. I don't share what exactly I do on here. I'm not trying to sound like some stuck up trader or come across with an ego, but I work my ass off at trading so I don't want to just offer it out. The way I trade is not for everyone....trust me. Guys on my desk in the past (some of them good friends) don't have the patience to do it and wouldn't want to do it. It's a lot of waiting around for the right set up, and then pouncing.
Also I am not a fan of criticizing or trashing others strategies. If it works for the trader and they are profitable over the long run then great, go for it. I don't care if it's using fibonacci retracements, market profile, studying COT reports......if it works for you that's all that matters.
No, that's not what I'm inquiring at all. My point is this - if you're making 20% in your long term account with a relatively small effort, how much would you see yourself needing to make day trading for day trading to be worth your while?
If you're netting 20% on your long-term account, would you be happy with 10% on your day trading account? Or would you need to make substantially more for day trading to be worth it?
The main reason I chose day trading is because of the huge profit potential and the possibillity to increase position size in a liquid market. If I only were to make an income that I could match or outperform in a long-term account, why bother?
So I guess I'm asking if you think the Brooks approach will allow you to craft a methodology that's very profitable?
What I have or rather am developing is a complete quantitative model of the market which will remain secret for obvious reasons.
However, if you're interested, Brett Steenbarger has some ideas on how to implement statistical sorting. You can find it on his blog and his book 'The Daily Trading Coach'. I suggest that much more sophistication is needed, but it's a very good start.
Just start keeping OHLC data in Excel and try to code it according to certain criteria.
It's also very helpful to do something as simple as looking at average N-day volatility. Also maximum or minimums. That will at least let you know what to expect.
Now it’s my turn to be curious, Laissez. Are you successful with your trading, and if so, do you rely on it, and are you making a comfortable living at it (I'm not interested in the actual amount you make, just if it's enough). How long have you been trading? How long did it take you to become successful? Any particular trading education along the way...courses, books, dvd's, etc?
Unlike others in this thread and on this board, I've always been completely transparent about my operations and I've never made an effort to be a mentor. And whenever I have discussed trading or gotten inquiries from people wanting to learn, I've let them know where I'm at such to not lead anyone on. And I've certainly never told anyone, 'Just put in the work and you'll be successful' or 'Just study Brooks and Douglas very hard and you'll become rich'. No...
Quick resume:
- First attempt at trading was swing trading stocks and I'll say I was extremely successful during my short time period of trading. I probably had a bit of luck as well.
- Having been that successful without really knowing much, the sky should be the limit with some 'education', right? I read and studied roughly 100 books, put together a trading plan and started day trading a year later. Blew the whole account away.
- Back to the drawing board. Studied a lot of Brooks here, actually. Put together a better plan and went back to day trading. My first month back was very successful. I utilized the current huge volatility very well. I then got greedy, put on size and lost again. I didn't blow the account this time, but I decided to cash in and quit to pay my rent. At this time, I felt I could read the market very well and I was rarely surprised by anything that happened. I could frequently be right about target levels and get the day high and day low roughly correct. Still, I would botch up with poor trades.
I'd say part of the reason I failed was that I was short on capital and tried to make a living or a killing since I didn't have income at the time. But in the end, my methodology was not robust enough and it was too subjective. That's the truth.
So, after that, I took a long break and was exhausted and depressed about spending so much of my life on this pursuit with nothing to show for it but debt. I mean, I could have held a master degree with the same effort.
But, I decided to get back at it. My last trade was a swing trade in Statoil that netted me close to 100% with little effort. I was not sure whether to go back to day trading or not, but I decided to do so based on the huge profit potential and because of the knowledge I already had acquired and the stuff I had developed. Right now school is my main pursuit, but I keep developing my model and market understanding on the side.
This time, however, I won't start trading until I have something that's really good. The rough model is in place, but there's much more to be done. Perhaps I'll go live next fall.
Aggressive and passive HFT operate to either provide or take away liquidity as fast as possible in relation to detected institutional trading patterns, which are usually based on VWAP and TWAP technical analysis, Google some academic articles on the subject of HFT + algorithms.
No, that's not what I'm inquiring at all. My point is this - if you're making 20% in your long term account with a relatively small effort, how much would you see yourself needing to make day trading for day trading to be worth your while?
If you're netting 20% on your long-term account, would you be happy with 10% on your day trading account? Or would you need to make substantially more for day trading to be worth it?
The main reason I chose day trading is because of the huge profit potential and the possibillity to increase position size in a liquid market. If I only were to make an income that I could match or outperform in a long-term account, why bother?
