jasinhbca's quest for discipline, knowledge & profits

[zbestoch]

but when you throwing good quantity of lots, don't have to trade long.

You just need one pattern to do well, and learn when not to take trades and when price telling to do something. At "walls" take profit and don't fight walls to entry, let the others fight the walls.

Wisdom.

I know two guys their daily nut is $100 net, they throwing huge numbers 500-1,000 at trades, they take 1-2 trades then go play golf no later than 45 minutes.

The initials jcc mean anything to you, @Handle123? From Texas?

 

[toucan]

You bought up a stat that many overlook in their back testing and stat on getting stats by the hour. Some hours have very so so returns on trade. And others have the best. When I backtest anything, I delete out top/bottom 10% of the trades as I am searching for best averages to seek best protective stops and first targets. What many "newbs" don't look at or consider is ave per trade. In day trading unless you trading off the Dome and doing 200 trades a day, less trading is best, the commissions really add up if you are retail, ten trades can be $50 in Crude Oil. So that is a half a tick, have to always consider how you doing in hourly on loss percentages as when added to commissions, it going to be even more trades to get to breakeven.

So today you ave 4.8 ticks per trade and 4.3 ticks after commissions. This shows how near perfect you have to trade spread out over handful of hours and as hours goes by, more drained you become. I prefer to have a goal on any market I trade, make that goal and quit, I want less trades and much higher ticks per trade counting wins/losses and breakevens, the lower the ave ticks, more importance to trying to get plus one tick on breakeven trades, otherwise breakeven is a losing trade.

Keep up fine trading Jas and journal, before you know it be making $10k weeks.

One thing I found helpful was tracking stats by day of week and by hour. After collecting data over a number of months, I found that I made more money on certain days and during certain trading hours. I believe this is highly dependent on the processes you use to trade and the individual trader.

toucan

 

[Handle123]

Wisdom.



The initials jcc mean anything to you, @Handle123? From Texas?

Only JCC I know has huge spread near Ft. Worth and very "well to do" country gentleman.

 

[Handle123]

One thing I found helpful was tracking stats by day of week and by hour. After collecting data over a number of months, I found that I made more money on certain days and during certain trading hours. I believe this is highly dependent on the processes you use to trade and the individual trader.

toucan

I made a system that only trades Reports, it does very well now after six months of automation, so like all the forex pairs, grains, anything affected by government reports. Each weekend, we add dates/times to individual instruments and even stocks.

So when you are able to narrow it down to the "Best" times, then a matter of building the account and every month add another contract. For me afternoons were always the toughest, by then I am tired of sitting and want to go out and play with the kids.

I didn't trade ES/NQ today, volatility too high. Took some trades in Gold based on volume.

 

[Alpha Trader]

I have read in someone else's post, that they also deem Al Brook's material as "difficult". Are you able to explain how it is difficult

His writing style leave a lot to be desired. However, the new books tend to be a little better, but still almost as complex. Lastly, the charts are not organized and placed well; there's a lot of figuring out of where in the chart he is and there's a lot of back and forth flipping.

In saying that, he has done a very good job with the task at hand. Since his methodology is so complex, it becomes a challenge putting it on paper. You really have to be well acquainted with PA to truly benefit from his work.

He does have a video series, but I would put that on the level of Bob Volmann. Both those can be considered an intro. level to PA.

@Iwilldoit hope this helps.

 

[toucan]

I made a system that only trades Reports, it does very well now after six months of automation, so like all the forex pairs, grains, anything affected by government reports. Each weekend, we add dates/times to individual instruments and even stocks.

So when you are able to narrow it down to the "Best" times, then a matter of building the account and every month add another contract. For me afternoons were always the toughest, by then I am tired of sitting and want to go out and play with the kids.

I didn't trade ES/NQ today, volatility too high. Took some trades in Gold based on volume.

agreed.... I tend to trade 5am pst to 8-830am pst and always look for reports and exchange opens for opportunities

cheers

toucan

 

[jas_in_hbca]

Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to reply. I really appreciate it.



I have read in someone else's post, that they also deem Al Brook's material as "difficult". Are you able to explain how it is difficult?



I have a set of rules for every b/t. Rules for Entry,Exit,Stops etc.




Regardless of how successful I will become, I will never stop learning and improving.

I have read most of H123's posts, and will read every post in this thread as you recommended.

Thank You Jas, you thread has indeed been very inspirational.

