Are you going to trade from the road?
Journal from a lurker who just made his first post on ET
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Probably not. At most I might swing trade forex from my phone on a small account just to stay in touch with things and practice a bit.
Love it, focus on the business at hand. Market's will be here when you exit the star zone. Enjoy every second of it.
Down -$60 today, and -$100 last Friday. Been trading crypto a bit, and just trying to figure out why its so much easier for me to hold a trade in crypto vs futures even when the $ amounts are essentially the same in terms of average wins and losses. Still abiding by my loss limits in futures and not doing anything too dumb. But its perplexing to me why futures trading feels so much more stressful/intense.
For example here is a small shitcoin position I entered this morning and am still in now. At the high I was up about $100 on the trade, initial risk about $15. I decided not to take profits and just let it run overnight and see what happens tomorrow. On the contrary, I would find it very difficult to hold a $15 position on MES up to $100. I would usually find some excuse between $25-$45 to take profits, and I would feel way too excited/anxious while doing so. Whereas with this crypto position I don't feel any attachment to it at all. I'm not going to let it turn into a loser (unless it dumps in my sleep - no stop losses, only market orders in defi shitcoins), but I have no issue letting it run back against me, knowing that just like any other market, things slow down overnight. I've traded some very large shitcoin positions during the bull market, low 5 figures (large for me), and my girlfriend would never know based off my mood if I made or lost a few thousand that day. Whereas losing 50 bucks trading futures can fuck my whole day up LOL.
Part of it might be my sense of the competition trading shitcoins is a lot different. Trading a micro-cap shitcoin means you are trading against a few hundred absolute noobs with severely limited trading IQ, whereas with futures, I feel like the idiot, swimming around in a shark tank. In defi, traders call themselves "investors" and post their every thought and feeling in telegram chats, giving me a direct window into their internal dialogues, making it very easy to sense the psychological framing of the market as it ebbs and flows. There are bots, but they mostly impact the initial launch of a new token, in general the trading is very "human" oriented and organic. It also begs the question; if I have made good money in the past trading crypto, and struggle with futures, why not just stick to what seems to work? I remember reading old posts on these forums questioning why novice traders flock to ES, the major leagues of trading, instead of finding a smaller, thinner, or more obscure market? Defi shitcoin trading is the smallest, thinnest, most obscure market I have ever seen, and also the only one I've truly been sucessful in.
I think part of the answer is that I like how easy and orderly futures are in terms of going long or short at the price you want, at the exact moment you want. I know the liquidity is a mile wide and an inch deep, and can evaporate in a heartbeat if the shit hits the fan, but that illusion of robustness and reliability is something futures has that crypto doesn't. And if I had to guess which market has higher odds of still being operable in 10 years, I would guess futures over random shitcoins on decentralized smart chains.
For example here is a small shitcoin position I entered this morning and am still in now. At the high I was up about $100 on the trade, initial risk about $15. I decided not to take profits and just let it run overnight and see what happens tomorrow. On the contrary, I would find it very difficult to hold a $15 position on MES up to $100. I would usually find some excuse between $25-$45 to take profits, and I would feel way too excited/anxious while doing so. Whereas with this crypto position I don't feel any attachment to it at all. I'm not going to let it turn into a loser (unless it dumps in my sleep - no stop losses, only market orders in defi shitcoins), but I have no issue letting it run back against me, knowing that just like any other market, things slow down overnight. I've traded some very large shitcoin positions during the bull market, low 5 figures (large for me), and my girlfriend would never know based off my mood if I made or lost a few thousand that day. Whereas losing 50 bucks trading futures can fuck my whole day up LOL.
Part of it might be my sense of the competition trading shitcoins is a lot different. Trading a micro-cap shitcoin means you are trading against a few hundred absolute noobs with severely limited trading IQ, whereas with futures, I feel like the idiot, swimming around in a shark tank. In defi, traders call themselves "investors" and post their every thought and feeling in telegram chats, giving me a direct window into their internal dialogues, making it very easy to sense the psychological framing of the market as it ebbs and flows. There are bots, but they mostly impact the initial launch of a new token, in general the trading is very "human" oriented and organic. It also begs the question; if I have made good money in the past trading crypto, and struggle with futures, why not just stick to what seems to work? I remember reading old posts on these forums questioning why novice traders flock to ES, the major leagues of trading, instead of finding a smaller, thinner, or more obscure market? Defi shitcoin trading is the smallest, thinnest, most obscure market I have ever seen, and also the only one I've truly been sucessful in.