So I guess I'm asking if you think the Brooks approach will allow you to craft a methodology that's very profitable?
What I have or rather am developing is a complete quantitative model of the market which will remain secret for obvious reasons.
However, if you're interested, Brett Steenbarger has some ideas on how to implement statistical sorting. You can find it on his blog and his book 'The Daily Trading Coach'. I suggest that much more sophistication is needed, but it's a very good start.
Just start keeping OHLC data in Excel and try to code it according to certain criteria.
It's also very helpful to do something as simple as looking at average N-day volatility. Also maximum or minimums. That will at least let you know what to expect.
Unlike others in this thread and on this board, I've always been completely transparent about my operations and I've never made an effort to be a mentor. And whenever I have discussed trading or gotten inquiries from people wanting to learn, I've let them know where I'm at such to not lead anyone on. And I've certainly never told anyone, 'Just put in the work and you'll be successful' or 'Just study Brooks and Douglas very hard and you'll become rich'. No...
Quick resume:
- First attempt at trading was swing trading stocks and I'll say I was extremely successful during my short time period of trading. I probably had a bit of luck as well.
- Having been that successful without really knowing much, the sky should be the limit with some 'education', right? I read and studied roughly 100 books, put together a trading plan and started day trading a year later. Blew the whole account away.
- Back to the drawing board. Studied a lot of Brooks here, actually. Put together a better plan and went back to day trading. My first month back was very successful. I utilized the current huge volatility very well. I then got greedy, put on size and lost again. I didn't blow the account this time, but I decided to cash in and quit to pay my rent. At this time, I felt I could read the market very well and I was rarely surprised by anything that happened. I could frequently be right about target levels and get the day high and day low roughly correct. Still, I would botch up with poor trades.
I'd say part of the reason I failed was that I was short on capital and tried to make a living or a killing since I didn't have income at the time. But in the end, my methodology was not robust enough and it was too subjective. That's the truth.
So, after that, I took a long break and was exhausted and depressed about spending so much of my life on this pursuit with nothing to show for it but debt. I mean, I could have held a master degree with the same effort.
But, I decided to get back at it. My last trade was a swing trade in Statoil that netted me close to 100% with little effort. I was not sure whether to go back to day trading or not, but I decided to do so based on the huge profit potential and because of the knowledge I already had acquired and the stuff I had developed. Right now school is my main pursuit, but I keep developing my model and market understanding on the side.
This time, however, I won't start trading until I have something that's really good. The rough model is in place, but there's much more to be done. Perhaps I'll go live next fall.
thx much for sharing.
wishing you the very best in the future and may your trading successes be speedy and prompt, whenever you decide to do it all over again.
keep us posted if you have the time, K?
just remember, the same profitable setups in the morning sessions, would not be always
profitable in the afternoon sessions, many times. and that is the fact of life. chow.
I'm guessing you haven't read the academic studies on HFT.
No, that's not what I'm inquiring at all. My point is this - if you're making 20% in your long term account with a relatively small effort, how much would you see yourself needing to make day trading for day trading to be worth your while?
If you're netting 20% on your long-term account, would you be happy with 10% on your day trading account? Or would you need to make substantially more for day trading to be worth it?
The main reason I chose day trading is because of the huge profit potential and the possibillity to increase position size in a liquid market. If I only were to make an income that I could match or outperform in a long-term account, why bother?
So I guess I'm asking if you think the Brooks approach will allow you to craft a methodology that's very profitable?
What I have or rather am developing is a complete quantitative model of the market which will remain secret for obvious reasons.
However, if you're interested, Brett Steenbarger has some ideas on how to implement statistical sorting. You can find it on his blog and his book 'The Daily Trading Coach'. I suggest that much more sophistication is needed, but it's a very good start.
Just start keeping OHLC data in Excel and try to code it according to certain criteria.
It's also very helpful to do something as simple as looking at average N-day volatility. Also maximum or minimums. That will at least let you know what to expect.
Unlike others in this thread and on this board, I've always been completely transparent about my operations and I've never made an effort to be a mentor. And whenever I have discussed trading or gotten inquiries from people wanting to learn, I've let them know where I'm at such to not lead anyone on. And I've certainly never told anyone, 'Just put in the work and you'll be successful' or 'Just study Brooks and Douglas very hard and you'll become rich'. No...
Quick resume:
- First attempt at trading was swing trading stocks and I'll say I was extremely successful during my short time period of trading. I probably had a bit of luck as well.