We will be in touch,

IWDI

@jas_in_hbca

Been awhile since I looked at his books. The first one jumps right in to the material without defining his terms from what I recall. It's a confusing and tedious read. My understanding is so many traders complained that he then went and rewrote into several books. Maybe he was just trying to sell more books I bot one of the other books and found that also a slow very detailed read. Constant back and forth from text to the chart. Maybe just not conducive to my learning style. Some day i'll give it another try.

There are ET traders that found the first book extremely helpful and have done well with the info.

I wouldn't recommend reading my whole journal. Lot's of me just stumbling along. Maybe there's something helpful there early on, IDK. About 2 years in I think I starting making some progress. Like I said before , find Rednecks posts and read those along with the others I mentioned.

See ya ,

jas

 

[jas_in_hbca]

Interesting thread, albeit little too long (in length) to stomach in one sitting. I would like to know if you managed to overcome the above difficulties you've laid out at the outset of this thread. Needless to say, these tasks are pertinent to all traders--have in the past and will very likely continue into the neverending future.

My current goals are to:

1. continue to have patience in trade selection

2. complete my trade worksheets which will track my entries, exits and mistakes

3. Review the days chart to increase my knowledge of PA and better understand my entries. The better I understand my entries and exits the less hesitation on execution I hope to have.

4. Hold my winners longer

5. Remember to treat each trade independently. Sometimes I'm taking quick profits just to get back to even for the day despite PA to the contrary.

=================

Yeah, this journal lasted longer than I had expected.

1. My patience has improved greatly. One of the factors leading to this was specifically describing my set ups & triggers so I knew what I was looking for. Less guessing makes patience easier. Losing money due to impatience is another good teacher

2 My worksheets have changed over the years. Logging my trades and stats is sometimes intermittent. The first part of the year and end of last year I was logging all my trade stats and posting to my excel w/s. The problem is that there's a bug with Ninja trader when used with Kinetick data feed (their 'preferred' provider ). Ninja doesn't track MFE & MAE. For months I was manually calculating it for all my trades but it became too much work and time consuming. Supposedly Ninja ver 8 will fix this problem. Then i'll go back to logging all the data. The worksheet I do now is just monitoring is the trade valid, managed properly & exited properly.

3 Yes, I continue to annotate and save/print charts. Always learning and improving by doing this

4 yes. I used to get nervous when trades didn't move immediately or i might exit on the first pb. Seeing what that cost me in profits through logging and backtesting made it easier to hold trades.

5 Mostly yes. Sometimes I do grab a quick profits

jas

 

[jas_in_hbca]

You bought up a stat that many overlook in their back testing and stat on getting stats by the hour. Some hours have very so so returns on trade. And others have the best. When I backtest anything, I delete out top/bottom 10% of the trades as I am searching for best averages to seek best protective stops and first targets. What many "newbs" don't look at or consider is ave per trade. In day trading unless you trading off the Dome and doing 200 trades a day, less trading is best, the commissions really add up if you are retail, ten trades can be $50 in Crude Oil. So that is a half a tick, have to always consider how you doing in hourly on loss percentages as when added to commissions, it going to be even more trades to get to breakeven.

So today you ave 4.8 ticks per trade and 4.3 ticks after commissions. This shows how near perfect you have to trade spread out over handful of hours and as hours goes by, more drained you become. I prefer to have a goal on any market I trade, make that goal and quit, I want less trades and much higher ticks per trade counting wins/losses and breakevens, the lower the ave ticks, more importance to trying to get plus one tick on breakeven trades, otherwise breakeven is a losing trade.

Keep up fine trading Jas and journal, before you know it be making $10k weeks.

I was mistaken yesterday. I thought most trades were CL in fact I had 5 CL trades and 5 NQ trades. Anyway, I get your point.

Thanks Handle.

10K wk ? I haven't dreamed that big. Yet.

 

[jas_in_hbca]

Ok I think I responded to everybody. Let me know if missed something.

===============

Difficult PA day. Big drop overnight in equities. My immediate post trade review was everything was done fine per plan. I'll go back and review all the trades again. I think my last NQ trade was exited too soon. I'm trying for 90% of my trades to be executed exactly per plan. Why not 100% ? It's not realistic for me right now. I occasionally have an invalid impulse entry or an emotional exit. Executing 9 out of 10 trades perfectly is harder than it sounds , for me anyway.
That's what I'm focused on.

Good patience today. I did my job.

+23 CL ticks
-4.25 NQ pts

11 trades