I think part of the answer is that I like how easy and orderly futures are in terms of going long or short at the price you want, at the exact moment you want. I know the liquidity is a mile wide and an inch deep, and can evaporate in a heartbeat if the shit hits the fan, but that illusion of robustness and reliability is something futures has that crypto doesn't. And if I had to guess which market has higher odds of still being operable in 10 years, I would guess futures over random shitcoins on decentralized smart chains.
My guess is you've done more futures trades than crypto trades to this point?
If so you are more "aware" of perils of what can go wrong. Aware in quotes because obviously any trade at any time in any market can go wrong, but our feelings are more attuned to what we have done more of.
You just have to let it go if you feel your edge is strong and use proper trade management.
If so you are more "aware" of perils of what can go wrong. Aware in quotes because obviously any trade at any time in any market can go wrong, but our feelings are more attuned to what we have done more of.
You just have to let it go if you feel your edge is strong and use proper trade management.
Just one scalp today, short off a failed 2nd push higher. Pared back my system for futures to fit on one sticky note and paring back my trades to 1 or 2 a day. Getting busier with tour preparation, and also trading some crypto on the side. Ended my futures losing streak finally on Tuesday so just been trying to build back from there. Didn't have any huge blowouts or tilting, was just consistently hitting my loss limit on the first couple trades over and over lol. And my entries were getting sloppier as I was making more demands of the market and projecting what I thought it should do.
Out of curiosity, after you reach a channel bottom, do you think it is appropriate to take a long, expecting price to move back up to the channel top? Don't get me wrong, in a down channel, it perhaps only makes sense to take the shorts at the channel tops, but given that here you also have a moving average, and I think typically people think of a MA as a support or resistance level, so a channel bottom along with the MA might be seen as a good reason for a long. In fact, your short, being right at the MA, and at the same level as the previous swing low is kind of risky, which is just my opinion of course.
I have always liked your channels, and you seem to use them quite successfully. But what emphasis do you put into the MA? How does it help you take a trade? Because my humble opinion is that if it doesn't really add to the decision to enter a trade, then maybe its just a distraction?
Thanks for the comment! I think in certain situations you could go long in the bottom of a downward channel. Maybe if its a very large, broad channel and you are playing a smaller upwards channel within it. But yeah in general its just easy for me to compartmentalize things by sticking to the dominant side.
I agree, going short into those lows and the 200ema added some risk. If the trade had lost that would probably be my excuse. But the tightness/neatness of the bar pattern there, and the way they were pushing downwards off of the 21ema and the midline of the channel is what sealed it for me. My thought was that uptrend had played out, and there would be stops under that low from late buyers (i know because I've been the late buyer lately lol).
As far as MA's go, I use them dynamically. With the 200, depending on context I might avoid entering anywhere around it altogether. For example if its flat and positioned in the middle of a range, and price is clinging to it. However, if its flat but price is disrespecting it and swinging widely above and below it, then I'm not as worried about it. If the 200 is sloped, it serves as a reminder to me of the bigger trend at play, helps me avoid trying to pick bottoms/tops.
The 21 factors in more directly on a trade by trade basis. Im watching for flatness as a hint towards congestion, comparing how far price is traveling away from it on sequences of swings in a trend, using it as a warning not to chase prices too much on an impulse move, reminder to wait for a pullback, etc.
I tend not to think of them as support or resistance because ultimately I think its a random line. For example when prices bounce perfectly off the 200, I dont think anything special happened. Any and every ma length will look like support or resistance at some point. Maybe the 200 on a daily tf for a stock or something is meaningful if tons of people watch it but the way I use them, they are just a visual guide that I use to compare, measure, see patterns, guide behavior, and take tons of little cues from.
Maybe if I showed that chart in larger context I could better explain why i wasn't worried about it. At any rate thanks for asking, its really interesting to me how challenging it is to actually put this stuff into words. Its actually very hard to write about something so technical yet "artistic" and try not to give the impression that I think I'm smarter or better at trading than I am. I suppose it would be similar to trying to write about some aspect of playing guitar, like how to position your hand and hold the pick to achieve certain tones/dynamics. Seems simple in my head until I try to explain it. Thanks for the exercise!
So here is the larger context I was talking about. Basically, I saw price get to where that sharp move down earlier started from, and then the rhythm changed, and since they didn't run the stops above that "important swing high", I'm thinking it may go down and target that "important swing low" instead. So the fact that my entry was into a local swing low and into the 200 EMA kind of made me like the trade even more because I'm thinking longs are trapped with stops under that local low.