- Having been that successful without really knowing much, the sky should be the limit with some 'education', right? I read and studied roughly 100 books, put together a trading plan and started day trading a year later. Blew the whole account away.
- Back to the drawing board. Studied a lot of Brooks here, actually. Put together a better plan and went back to day trading. My first month back was very successful. I utilized the current huge volatility very well. I then got greedy, put on size and lost again. I didn't blow the account this time, but I decided to cash in and quit to pay my rent. At this time, I felt I could read the market very well and I was rarely surprised by anything that happened. I could frequently be right about target levels and get the day high and day low roughly correct. Still, I would botch up with poor trades.
I'd say part of the reason I failed was that I was short on capital and tried to make a living or a killing since I didn't have income at the time. But in the end, my methodology was not robust enough and it was too subjective. That's the truth.
So, after that, I took a long break and was exhausted and depressed about spending so much of my life on this pursuit with nothing to show for it but debt. I mean, I could have held a master degree with the same effort.
But, I decided to get back at it. My last trade was a swing trade in Statoil that netted me close to 100% with little effort. I was not sure whether to go back to day trading or not, but I decided to do so based on the huge profit potential and because of the knowledge I already had acquired and the stuff I had developed. Right now school is my main pursuit, but I keep developing my model and market understanding on the side.
This time, however, I won't start trading until I have something that's really good. The rough model is in place, but there's much more to be done. Perhaps I'll go live next fall.
I understand your question now. I started with the smaller account after taking my break, and played with wide stops and targets on the daily and weekly charts , sitting in some of those plays for days and weeks using the entry signals described in Brooks’ books and others (about 100 for me, too... I'll dig them out one day and list them...only have a few sitting out now {Brooks}). When I started making gains, I started thinking about trading smaller time frames again (daytrading) to make faster gains (in dollar amounts).
Also, even though I like to take trades when multiple frames line up, I like having the option of being able to play in two directions at one time in the same instrument, though never in the same time frame for obvious reasons. (I only trade EURUSD...for now). If I have a 200 or 300 pip target in a small long position based on weekly signals, there will be times I want to trade patterns or ranges on 5, 15, or 60 minutes, and sometimes having the play on in the larger time frame actually provides clarity for the small ones. So it's possible to be in and out of the instrument 20 or 30 times in two weeks both long and short in one account while sitting in the same instrument in one direction the entire time in the other.
I had thought about making the second account the same size, but decided to make it larger to increase the dollar amount of my gains (my ultimate risk is always a percentage of my total account size…except when I break my size rules…like the few times I still broke them in the DT account…had I not, I would have a gain right now instead of a loss). If you risk 10% of your account on a trade, and lose, then go back to your original tolerance (in my case, 1 -2 % of my account), it can take a while to make back that 10% loss, but part of the development is accepting that when I break my rules, I cannot continue to do so to make back the loss…accounts drain quickly that way. By forcing myself to come back off a larger than tolerable loss as a result of violating my size (or stop) rules without violating them to try and recover quickly is actually helping to avoid that pitfall (remember, after the big loss, the account is now smaller, so the allowable % played is now smaller, making it even more time consuming to recover it). That is why it is important that these accounts never have deposits added. If they are finite, I either get over my pitfalls and grow them, or blow them out and walk away. I was always adding money into my old daytrading account because of my mistakes, promising myself I wouldn’t make them again, then turning right around and doing it again. I wasn’t learning a damn thing. Plus, I hated that 25k min rule. There is no reason I shouldn't be able to succeed on the short term plays if I can on the long term. I think it's just easier to break rules short term trading because I'm take so many more plays (which means more opportunity to break rules, though I'm trying to view it as more opportunities to not break rules.)
It sounds like you have a lot of the same scars I do, and a lot of the same feelings I’ve felt along the way. One of the reasons I still want to achieve this victory is because of the sheer amount of money, effort, and time I've invested in it (I hear you on that master’s degree comment!). Increasing size too soon, or just breaking size rules has always been the biggest destroyer of my objectivity, which is why I'm starting small and growing tolerance. I moved to the EURUSD so I could start with smaller risk than I could trading the NQ (I had moved to the EURUSD already but still kept putting on too big of plays to be comfortable in, which was disastrous). I could trade small with stocks, but I don't want to go back to ETFs or stocks because I hate the PDT rule and taxes are a pain with those, too. If my daytrading account grows large enough (and my tolerance with it, of course) to play at least 3 or more contracts, I will at that point consider the E minis again.
Very enjoyable discussion. Good luck with your plan…and school too!
Too many pipedreams, not because it's impossible but because most are misled.