Journal from a lurker who just made his first post on ET
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Never heard the term seed wave before. The way I use channels is mostly useful on short term tick charts, or 1-2 minute charts, and mostly with futures. I'm not sure why that is, but something about their character and the horizontal "spreading" effect of tick charts seems to work well with channels. I can never find channels that clean on anything 5 minutes or higher, or in any other markets I'm aware of.
Scalping a lot today. 100% win rate, made up for the lack of action on my end the last 2 days. Not gonna bother about missing some very big moves. Was targeting Tuesday's low, but the longer my win streak got the less willing I was to give it back. Seeing as I knew the objective but not the actual path to get there, seemed safer to use the momentum to keep tight stops and book profits. Of course my goal is to become a hot shot and hold for hours. I did hold a trade for about 40 minutes last week, which is an improvement for me. Eventually I'd like to break that attachment to house money, and use it instead of clinging on to it.
Here's my performance for the week. Commissions are a little over a dollar round trip:
I know that trading micros on an evaluation sim account probably isn't impressive to anyone here, but the thought of having a button that prints $7.78 every time I push it is pretty appealing to me and keeps me motivated.
My band is heading out on a US/Canada tour in November. Goal, if I may be so bold as to have one, is to leave for tour with some money in my pocket by completing this evaluation account and being granted access to the bucket shop. Main priority is to limit losing days to a max of $150. (Basically, stop trading on the first loss that breaches -$100 pnl on the day)
Here's my performance for the week. Commissions are a little over a dollar round trip:
I know that trading micros on an evaluation sim account probably isn't impressive to anyone here, but the thought of having a button that prints $7.78 every time I push it is pretty appealing to me and keeps me motivated.
My band is heading out on a US/Canada tour in November. Goal, if I may be so bold as to have one, is to leave for tour with some money in my pocket by completing this evaluation account and being granted access to the bucket shop. Main priority is to limit losing days to a max of $150. (Basically, stop trading on the first loss that breaches -$100 pnl on the day)
Had 10 ticks of slippage off of a sell stop on the 3rd contract of that first short sequence. Actual order was 1 tick below the previous relatively equal lows. Pretty funny. So I booked what I had there since I didn't like that fill. Re-entered a 1 lot just in case the stop run continued. Was distracted with some other stuff and missed some nice entries, took a quick scalp just to offset the sloppy entries on the first sequence.
After that, I switched over to my live account and spent some time scalping MYM. 100% win rate over 8 trades, since price was in a range, and I am just working on pulling the trigger with live money with no hesitation. Thats definitely not how I prefer to trade, but it's still better than being in a range and constantly loading up looking for breakouts. At least my expectations were in line with the actual price action.
After that, I switched over to my live account and spent some time scalping MYM. 100% win rate over 8 trades, since price was in a range, and I am just working on pulling the trigger with live money with no hesitation. Thats definitely not how I prefer to trade, but it's still better than being in a range and constantly loading up looking for breakouts. At least my expectations were in line with the actual price action.
First sequence of the day, a short position.
In this case I decided to tighten my stop a bit, take a 3-point loss, and then look for another entry. Once I was in a clean lower high, I started adding on and tightening my stop behind consecutive power bars. Closed because of the ranging nature of the market today. However, my thought on that 2nd sell was "if this doesn't work, I need to be done for the day". My priority this week is to make sure I don't lose more than $150 in 1 day. I would have been down about $65 if I had lost the first 2 entries in a row. If I take 2 decent sized L's right out of the gate, at that point my next entry will likely be a coin toss, and if that fails, I am in danger of overtrading. There's plenty of times when I recover from 2 losses, but there are also many times where 3 losses turn into 12 losses in a row, and so on.
But I still try to add on to my winners. Continue to work on holding them through more heat if there is a cushion of house money on the table.
Probably my only trade for the day. I'm managing some BBBY puts that I bought last week and this Monday so that's got my attention.
In this case I decided to tighten my stop a bit, take a 3-point loss, and then look for another entry. Once I was in a clean lower high, I started adding on and tightening my stop behind consecutive power bars. Closed because of the ranging nature of the market today. However, my thought on that 2nd sell was "if this doesn't work, I need to be done for the day". My priority this week is to make sure I don't lose more than $150 in 1 day. I would have been down about $65 if I had lost the first 2 entries in a row. If I take 2 decent sized L's right out of the gate, at that point my next entry will likely be a coin toss, and if that fails, I am in danger of overtrading. There's plenty of times when I recover from 2 losses, but there are also many times where 3 losses turn into 12 losses in a row, and so on.
But I still try to add on to my winners. Continue to work on holding them through more heat if there is a cushion of house money on the table.
Probably my only trade for the day. I'm managing some BBBY puts that I bought last week and this Monday so that's got my attention.
Didn't take any trades today. Still managing BBBY puts so just want to get that out of the way first. Plus, I wasn't a big fan of the choppiness on ES today. Here are my updated stats since the last performance card I posted:
Also, here is a cumulative net profit graph from my trading yesterday.
Just like the market itself, my PNL is ranging up and down on most days, trending up steadily on a few, and dumping down on a few. But even though my pnl is usually just oscillating up and down throughout the day from red to green, I haven't had a single losing day in the last 2 weeks. They key, as I often try to remind myself, is at what point of the oscillation do I choose to stop trading for the day?
This is probably common sense to experienced traders here, but it's probably worth a lot of money to a novice.
Also, here is a cumulative net profit graph from my trading yesterday.
Just like the market itself, my PNL is ranging up and down on most days, trending up steadily on a few, and dumping down on a few. But even though my pnl is usually just oscillating up and down throughout the day from red to green, I haven't had a single losing day in the last 2 weeks. They key, as I often try to remind myself, is at what point of the oscillation do I choose to stop trading for the day?
This is probably common sense to experienced traders here, but it's probably worth a lot of money to a novice.
That 1750 chart hums right along at that time of morning. What time you hit the rack when you're on the road? Gotta be drenched and drained after a show. How long to get back in gear? What's your feeding routine? Vitamin Mineral sups? Exercise? Hydrate? Aspirin, lol?
Hey, those channels look great. As price cranks by on that 1750 chart, at what point do those channels appear and how do they get there? Break a Leg.
We got no idea what you guys kick out but here's one for the metal lite hour.
https://elitetrader.com/et/threads/wipers-in-tha-carwash-good-badd.365842/page-2#post-5670091